WEEK 2 THE CONCEPT OF CULTURE MNGT 583 – Özge Can

HOFSTEDE ET AL 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

Three goals of the book: 1. Dispel the notion that there is ''one best way" of managing and organizing 2. 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)