Friday, July 10, 2009

Culture - characteristics

“Culture consists of patterns, implicit and explicit of and for behaviour acquired and transmitted by symbols constituting the distinctive achievements of human groups including their embodiments in artifacts”.
Another definition of culture would be ‘the acquired knowledge that people use to interpret experience and generate a social behaviour’.
The following are the characteristics of culture :
Culture is Learned : Culture is not genetic or biological, a human being learns the culture of the social group in which he is brought up.
Culture is shared : People as members of group or organization share culture . It is not special or specific to an individual.
Culture is Transgenerational : It is cumulative in its development and is passed down from generation to generation.
Culture is symbolic : It is based on human capacity to symbolize to use one thing to represent another.
Culture is patterned : It is based on human capacity to symbolize to use one thing to represent another.
Culture is Adaptive : It is based on human capacity to adopt as opposed to more genetically determined adaptive process of most other animals.

Influences

Many aspects of life have a significant influence upon behaviour, therefore, any understanding of employee behaviour must be preceded by study and understanding of the cultural in which they live. People meet at various places homes and street, they read books; they go to movies and they engage in may other activities that cause them to develop a set of basic values long before they seek their first employment. In fact, basic values are so well ingrained that they are very difficult to change even before a person finishes high school. They influence the amount of education one seeks, how hard one work on the job, and the way in which one cooperates with other at the work place. The basic relationship is that culture off the job affects on the job performance.

Attractive Furniture

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Saturday, July 4, 2009

Cultural Anthropology

Anthropology means the study of man. Although there are many subfields of anthropology the discipline of organizational behavioural draws support from cultural anthropology. Since, human behaviour is largely dominated and governed by the cultural heritage, understanding the cultural aspect becomes important for a manager.

Contribution of other social sciences

The discipline of organizational behaviour derives support from other behavioural sciences. In the main, cultural anthropology, sociology and psychology have given solid foundational support to this discipline. In the following paragraphs we discuss the main concepts from these behavioural sciences that a student of organizational behaviour should know.

Mutuality of interest

The mutual interest is represented by the statement “organization need people and people need organizations” The interests of the organization and the interests of the individual employee are interwined in such a way that the interests of one suffer if the interests of the other are affected.

Organisation as a social system

The members of the organization are the members of the society at large. They bring along with them the external social values. The existence of the social systems in the organizations implies that organizational environment is a dynamic one. All parts of the system are interdependent and subject to influence by the ideas prevailing in the external social system. It also implies that the organizational values and culture will be consistent with the values and culture of society in which the organization thrives.