culture

• Cross-Cultural Literacy - an understanding of how cultural differences across and withinnations can affect the way business is practiced
• Culture - a system of values and norms that are shared among a group of people and that when taken together constitute a design for living.
• Values - abstract ideas about what a group believes to be good, right, and desirable.
• Norms - the social rules and guidelines that prescribe appropriate behavior in particularsituations
• Two Major Categories of Norms

  Folkways - the routine conventions of everyday life Mores - norms that are seen as central to the functioning of a society and to its social life
• Society - a group of people who share a common set of values and norms
• Social Structure - refers to its basic social organization. Although social structure consists of many different aspects, two dimensions are particularly important when explaining differences between cultures. The degree to which the basic unit of social organization is the individual,as opposed to the group. The degree to which a society is stratified into classes.
• Religion - a system of shared beliefs and rituals that are concerned with the realmof the sacred
• Ethical Systems - refer to a set of moral principles, or values, that are used toguide and shape behavior
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  spoken Language - Language does far more than just enable people tocommunicate with each other. The nature of a language also structures the way we perceive the world. The language of a society can direct the attention of its members to certain features of the world rather than others.
• Unspoken Language - refers to nonverbal communication. We all communicate with each other by a host of nonverbal cues
• Education - Formal education plays a key role in a society. Formal education is the medium through which individuals learn many of the language, conceptual, and mathematical skills that are indispensable in a modern society. Formal education also supplements the family's role in socializing the young into the values and norms of a society