INTRODUCTION
The word “culture” comes from latin “cultura” which means cultivating of plant. Research has been made to derive one definition of culture that can be applied generally, but it has proven difficult to conclude on one definition of culture. For example to sociologists culture is the way of life of members of a society, which includes language, values, lifestyle, cuisine, beliefs and behaviour, meanwhile to a biologist culture is the cultivation of bacteria, tissue cells in an artificial condition suitable for growth. Kroeber and Kluckhohn critically analyzed the definition of culture and 164 different definitions were gathered Apte (1994;2001).
In general sense, culture are the beliefs, values, languages, norms, symbols, rituals and behaviours that differentiate one group from another. Every society has a certain culture guiding the way they live there lives. However no culture is more superior to another , therefore no culture should be condemned.
DEFINITION OF CULTURE
Culture can be defined as established morals that are set down to guide a particular group of people. They can be anything from language, religion, values, beliefs, norms, cuisine, lifestyle to rituals, symbols etc.
Culture differ in every society, to explain the total concept of culture, symbols, heroes, rituals and value would cover the concepts rather neatly.
Symbols are words, signs, pictures, or objects that carry a peculiar meaning which is only recognized by those who share the culture. The words in a language or pidgin belong to this section, as well as attire, hairstyle, flags and status symbols. For example the Nigerian “coat of arm” is a symbol familiar with Nigerians while the great seal of the united states to the U.S citizens. New symbols are easily developed and old ones disappear, symbols are regularly copied by other cultural group that is why it is placed into the outer most superficial layer of the onion diagram.
Heroes are the persons, alive or dead, real or unreal, who hold characteristics which are highly prized in a culture , hence serve as models for behaviour. For example
Rituals are collective activities, considered essential within culture. Ways of greeting and paying respect to others, social and religious ceremonies, Olympics, new yam festival in africa are examples.
Values are generally held standards of what is important or unimportant, good or bad, normal or abnormal, acceptable or unacceptable, workable or unworkable etc in a society. This values are learned not consciously but implicitly (Hofstede 1997). For example timing is of high importance in the U.S whereas in Nigeria timing is flexible.
Fig. 1 The ‘onion diagram’: culture at different levels of depth
Symbols, heroes and rituals have been classified under the term practices. They are visible to an outside observer; their cultural meaning, however is invisible and lies precisely and only in the way these practices are interpreted by the insiders. Value forms the foundation of culture according to Fig 1 as value are broad tendencies to prefer certain states of affairs over others.
Asides the concepts of culture, there are different levels of culture; it can personal, interpersonal, national, universal, organizational etc. The national level is more pronounced as it generalizes the culture of a nation from another. This is why several dimension were established to understand national cultural differences; some of this dimensions are individualism vs collectivism, masculinity vs femininity, power distance, uncertainty avoidance etc. For example in the U.K individualism was found to be high as people in the U.K perform as individuals than as groups while in china collectivism is high as the Chinese tend to function more as groups than as individuals. In other words different nation with different culture, understanding these cultural differences helps us interact better internationally.
Other definitions of culture
Culture is the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from another.
(Hofstede 1997)
Culture is acquired knowledge that people use to interpret experience and generate social behaviour
(Luthans and Doh 2008)
Compare and contrast between other definitions of culture
Definition one which defines culture as a “collective programming” of the mind which distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from another talks about how we think, feel, and act, this pattern is usually acquired in early childhood, because the process of learning starts when your born. This mental program can ne possessed from family, school, neighbourhood, work place and community as a whole. That is why people who live in the same social environment tend to have a common phenomenon of living because they are influenced by each others mental behaviour.
Culture should be singled out from ‘human nature’ on one side and personality on the other; why? Because culture is learned not inherited as it is obtained from social environment and not from one’s genes. Whereas human nature is inherited with ones genes. The ability to feel fear, anger, love, joy, sadness, the need to assiociate with others, to play and exercise oneself, the proficiency to observe the environment and to talk about it with other human all belong to universal level of mental programming. However how one is communicate these feelings and expresses fear, joy observation etc is developed by culture.
Personality of an individual on the other hand is his/her unique personal set of mental programs which he/she does not share with any other human being. It is based upon traits which are partly inherited with individuals unique set of genes and partly learned. This definition of culture simply means behaviour and mindset can change depending on the social environment we find ourselves. For example a person from france who relocates to American would start behaving like the Americans overtime, if he puts his mind towards adapting to his new environment and behaviours of people around him.
On the other hand culture defined as acquired knowledge that people use to interpret experience and generate social behaviour simple means studying other peoples culture to gather knowledge on their values, beliefs, norms and any other morals established in the society or nation. This can be applicable to organizational level of culture, if a company is looking to go internationally there might be need to study and understand the environment and behaviours in which they want operate in so as to avoid disaster in setting up that business.
The need for understanding cultural differences is very essential for companies going internationally, there have been scenarios where companies lost millions trying to set up a business in a new environment. One of which was the case of U.S media star T.V that lost 500million dollars trying to introduce T.V programming in Asia because they did not put into consideration the cultural difference in language.
Culture can affect technology transfer, management attitudes, managerial ideology and even business government relations, reasonably most significant culture effects how people think and behave. Culture affects a host of business related activities even including common body language. For example in Arab countries, when sitting, keep both feet on the ground, meanwhile in the U.S when sitting, they may sometimes sit with the ankle of one leg on their knee and they often look very relaxed.
The table below compares the most important cultural values of the United States, Japan and Arab countries.