Culture in busin ess

1. Culture in business What is culture? National cultures and subcultures Components of culture Frameworks for studying cultural differences Wild, Wild, & Han. Chapter 2

2. What is culture? • The set of values, beliefs, rules, and institutions held by a specific group of people (Wild, Wild & Han) • The collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from another (Hofstede) • Culture is learned, not inherited • Culture is EVERYTHING (Tim) ?

3. National culture and subcultures • National culture supports and promotes the concept of a national identity by building museums and monuments to preserve the legacies of important events and people • A subculture is a group of people who share a unique way of life within a larger dominant culture. It differs from the dominant culture in languages, race, values or attitudes

4. The Swedes • “There are about 9 million Swedes all of whom are tall, blond, blue eyed and socialists. They make love (sin) all day long, pausing regularly to imbibe schnapps. They then work efficiently and honestly to earn enormous salaries, which makes them such bores that they kill themselves!” (Phillips-Martinsson, 1985)

5. Components of culture Aesthetics Values & Attitudes Physical & material environments Manners & Customs Education Culture Social Structure Personal communication Religion

6. Aesthetics • What a culture considers to be in “good taste” (e.g. in the arts) • The imagery evoked by certain expressions and the symbolism of certain colors Values & Attitudes • Values are ideas, beliefs, and customs to which people are emotionally attached • Attitudes are positive or negative evaluations, feelings, and tendencies that individuals harbor toward objects or concepts • Attitudes and values are learned from role models

7. Manners and Customs • Manners are the appropriate ways of behaving, speaking, and dressing in a culture • Customs are habits or ways of behaving in specific circumstances that are passed down through generations in a culture • Folk and popular customs • Gift giving

8. Social Structure • Social group associations • Nuclear Family: a person’s immediate relatives • Extended family: broadens the nuclear family • Gender: socially learned traits associated with each sex • Social status • Social stratification: Ranking people into social classes • Social Mobility • Caste system: people are born into social ranking • Class system: Personal ability and actions decide social status and mobility

9. Religion Christianity Islam Shinto Human values often originate from religious beliefs Hinduism Judaism Buddhism Confucianism

10. Personal Communication • Spoken language • Blunders • Lingua franca • Unspoken language (body language) • Gestures • Proximity • High and low context cultures (Hall) • High: context is as important as what is being said; a reliance on common understanding • Low: most information is contained explicitly in the words

11. Education • Important in passing on traditions, customs and values • Education level • Brain drain Physical and material environments • Physical environment • Topography: the physical features that characterize the surface of a geographic region • Climate: the weather conditions of a geographic region • Material culture • All the technology employed in a culture to manufacture goods and provide services • Uneven material culture

12. Classifying culture • Kluckhohn-Strodtbeck Framework • Studies cultural differences along six dimensions • Relationship to nature: Do we control it? • Time orientation: Past, present or future? • Trust and control: Can people be trusted or controlled? • Accomplishments in life: Materialistic or spiritual? • Relationship with others: The individual or the group? • View of personal space: Public or private? • Hofstede Framework • Studies cultural differences along four dimensions • Individualism vs. collectivism: Individual vs. Group • Power distance: Acceptance of social inequality • Uncertainty avoidance: Avoiding uncertainty and ambiguity • Masculinity vs. femininity: The role of men & women