Material culture is also important to companies contemplating international expansion. The technological aspects of a culture can determine whether a company should enter a particular market. Several tools developed to help analyze and classify cultures include the Hofstede framework and the Kluckhohn-Strodtbeck framework. This chapter focuses on the cultural aspect of national business environments. We examine the ways in which international business activity is influenced by elements of culture.
Culture is the set of values, beliefs, rules, and institutions held by a specific group of people.
Managers must strive to overcome ethnocentricity -the belief that one's own ethnic group or culture is superior to that of others. Managers working a great deal within another culture should develop cultural literacy -detailed knowledge about a culture that enables people to live and work within it. As a nation we support and promote the concept of a national culture by building museums and monuments to preserve the legacies of important events and people. Rightly or wrongly, we tend to generalize about cultures. Subcultures can differ from the dominant culture in language, race, lifestyle, values, attitudes, or other characteristics.