chapter 4

• Culture is a system of values and norms shared among a group of people and that when taken together constitute a design for living.
• Values are ideas about what a group believes to be good, right, and desirable.
• Norms are social rules and guidelines that prescribe appropriate behavior in particular situations.
• Society is a group of people sharing a common set of values and norms.
• Values provide the context within which a society’s norms are established and justified and are invested with emotional significance.
• Norms are social rules that govern people’s actions toward one another and include rituals and symbolic behavior.
• Culture, society, and the nation-state relationship is not strictly one-to-one, with a nation-state being a political creation.
• The values and norms of a culture evolve over time due to factors such as religion, political philosophy, economic philosophy, education, and social structure.
• Social structure refers to the basic social organization of a society and can be explained by two dimensions: the degree to which the basic unit of social organization is the individual, as opposed to the group, and the degree to which a society is stratified into classes or castes.
• In many Western societies, the individual is the basic building block of social organization, with an emphasis on individual achievement.
• In many non-Western societies, a group is the primary unit of social organization, with importance of group membership/identification.
• Social strata are hierarchical social categories often based on family background, occupation, and income, and individuals born into a particular stratum, which affects life chances.
• Social mobility is the extent to which individuals can move out of the strata into which they are born, and it varies among societies.
• A caste system is a closed system where social position is determined by family and change is usually not possible, with India having four main castes.
• A class system is less rigid, and position can be changed through achievement and luck.
• The choice of countries in which to locate production facilities and do business has important business implications.
• Hofstede's work is the leading research on culture but has received criticism for assuming a one-to-one correspondence between culture and the nation-state, being culturally bound, and focusing on a single industry.
• Western nations tend to score high on individualism and low on power distance, while Latin American and Asian countries emphasize collectivism and score high on power distance.
• Edward T. Hall notes Americans tend to be informal and have a different attitude toward time, which can be misconstrued in an international business situation.
• Japan demonstrates strong uncertainty avoidance and high masculinity.
• Some say the culture of modern Japan lowers the cost of doing business relative to Western nations, and Japan is less supportive of entrepreneurial activity.
• Cross-Cultural Literacy: Companies must be informed about the culture of another nation when conducting international business.
• Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness (GLOBE) instrument measures a leader's effectiveness as contextual, embedded in the societal and organizational norms, values, and beliefs of the people being led, and established nine cultural dimensions: Power Distance, Uncertainty Avoidance, Humane Orientation, Institutional Collectivism, In-Group Collectivism, Assertiveness, Gender Egalitarianism, Future Orientation, and Performance Orientation.
• Culture is not a constant; it evolves over time, as evidenced by changes in the workplace such as the shift toward individualism in Japan and the move toward greater individualism in Japan.
• World Values Survey (WVS) explores people's values and norms, how they change over time, and what impact they have in society and business.
• Culture and Competitive Advantage: Values and norms influence costs of doing business and the costs of doing business influence ability to establish competitive advantage.
• Culture and Business: Geert Hofstede's Dimensions of Culture include Power Distance, Individualism versus Collectivism, Uncertainty Avoidance, Masculinity versus Femininity, Long-term versus Short-term Orientation, and Indulgence versus Restraint.
• Ethnocentrism is the belief in the superiority of one's own ethnic group or culture.
• The connection between culture and competitive advantage is important for two reasons: it suggests which countries are likely to produce the most viable competitors.
• Education is the medium through which individuals learn languages and other skills, socializes the young into the values and norms of a society, and provides a national competitive advantage.
• Most ethical systems are the product of religions.
• United Kingdom has a more rigid class structure than U.S.
• Nonverbal communication refers to the use of nonverbal cues to communicate meaning and is often culturally bound.
• Religion is a system of shared beliefs and rituals concerned with the realm of the sacred.
• Social Stratification can affect business operations.
• Class consciousness is a tendency for individuals to perceive themselves in terms of their class background.
• Language structures the way we see the world and countries with more than one language often have more than one culture.
• Ethical System is a set of moral principles, or values, that are used to guide and shape behavior.
• Sociologists argue that Protestant branch of Christianity has the most important economic implications.
• Christianity is the most widely-practiced religion, monotheistic, and is found throughout Europe, the Americas, and other countries settled by Europeans.