Transcript What is Culture?

Cross-Cultural
Business
Chapter Preview
• Define culture and list its components
• Discuss attitudes toward time, work and cultural
change
• Describe the roles of religion and communication
in a society
• Discuss how physical environment affects culture
• Describe two frameworks for classifying cultures
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What is Culture?
• Set of values, beliefs, rules and institutions
held by a specific group of people
• Ethnocentricity
– Belief that one’s own ethnic group or
culture is superior to that of others
• Cultural literacy
– Detailed knowledge of a culture that
enables a person to function effectively
within it
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Nations and Culture
• National culture
– Nation states build museums and
monuments to preserve the legacies of
important events and people
• Subculture
– Group of people that share a unique way
of life within a larger culture (language,
race, lifestyle, attitudes, etc.)
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Components of Culture
– Aesthetics
– Values & attitudes
– Manners & customs
– Social structure
– Religion
– Personal communication
– Education
– Physical environments
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Aesthetics
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Music
Painting
Dance
Drama
Architecture
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Values and Attitudes
• Values
– The Ideas, beliefs and customs to which people are
emotionally attached
• Freedom
• Responsibility
• Honesty
• Attitudes
– Positive or negative evaluations, feelings and
tendencies people hold toward objects or concepts
• Time
• Work
• Cultural change
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Manners and Customs
• Manners
– Appropriate behavior, speech and
dressing in general
• Customs
– Traditional ways or behavior in specific
circumstances
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Social Structure
• Social structure
– Culture’s groups, institutions, social
positions and resource distribution
• Social stratification
– Process of ranking people into social
layers
• Social mobility
– Ease of moving up or down a culture's
"social ladder"
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World Religions
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Origin of Human Values
-Christianity
-Islam
-Hinduism
-Buddhism
-Confucianism
-Judaism
-Shinto
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Language Blunders
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Braniff Airlines’ English-language slogan “Fly in Leather” was
translated into “Fly Naked” in Spanish.
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Sign in English on a Majorcan storefront read, “English welltalking” and “Here speeching American.”
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Sign for non-Japanese-speaking guests in a Tokyo hotel read, “You
are respectfully requested to take advantage of the
chambermaids.”
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English sign in a Moscow hotel read, “If this is your first visit to the
USSR, you are welcome to it.”
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Japanese knife manufacturer labeled its exports to the United
States with “Caution: Blade extremely sharp! Keep out of children.”
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Education
• Cultures pass on traditions, customs, and
values through schooling, parenting, group
memberships, etc.
• Education level
– Well-educated attract high-paying jobs, while
poorly educated attract low-paying manufacturing
jobs
• Brain drain
– Departure of highly educated people from one
profession, geographic region or nation to
another
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Physical and Material Culture
• These influence a culture’s development and
pace of change
• Topography
– Physical features characterizing the
surface of a geographic region
• Climate
– Weather conditions of a geographic region
• Material Culture
– Technology used to manufacture goods
and provide services
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Kluckhohn-Strodtbeck Framework
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Relation to nature
Material or spiritual
Time orientation
Responsibility to others
Trust and control
View of personal space
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Hofstede Framework
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Individualism vs. collectivism
Power distance
Uncertainty avoidance
Achievement vs. nurturing
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