Week 2 Flashcards
Cross-cultural literacy
Understanding how cultural differences across and within counties can affect how business is practised
Culture
A system of values and norms shared among a group of people and that when taken together constitute a design for living
Values
Ideas about what a group believes to be good, right and desirable
-provides the context within which a society’s norms are established and justified
-they are invested with emotional significance
-reflected in the economic system of a society
Norms
Social rules and guidelines that prescribe appropriate behaviour in particular situations
-social rules that govern people’s actions towards one another
-folkways are routine conventions of everyday life (e.g. appropriate dress code, good social manners)
-mores are norms seen as central to functioning of society (e.g. laws against theft)
Society
A group of people who share a common set of values and norms
Determinants of culture
-Religion
-Political philosophy
-Economic philosophy
-Education
-Language
-Social structure
Social structure
Refers to the basic social organisation of a society
-two dimensions help explain differences among cultures: the degree to which the basic unit of social organisation is the individual, as opposed to the group, the degree to which a society is stratified into classes or castes
Social structure
Refers to the basic social organisation of a society
-two dimensions help explain differences among cultures: the degree to which the basic unit of social organisation is the individual, as opposed to the group, the degree to which a society is stratified into classes or castes
Individuals and groups
Individual: In many western societies, the individual is the basic building block of social organisation (emphasis on individual achievement)
The group: a group is an association of 2 or more individuals who have a shared sense of identity and interact in structured ways based on common expectations. (Non-western societies, importance of group membership/identification)
Social stratification
Meaning: Hierarchical social categories often based on family background, occupation, and income. (E.g. individuals born into a particular stratum, which affects life chances.)
Social mobility
Extent to which individuals can move out of the strata into which they are born
Religion
A system of shared beliefs and rituals concerned with the realm of the sacred
4 dominate religions: Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism
Christianity
-Most widely practiced religion, monotheistic
-Found throughout Eu, the Americas, and other countries settled by Europeans
Economic implications: Sociologists argue that Protestant branch has the most important economic implications, (Max Weber, Protestant ethics, and the spirit of capitalism.)
Language
Spoken language: language structures the way we see the world, countries with more than one language have multiple cultures, mandarin is the mother tongue of the largest number of people, while English the widely spoken in the world.
Unspoken language: nonverbal communication refers to the use of nonverbal cues to communicate meaning. Often culturally bond, personal space is the comfortable distance between a speaker and the lister, varies from cultures.
Education
Formal education: medium through which individuals learn languages and other skills, socialises the young into values and norms of a society. Provides a national competitive advantage (creates a pool of skilled and knowledgeable workers, represents a good index of what products might sell in a country)
