BUS 200 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Social Stratification, Social Mobility
Chapter 4 - Managing across different cultures and social environments.
• cross-cultural literacy: an understanding of how cultural differences across and within nations
can affect the way in which business is practiced
o Important to success in international business
• There may be a relationship between culture and the costs of doing business in a country or
region
• Culture is not static
o The actions of MNEs can contribute to cultural change
What Is Culture?
• Culture is a system of values (abstract ideas about what a group believes to be good, right, and
desirable) and norms (the social rules and guidelines that prescribe appropriate behavior in
particular situations) that are shared among a group of people and that when taken together
constitute a design for living
• A society is a group of people who share a common set of values and norms
Values form the bedrock of a culture.
• The proide the otet ithi hih a soiet’s ors are estalished ad justified.
• The a ilude a soiet’s attitudes toward such concepts as individual freedom, democracy,
truth, justice, honesty, loyalty, social obligations, collective responsibility, the role of women,
love, sex,
• There is not a strict one-to-one correspondence between a society and a nation-state
o Nation- states are political creations that can contain a single culture or several cultures
o Some cultures embrace several nations
• Culture arises from:
o Prevailing political and economic philosophies
o A soiet’s soial struture
o The dominant religion, language, and education
The values and norms of a culture do not emerge fully formed.
They evolve over time in response to a number of factors, including prevailing political and economic
philosophies, the social structure of a society, and the dominant religion, language, and education.
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Document Summary
Chapter 4 - managing across different cultures and social environments. cross-cultural literacy: an understanding of how cultural differences across and within nations can affect the way in which business is practiced. Important to success in international business: there may be a relationship between culture and the costs of doing business in a country or region, culture is not static, the actions of mnes can contribute to cultural change. The values and norms of a culture do not emerge fully formed. They evolve over time in response to a number of factors, including prevailing political and economic philosophies, the social structure of a society, and the dominant religion, language, and education. Two dimensions to consider: the degree to which a society is stratified into classes or castes, the degree to which the basic unit of social organization is the individual, as opposed to the group.
