International cultural environment

32. Define culture. Which definition in your opinion, is the most appropriate and why? Provide examples?

1. Anthropologists view culture as “the sum total of the beliefs, rules, techniques,

institutions, and artifacts that characterize human populations”

2. Culture can be defined as the socially constructed and learned ways of behaving

and believing that identify social groups. It can be described in terms of the following elements. It is learned, shared, patterned, mutually constructed, symbolic, arbitrary, and internalized.

The most appropriate definition of culture:

Culture is everything that people have, think, and do as members of their society.

- This means that in order for a person to have something, some material object must be present. For example: Ukrainians live in houses, flats; Africans-handmade tents

- When people think, ideas, values, attitudes, and beliefs are present.

For example: Ukrainian key values are family, independence, honesty, but in values in American society are wealth, success, power, and prestige;

We have certain national attitudes to family, education, marriage, holidays, etc;

We belief in God according to Bible, African tribes belief in a lot of Gods according to their understanding of nature

- When people do, they behave in certain socially prescribed ways;

For example: in Ukraine it is normally to come late on 5 minutes, leaders tend more to concentrate decision-making powers in their own hands; but for example in Japan people are punctual, leaders are more likely to delegate authority.

Thus culture is made up of (1) material objects; (2) ideas, values, and attitudes; and (3) normative or expected patterns of behavior.

The final component of this working definition, “as members of society, ” tells us that culture is shared by at least two individuals and, of course, real societies are much larger than that. Thus, it is crucial that international business managers look at groupings of individuals within a society.

33. Which needs must be satisfied by culture? Briefly explain each and provide examples.

1. Communication, because each person needs it in order to exchange experience, to receive someone help, to spend good time

2. Family, because from ancient times it was much more easily to live out, each person needs people which will support, don’t betray and to have “пристанище”

3. Educational needs, because everybody want to receive desalinized knowledge’s in certain field in order to use them in his life and receive money

4. Aesthetical need, everybody tends to nice, beautiful in order to обогатить себя

5. Relational, because we need to explain our life events, we need to have our internal drivers, we need to understand who we are

6. Self-actualization needs, some people need to show oneself in all his life spheres to be the most fluent person, to have perfect knowledges in some fields, to be on the highest steps o job stairs.