How culture affects social values and attitudes
Social and cultural environment refers to the influence exercised by certain social factors which are "beyond the company's gate." Such factors include, among others, attitude of people to work, attitude to wealth, family, marriage, religion, education, ethics and social responsibility of business.
Culture:
In its narrow sense culture is understood to refer to such activities as dance, drama, music, and festivals. In its true sense culture is understood as that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, customs and other capabilities and habits acquired by an individual as member of a society. "Culture consists of", write Elbert Westward and James A. Glynn, "the thought and behavior patterns that members of a society learn through language and other forms of symbolic interaction-their customs, habits, beliefs, and values, the common viewpoints which bind them together as a social entity... Cultures change gradually, picking up new ideas and dropping old ones, but many of the cultures of the past have been so persistent and self-contained that the impact of such sudden change has torn them apart, uprooting their people psychologically. Thus, culture has two phenomena: shared values and passage of time. Culture of society shared by its members. Second, cultural ethos is passed on from generation to generation: Culture is not confined to one particular period of time, The interface between business and culture is brought out in the following paragraphs.
1) Culture Creates People:
The concept of culture is of great significance to business
because it is the culture which generally determines the ethos of people. It
trains people along particular lines, tending to put a personality stamp upon
them. Thus, we have Indians, Japanese, Americans, Germans, Britishers and so
on. It is not that all people are alike in a particular culture, there are
sub-cultures within a culture. For people have their own idiosyncrasies and are
a blend of heredity, cultural experience, subcultural experience, family
experience, and unique personal experience.
When people with different cultural backgrounds promote, own and manage organisations, organisations themselves tend to acquire distinct cultures. Thus, the culture of the Tata Group of companies is different from that of the enterprises owned by Birla’s.
Organisational culture has functional and dysfunctional consequences. Culture performs at least four functions. First, culture create distinctions between one organisation and another. Second, it conveys a sense of identity for organisation members. Third, it facilitates the generation of commitment to something nobler than one's own self-interest. Finally, it enhances social system stability. Culture is the social glue that helps hold the organisation together by providing appropriate standards for behavior of organisation members.
Culture becomes a liability where the shared values are not in agreement with those that will further organization’s effectiveness. This is most likely to happen where organization’s environment is dynamic. When the environment is changing fast, the organization’s entrenched culture may no longer be appropriate. So, consistency of behavior is an asset to an organisation when it faces a stable environment. It may, however, burden the organisation and make it difficult to respond to changes in the environment. This is what precisely happened to ITI. In the pre-economic reform’s decades, the telephone company had stable environment. It had developed its own identity as a monopolist in telephones and thrived well sticking to old and outdated technology. In the changed environment of today, neither its culture, nor its old technology could save the ailing
2) Culture and Globalization:
As business units go international, the need for understanding and appreciating cultural differences across by Japanese and Americans. gift-giving customs, greetings, significance of body gestures, meaning of negotiating styles, attitudes towards development of business relationships, countries are essential. Work motivation, profit motivation, business goals, colors and numbers, and the like vary from country to country. Table brings out a summary of how major management concepts are perceived
3) Education:
The close interface of business and higher education is a new develop mint. Centuries ago, each had a somewhat hands-off their seclusion in university halls, educating a few selected students to attitude towards the other. A relatively small intellectual elite maintained become intellectual and social leaders of their nation. Education was not for masses who labored in factories, fields, and stores. University education had little interest in business, and businessmen had little interest in education. Each lived in a different world. Many educators showed an elitist disdain for businessmen who were perceived as less nobly motivated than educators. Most businessmen admitted that the disdain was mutual since the men in the ivory tower had little that was practical to offer to business. The separation of business from education gradually waned as higher education expanded in accordance with the democratic ideals of equal opportunity, but the real breakthrough came with the rapid trend towards a knowledge-oriented society.
Industrial societies of today are knowledge-oriented and educated, and education is considered as one of the social overheads that has been accorded due priority among the developmental activities. But there are variations. A society without too many constraints on social mobility may accord prestige to the teaching profession and a large part of the national income will be spent on educational equipment than in a society which is more rigidly stratified. Educational institutions are sometimes resented in countries where children are regarded as a source of income. Other countries, by no means always the same ones, will be opposed to welfare support for adults.
