Topic outline

• 
  

  General

  Business Cultures
  
  Whether written as a mission statement, spoken or merely understood, corporate culture describes and governs the ways a company's owners and employees think, feel and act.
  
  Your own business's culture may be based on beliefs spelled out in your mission statement. It could consist in part of a corporate symbol, like the rainbow-colored apple that symbolizes Apple Computer.
  
  Whatever shape it takes, your corporate culture plays a big role in determining how well your business will do.
  

  • 
    

• 
  

  Topic 1

  Introduction

  • Introduction Page
  • Culture is just one perspective that can help us to understand more about a business. 'Business culture' is not just about how others see a business, but also about how the individuals within an organisation...
• 
  

  Topic 2

  Business cultures

  • Business cultures Page
  • Why are we studying ‘business cultures’? Culture is a metaphor which can be used to explore the identity of a business. It is about how others see the business, but also how the individuals who work...
• 
  

  Topic 3

  1 National cultures

  • 1.1 Hofstede's five Cultural Dimensions Page
  • A series of perspectives that we might use to achieve a different insight into business was introduced by Morgan (1986) in his book entitled Images of an Organization. One of these was the business as...
  • 1.2 Working abroad Page
  • The extract from a newspaper article in Example 1 provides insight into the problems of working abroad.
• 
  

  Topic 4

  2 Definitions of organisational culture

  • 2.1 Culture as socialisation Page
  • The cultural perspective has become popular in business studies because it offers a way of explaining performance and understanding difference. It is only one way of analysing business, but it is an interesting...
  • 2.2 Symbols within business Page
  • How have academics and managers attempted to diagnose these largely hidden aspects of business? One well-known example is provided by Trice and Beyer (1984), who concentrated on the idea of there being...
• 
  

  Topic 5

  3 Factors influencing culture

  • 3 Factors influencing culture Page
  • Where the culture of a business comes from, and how it develops, is the subject of much discussion within business studies. Every commentator seems to have their own list of key factors. One example is...
• 
  

  Topic 6

  4 Conclusion

  • 4 Conclusion Page
  • Culture is just one perspective that can help us to understand more about a business. In this Unit we saw how the concept of culture developed from research into differences between cultures at a national...
• 
  

  Topic 7

  References and Acknowledgements

  • References Page
  • Acknowledgements Page