The word "culture" stems from a Latin root that means the
tilling of the soil, like in agriculture. In many modern languages
the word is used in a figurative sense, with two meanings:
- The first, most common, meaning is "civilization",
including education, manners, arts and crafts and
their products. It is the domain of a "ministry of
culture".
- The second meaning derives from social anthropology, but in the
past decades it has entered common parlance. It refers to the way
people think, feel, and act. Geert has defined it as "the
collective programming of the mind distinguishing the members of
one group or category of people from another". The "category" can
refer to nations, regions within or across nations, ethnicities,
religions, occupations, organizations, or the genders. A simpler
definition is 'the unwritten rules of the social game'.
The two meanings should not be confused. Our work refers to
culture in the second sense.
Human culture is the result of hundreds of thousands of years of
evolution. During most of this time, competition between bands of
gatherer-hunters was a powerful evolutionary pressure. As a result
our social and intellectual skills have become ever bigger. But we
did not lose the elements of our behaviour that identify us as
social mammals. Fights for dominance, competition for partners, a
wish to belong and to know who does not belong - all of these basic
drives are alive in us. No wonder that culture revolves around
basic issues that have to do with group membership, authority,
gender roles, morality, anxiety, emotions and drives. Culture
affects our love lives, our professional lives, our wars and our
dreams.
An individual human being acquires most of her or his
programming during childhood, before puberty. In this phase
of our lives we have an incredible capacity for absorbing
information and following examples from our social environment: our
parents and other elders, our siblings and playmates. But all of
this is constrained by our physical environment: its wealth or
poverty, its threats or safety, its level of technology. All human
groups, from the nuclear family to society, develop cultures as
they go. Culture is what enables a group to function smoothly. Here
are some prominent levels:
Today's world population is divided into some 200 nations.
Comparing nations has become part of most social sciences. Some
nations are more culturally homogeneous than others; especially
large nations like Brazil, China, India and Indonesia comprise
culturally different regions. Other culturally similar areas belong
politically to different nations: this is in particular the
case in Africa. With these limitations, comparing national cultures
is still a meaningful and revealing venture. Research by Geert and
others has shown that national cultures differ in particular at the
level of, usually unconscious, values held by a majority of the
population. Values, in this case, are "broad preferences for one
state of affairs over others". This differs from the often used
meaning "cherished moral convictions", as in "company
values". The Hofstede dimensions of national cultures are
rooted in our unconscious values. Because values are acquired
in childhood, national cultures are remarkably stable over time;
national values change is a matter of generations. What we see
changing around us, in response to changing circumstances are
practices: symbols, heroes and rituals, leaving the
underlying values untouched. This is why differences between
countries often have such a remarkable historical continuity.
Many of us spend a large part of their time in
organizations. Organizational cultures, the way Geert uses the
term, distinguish different organizations within the same country
or countries. Geert's research has shown that organizational
cultures differ mainly at the level of practices (symbols, heroes
and rituals); these are more superficial and more easily learned
and unlearned than the values that form the core of national
cultures. As a consequence, the Hofstede dimensions of national
cultures are not relevant for comparing organizations within the
same country. National cultures belong to anthropology;
organizational cultures to sociology. Because organizational
cultures are rooted in practices, they are to some extent
manageable; national cultures, rooted in values, are given facts
for organization management.
Entering an occupational field like nursing or ICT implies
acquiring a degree of mental programming. Occupational
cultures have symbols, heroes and rituals in common with
organizational cultures, but they also often imply holding certain
values and convictions. Occupational cultures in this respect
take a position in between national and organizational cultures.
The culture of management as an occupation contains both national
and organizational elements.
Gender differences are not usually described in terms of
cultures. It can be revealing to do so. If we recognize that within
each society there may be a men's culture that differs from a
women's culture, this helps to explain why it is so difficult to
change traditional gender roles. Women and men are often
technically able to perform the same jobs, but they do not
respond to the symbols, do not look like the heroes, do not share
the rituals. Even if some do, the other sex may not accept them in
their deviant gender role. Feelings and fears about behaviours by
the opposite sex can be of the same order of intensity as reactions
of people exposed to foreign cultures. The degree of gender
differentiation in a country is highly dependent on its
national culture.
- prehistory of culture
- dimensions of national cultures
- dimensions of organizational cultures
- future of culture