WEEK 2

THE CONCEPT OF CULTURE

MNGT 583 – Özge Can

HOFSTEDE ET AL. 2010

Culture and Organizations

Why to Study Culture?

World full of confrontations between people, groups and nations who think, feel and act differently

But we have to find solutions to some common problems (e.g. economic, political, ecological, technological, medical) and cooperate

Culture as Mental Programming

Software of the mind Patterns of thinking, feeling and acting in

some expected way

Soruces of mental programming => family, neighborhood, school, friendship groups, workplace, living community

Culture as Mental Programming

Every society has a culture; it includes all kinds of activities in life such as greeting, eating, showing feelings, keeping a distance from others and etc. => unwritten rules of the social game

Collective programming of the mind that distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from others

Culture is learned, not inherited It is also different from human nature or

personality

Manifestations of Culture:

Symbols: words, gestures, pictures, or objects that carry a particular meaning that is recognized as such by those who share the culture (e.g. language)

Heroes: persons, alive or dead, real or imaginary, who possess characteristics that are highly prized in a culture and serve as models for behavior (e.g. our parents)

Rituals: collective activities that are technically superflous but are considered socially essential. (e.g. toilet training)

Values: broad tendencies to prefer certain states of affairs over others (e.g. evil versus good)

Moral Circle

“Our group” => Only the members of the moral circle have full rights and obligations of a culture. But who are they?

Nations or religions try to set the boundaries of a moral circle: expanding or narrowing it (e.g. Universal Declaration of Human Rights)

Race and family – “blood is thicker than water”

But; genetic differences are NOT the main basis for group boundaries; symbolic boundaries are becoming more important

Moral Circle

In-group: “We” Out-group: “They”

We have a persistent need to classify people in either group

Moral Circle

Question: If you could make only three

statements about yourself, what would you say?

Reinforcing the moral circle: Showing your membership in the clothes,

movements, way of speaking, possessions, jobs

Talking, laughing, playing, touching, singing, eating, driinking with the other members of the group

Differentl Levels of Culture

National level Regional and/or ethnic and/or religious

and/or linguistic affiliation level Gender level Generation level Social-class level Organizational and/or corporate level

Change: Practices and Values “Onion” model: Different layers of

culture Change mostly involve the relatively

superficial spheres of symbols and heroes, of fashion and consumption => Visible practices

But values as the deepeset sphere (inner layer) do not change easily

National values are hard to change (as well as gender and regional ones)

National Culture and Identities Important: Nations should not be equated to

societies Societies are historically, organically developed

forms of social organization

Three main differences between countries: Identity => language, religion (visible) Values => software of the mings (invisible) Institutions => rules, laws, organizationas

(visible)

Identities vs. Values

Identity is explicit “A woman” “A bilingual individual” “A Turkish citizen”

Values are implicit It is like the air we breathe; difficult to talk

about or explain

Cultural Relativism

No culture is superior or inferior to another

Studying differences in culture among groups and societies from a neutral vantage point => cultural relativism

It calls for suspending judgments when dealing with groups or societies different from one’s own

You should not apply the norms of your own culture to another

Trompenaars & Turner-Hampden (2000)

Riding the Waves of Culture

Riding the Waves of Culture

Three goals of the book:1. Dispel the notion that there is ''one best

way" of managing and organizing2. Give readers a better understanding of

their own culture and cultural differences in general, by learning how to recognize and cope with these in a business context

3. Provide some cultural insights into the "global“ versus "local" dilemma facing international organizations

A Major Question

Can management solutions be universal?

Can management “thruths” be applied anywhere, under any circumstances? Some implimantation failures: pay-for-

performance and management-by-objectives schemes

Even the notion of HRM is difficult to translate to other cultures; human beings as “resources”

Common Culture Worldwide? McDonalds and Coca-Cola given as

exaples of tastes, markets and cultures becoming similar everywhere

But the question is not what they are or where they are found: What they mean to the people in

each culture The essence of culture is not what

is visible on the surface International dilemma: “glocalization”

Common Culture Worldwide? Critique of the standart model of North

America Internationalization of business life

requires more knowledge of cultural patterns

The "one best way“ is a management fallacy which is dying a slow death.

Culture is like gravity: you do not experience it until you jump six feet into the air.

We cannot understand why individuals and organizations act as they do without considering the meanings they attribute to their environment.

The organization and its structures are thus more than objective reality; they comprise fulfilments or frustrations of the mental models held by real people.

Meaning of Culture

A fish only discovers its need for water when it is no longer in it.

Our own culture is like water to a fish. It sustains us. We live and breathe through it.

Meaning of Culture

The existence of mutual beliefs The meanings we give to what we

experience; our expectations

The Layers of Culture: Outer layer: Explicit culture Middle layer: Norms and values Core: Assumptions about existence

Outer Layer: Explicit Culture

Explicit culture is the observable reality of the language, food, buildings, houses, monuments, agriculture, shrines, markets, fashions and art.

They are the symbols of a deeper level of culture.

Prejudices mostly start on this symbolic and observable level.

What Is Culture?

Culture: The way in which a group of people

solves problems and reconciles dilemmas.

The layers of values and norms are deeper than explicit culture, and are more difficult to identify.

What is taken for granted, unquestioned reality => this is the core of the onion.

Middle Level: Norms and Values Norms are the mutual sense a group

has of what is "right" and "wrong". They can develop on a formal level as

written laws, and on an informal level as social control.

Values determine the definition of "good and bad", and are therefore closely related to the ideals shared by a group.

Middle Level: Norms and Values While the norms, consciously or

subconsciously, give us a feeling of "this is how I normally should behave", values give us a feeling of "this is how I aspire or desire to behave".

A value serves as a criterion to determine a choice from existing alternatives. It is the concept an individual or group has regarding the desirable.

Core: Assumptions about Existence Each society organized themselves to find the

ways to deal most effectively with their environments, given their available resources. Such continuous problems are eventually solved automatically.

"Culture" comes from the same root as the verb "to cultivate", meaning to till the soil: the way people act upon nature => relationship with the nature/ environment

Stereotyping

Culture directs our actions Culture as a “normal distribution”

Using extreme, exaggerated forms of behavior is stereotyping. It is a very limited view of the average

behavior in a certain environment. People often equate something different with

something wrong. "Their way is clearly different from ours, so it cannot be right."

Cultural Variation

Cultures vary in solutions to common problems and dilemmas: What is the relationship of the individual to

others? (relational orientation) What is the temporal focus of human life?

(time orientation) What is the form of human activity? (activity

orientation) What is a human being's relation to nature?

(man-nature orientation) What is the character of innate human nature

(inner self)? (human nature orientation)