Culture definitions

Schein, a famous organizational psychologist, says that culture can be defined as: "the way a society resolves issues". Hofstede speaks of: 'the software of the mind'. In his opinion, culture is the collective programming of the mind distinguishing the members of one group or category of people from another.

In other words, groups of people (a society) have been confronted with certain problems. They have found ways to handle problems; they have found solutions to them. Those solutions that have worked well will be taught to new members of the group. In that way, they will learn how to perceive, think, and feel about problems.

Because culture will be taught to all new members, it will eventually become 'the way we do things around here'. As you can imagine, 'the way we do things around here', can be quite different from one place or the other. Although there are various cultures, many scholars have found ways to structure the different ways people have found to respond to issues. These structures can be translated frameworks that describe several aspects of culture. 

Dimensions of culture

Different aspects of cultures that can be compared and are part of a framework are called 'dimensions'.* Dimensions of culture are measurable ways that cultures are different.

Measurement means:

• you come up with a statement about subject A and
• then ask if people agree or disagree with it.
• You go to country 1, first and ask a lot of people in that country if they agree or disagree (or strongly agree or disagree).
• Then you go to a 2nd country and do the same.
• And then to a 3rd.
• Let's say in country 1, only 10% of people agree with your statement.
• In country 2, you find that 50% of the people agree with the statement about subject A
• And in country 3, 90% agree with that same statement.
• Then you will have found that subject A is a 'cultural dimension.'

Frameworks of cultural dimensions

Geert Hofstede researched in the 1980s. Around 117,000 surveys were conducted in more than 65 countries about what people value in the workplace. Hofstede clustered the answers that created the dimensions. Every country can be graded on every dimension with a score from 0 to 100.* After Geert, several other people came with other dimensions:

• Fons Trompenaars
• Erin Meyer

Cultural colors

Richard Lewis came up with a cross-cultural framework that uses three colors, red, blue and yellow in which the colors stand for:

• multi-active culture (red)
• linear active culture (blue)
• reactive or reflective (yellow)