In our traditional society, education was a preserve of the Brahmins and it was unfortunate that people of other castes were denied the facility. The economic environment of the day also supported the prevailing system.
Our economy was primitive, and occupations were based on heredity. No education was needed for a cobbler to stitch footwear, for a barber to shave, for an agriculturist to till land or for a goldsmith to make a piece of gold ornaments. All these and other crafts were passed down from one generation to the other.
Things changed over the passage of time. Economy gradually shed its primitiveness and almost turned into an industrialized one, demanding technical education at all levels and of all castes. Educational institutions sprang up in all corners of the country and it is estimated that we have a greater number of primary schools than the U.S.S.R. and the U.S.A. put together. Vast sums have been spent on education in successive Plans and a staggering sum of more than Rs.29,000 crores had been allocated to education in the Seventh Plan alone.
Education benefits in business. Business in turn has responded and started supporting education. This support is manifested in the starting and maintaining of educational institutions, sponsoring employees for continuing education and bearing the cost of the education of employees' children.
4) Family:
Basic to all types of social organisations is the family, the institution which concerns itself with love, sexual relationship, marriage, reproduction, socialization of the child and the various statuses and roles involved in kinship organisation. Little wonder that the family is referred to as a remarkable institution.
The family is recognized as the institution responsible for procreation and child-rearing. In civilized societies, especially, the process of child socialization has come to have tremendous significance. Gone are the days when the children should be seen but not heard; on the contrary, the importance of childhood and the effects of homelike on personality and character formation have been widely recognized. In fact, as the basic primary group, the family probably has more to do with the child's ultimate behavioral pattern than does any other single environment factor, and it is on this assumption, that a loose home life is so often associated with delinquency.
The family, through the husband-wife relationship, is also a recognized institution for the fulfillment of sexual needs. The sex urge is a powerful one and most societies have set-up rather elaborate safeguards to insure that sexuality is kept within the bounds. In a very real sense, the family is answer to man's sex problems.
The family is also one of the chief agencies of social life. This was not always so, and in some societies, it is not the case today. In any number of cultures, for example, men and women have tended to socialize in same sex-groupings. Yet over the years, wherever women have been accorded a relatively equal status the husband-wife relationship has taken on a Business added meaning in terms of companionship, shared activities, satisfaction of emotional needs and other manifestations of primary group association. Such is the role of family in societies. Family ties have been very understood as a group of people who generally live under one roof, who system, peculiar to our society, flourished for centuries. A joint family is strong in our culture. The joint family, also called the extended family eat food cooked at one hearth, who hold property in common and who participate in common family worship and are related to each other as and patrilinear. The father was the head of the house and administrator of Like the European and Semitic family, the joint family was patriarchal joint property, and except in Kerala, the headship descended in the male line. some particular type of kindred.
The joint family had its plus points. In times of distress, a man could for-nothing uncle, living in a corner of the family home in comparative rely on his sapindas, and the never-do-well cousin or the indolent good comfort while adding little or nothing to the family fortunes. Secondly, in the joint family, affection as well as dependence is diffused among so many relatives that the loss of even an important member, such as a parent, is less critical than in the nuclear family system which is so small that every member plays a decisive role. In reality, the joint family is a revolving system which provides a full complement of young and adult people at all times to carry out its various functions.
Thirdly, safety and security needs of man, the second-level needs as per Maslow's need hierarchy, are met through the joint family system. Finally, and the crucial point is the role of the joint family in entrepreneurial development. There are some who believe that the individual is constrained and held back by the group. On the other hand, there is some evidence that, at least in the initial stages, joint family may be a useful institution in capital accumulation. Birla’s, for instance, manage what is virtually a joint family business, but the brothers and the sons and the nephews live separately and the companies they control are also separate entities. The Mafatlal’s in Mumbai live in the same building but the brothers have now separated and the companies have been parceled out among the brothers.
The joint family system had its blemishes. There was strain in the relationship among family members; life was not peaceful; women generally were forced to bear a larger share of family strains and as Basham put it, "The deep sense of solidarity led, as might be expected, to nepotism and various other abuses, and today the joint family system is beginning to weigh heavily on the younger generations..."
The extended family system is almost on the wane, thanks to the spread of education, technological development, unmanageable size of families, the MIT Akshara school of law which permits division of property even while the paterfamilias is alive and India's fight for Independence shook the older customary patterns of behavior.