Cultural Levels and Business

Considering the business point of view, it is valuable to deliberate of culture as presented at four diverse levels namely the national, business, industry and organization.

1. National Culture comprises of the distinguishing common values, thoughts, suppositions, faith and customs of the occupants of a country which direct their behavior.

   For instance, the Scandinavian countries rest an extremely significant value on individual liberty. They opposed efforts to bring in identity cards that are considered as an intrusion to their liberty. In comparison, identity cards are extensively allowed in many other nations.

2. Business Culture is consisting of the distinguishing common values, thoughts, suppositions, faith and customs of the occupants of a nation which direct business functions in that country. Features of business culture can influence customers, executives, sponsors and governments. It can seriously affect the business ethics.

   For instance there are nations which explicitly display preferences for friendship and family connections in business operations. In such countries these attitudes are widely admitted and also required. For in certain other nation such attitude to work can be considered as dis-honorable.

3. Industry Culture is described as the distinguishing common values, thoughts, suppositions, faith and customs that effect the manner in which the organizations in a specific industry carries out their business.

   For instance, academic institutions all over the world share definite cultural aspects like a faith in educational liberty, no matter to which national culture they belong. There will be certainly some dissimilarity among the cultures of academic institutions in diverse countries which happen from diversity in national cultures.

4. Organizational Culture comprises of the distinguishing common values, thoughts, suppositions, faith and customs that impact the manner in which the individuals in an organization conduct the functions. This will rely on aspects such as national culture, business culture and industry culture. Certainly, this is much more complex in the case of a global organization.

   Such an organization has to perform business across national frontiers and it will entail handling many different national and business cultural differences. Therefore running a transnational business needs to adopt several types of cultural aspects into consideration. Cultural differences in consumer behavior, approaches to work and power and moral deliberations are typical instances.

Each one of these levels of culture will inter-relate with and influence the others. For instance, the culture of the organization will be based on aspects that will comprise of national culture, the business culture of the country, the culture of the industry of which the organization is a constituent and definite organization factors such the size and character of the business, the method of management.

Consideration has to be given to the different levels of culture while studying the influences of the different aspects of it on the strategy of an organization to sustain competitive advantage.