Understanding National Culture And A Common Values And Attitudes Shared By A Particular Group Of Humans

Taking the first concern mentioned into consideration, we can easily relate to cross-cultural researcher, Edward T. Hall’s differentiation between high-context cultures and low-context cultures.

culture are intricately interwoven; they do not exist in vacuums but rather influence each other in

Culture is defined as “The ideas, attitudes, customs, beliefs, values and social behaviour of a particular group of people or society that are passed on from generation to generation” (Brentnall, A., n.d.).

Given this, the main target of this essay is to analyse the main approaches to understanding national culture and how relevant is such an understanding to an internationalising firm.

For the purposes of this piece, culture is defined as “the full range of human patterned experience” as described by Cole (1996) cited in Gla ̆veanu & Jovchelovitch (2017, p.113). This chapter also provides a description of the importance culture plays in psychological research.

Culture, according to Hofstede (1982), is a “collective programming of the mind which distinguish the members of one category from another”. The term “category of people” can be a nation, a region, a work organization, or even a family.

A culture of any region provides a complete framework to its inhabitants to how to organize themselves, their actions and thoughts with respect to their environment. Thus culture is not innate; instead it is learned by the people as they continue to live in that particular region. This culture drives their thinking, actions and basically all kinds of interaction with their surroundings. Thus, it is different for different areas and people from these areas learn different ways to interact by each other(Neuliep, 2015).Moreover, people from different cultures differ from each other because of their context in which they move about. This context plays an important role in providing meaning to their interaction. There are some things that cannot be understood by verbal words alone; they have to be justified by the context in which they exist. This has been argued by Edward Hall, according to whom, “context carries varying proportions of the meaning” (Gamsrieglerm, 2005). Because of these differences in interaction due to differences in the context in which these people exist, culture has been divided into two sub-categories. One is high-context culture and the other is low-context culture. These two terms are used to refer to the differences in culture between different societies because of the difference in context, and have been suggested by a well-known U.S. anthropologist Edward T. Hall (Hofstede, 2011).

Cultural psychology is an interdisciplinary program of research that explores the relationship between individual minds and the complex environments in which they are deployed. The approach focuses on the contribution that content-rich, complex environments – ranging from workplaces to cultural traditions to nation states – make in shaping basic cognitive processes. The comparative approach, or cross-cultural approach, uses experimental methods

Using appropriate theories critically analyse the role of culture in International Business. Support your answer by quoting relevant examples from the case study.

(Hall, 1976a, 1977). We also know that these cultural contexts are continually changing and that

Hofstede’s vision of culture is often linked to two different concepts, unique national tendency and central tendency, respectively. In the

Culture is a complex concept that can be explained using various definitions. It refers to a community that understands the world in the same exact way, based on common experiences. It can include a group of people that are born into it, or can be defined by a national origin, race and gender. People can change to a certain culture by changing economic status or by moving to a new region. An individual may belong to two different cultures at once. While all cultures in the world share similar emotions, the forms of communication used between them vary to a considerable extent (DuPraw & Axner, n.d.).

Each person is normally acquainted with a culture and a social system that incorporates family, gathering, class, lingo and religion, among the distinctive factors. The way we respond to these effects may change and it's not by any stretch of the imagination astounding. Being brought up in a similar social condition, quite far, by and large practically identical outlines of response, which can be so profoundly installed in the human identity that they work consistently without individuals, have no information. The estimations of a solitary culture that command an expansive locale can be influential to the point that those qualities are thought to be correct and thusly advanced by the group and government. Subcultures can shape and make their own individual impacts, however, development between social classes can at present be hampered by conditions (Savage, 2015).

• A focus on the concept of culture • A comparative perspective • A holistic perspective – look at culture as an integrated whole

Given this, the main objective of this essay is to analyse the main approaches to understanding national culture and how relevant is such an understanding to an internationalising firm.