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StatPearls [Internet]. Treasure Island (FL): StatPearls Publishing; 2024 Jan-.

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StatPearls [Internet].

Work culture.

Marlon L. Bayot ; Prasanna Tadi ; Sarosh Vaqar .

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Last Update: September 18, 2022 .

  • Definition/Introduction

Work culture is an organizational management concept which deals with the attitudes, beliefs, and perceptions of employees relative to the principles and practices adhered to by the institution. In the healthcare setting, work culture determines how medical, nursing, ancillary staff and other professionals actually work together in the pursuit of achieving organizational goals -- whether they work in clinics, hospitals, health centers, and other health institutions.

Major components of the work culture as it applies in healthcare practice include the statement of its mission and vision, institutional policies, work procedures, and organizational rules. Additionally, the current state of organizational development is an essential element for every healthcare setting as it determines the maturity of the organization which could directly influence the work culture as a whole. Considering these essential elements, every member of the organization, both from healthcare managers and staff, expects that a strong work culture must exist to maximize potentials in serving patients. Positive work culture is geared towards progressive improvement for the individual staff and the organization while a negative work culture fosters disintegration, loss of cooperation and collaboration among staff. Thus, this will result in regressing organizational value and overall performance. With this, it is crucial that work culture is assessed and improved in every health organization as it will significantly impact healthcare staff, leaders and managers, the organization itself and more importantly patient outcomes in terms of health.

  • Issues of Concern

The following factors have been described to be associated work culture of specific health care organization, dichotomized into positive and negative work cultures. Positive work cultures must be continually enhanced while learnings from negative work cultures must be sought and applied so as not to cause any further problems in the future. [1]  

  • Positive Work Culture

To create a work culture that will bring about a significant positive change in an organization, good leadership behavior is essential in maintaining the relationship of the team. Leaders who can scan the situation and the needs of the individual staff is a necessary skill to identify and bridge possible gaps in work implementation. Aligning the members to the direction of the organization sets the tone of the work for every member. When each staff at every level of the organization becomes fully aware of the situation, it will then become more natural for the leaders to mobilize the whole team and to delegate appropriate tasks in carrying out individual functions. Lastly, a leader who can inspire his colleagues in the organization will develop a positive work culture for all. Emphasis on these essential roles must be well taught to healthcare managers since every organization or team is unique on its own. When members of the organization have established a harmonious relationship with its leaders and vice versa, performance and satisfaction at work will be enhanced. [2] [3]

Aside from leadership abilities, management skills require emphasis for all persons who are tasked to manage a unit, a section, a department or the administrative body of any healthcare organization. Managers must be well skilled in developing plans for the organization, organizing staff and attending to their needs at work. They should be able to have control of the organization especially to the implementation of the organization's mandate as a whole. Furthermore, managers who always monitor the progress of work implementation, and those who evaluate the organizational impact of its work on patients, do always have a more accurate view of the status of any healthcare institution. Managers and leaders can be two different things, but real leaders who strongly influence positive work culture always demonstrate both sets of skills. No employee could ever be more motivated and empowered to do the work when there are elements of trust and supportive supervision of one's performance and welfare at work. [4]

Another critical aspect that mediates the positive culture at work is the value of teamwork. Teamwork is the union of individual members to achieve a specific goal. Every healthcare organization, just like in other business entities, usually conduct activities that will enhance teamwork in the organization. Regularly, team building activities can help with the primary goal of uniting the members and not for rest and recreation. Healthcare managers should be able to come up with strategies that will engage the participation of all members that would soon break barriers to a good relationship at work. [5] [6] When improving on teamwork, there are two central relationships involved: one between individual members; and one between managers and staff. Additionally, teamwork in healthcare settings should not include only healthcare professionals but also all other staff (ancillary services, administrative services, and the like) that are part of the organization. Successful teams sustain a positive work culture. [7] [8]

  • Negative Work Culture

Excessive and prolonged stress among healthcare staff leads to burnout. [9] Hospitals, medical centers, and other health institutions are known to be demanding in terms of work. Work shifts among staff are in place, however, cannot still cope up with the demands required by each unit or department especially in government healthcare institutions and large healthcare private institutions as well. When these burnouts continue to inflict our healthcare teams who provide direct patient care and services, it will later impact negatively on the quality of care that they provide. Individual patients themselves can feel these changes. Recommendations may include the formulation of strategies that will determine the source of the stress and to apply interventions that will aid in minimizing if not eliminating stress and burnout at healthcare settings.

Another aspect related to the negative culture at work is absenteeism. [10] Due to the accumulation of stress at work, healthcare staff tends to lose satisfaction in performing their tasks and would eventually result in absence from work, which reduces productivity for the organization and would limit the quality of services that they provide. Aside from the demands from work, the staff sees going to work as a burden when they feel dissatisfied with leadership, experience blame, confusion, and discrimination, as well as incivility among colleagues. [11]

As both leaders and managers of a healthcare organization, it is imperative that these concerns receive proper attention other than just focusing on how to increase work output and profit. Leadership must remember that all healthcare staff, encompassing administrators, doctors, nurses, laboratory staff, pharmacists, technicians, hospital engineers, clerks, and housekeeping service personnel and other parts of the workforce are the essential resource of the healthcare system. Applying strategies that will work out a solution to sustain and continuously improve the positive work culture should always be a priority.

  • Clinical Significance

Work culture whether positive or negative significantly impacts the quality of care and delivery of health services to patients. [12] Positive work culture will always support the healthcare professional-patient relationship. It will build patient trust and gain confidence among staff who provide patient care. It will allow them to feel that other than the goal of working to cure their diseases, they receive care. When patients see doctors and nurses who are satisfied in doing their work and providing services, it enables them to follow instructions given to them (e.g., compliance with medications). When they feel teamwork is active among staff and stable leadership exists from their managers, these patients may be more than willing to allow themselves to seek medical advice and treatment.

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Disclosure: Marlon Bayot declares no relevant financial relationships with ineligible companies.

Disclosure: Prasanna Tadi declares no relevant financial relationships with ineligible companies.

Disclosure: Sarosh Vaqar declares no relevant financial relationships with ineligible companies.

This book is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ ), which permits others to distribute the work, provided that the article is not altered or used commercially. You are not required to obtain permission to distribute this article, provided that you credit the author and journal.

  • Cite this Page Bayot ML, Tadi P, Vaqar S. Work Culture. [Updated 2022 Sep 18]. In: StatPearls [Internet]. Treasure Island (FL): StatPearls Publishing; 2024 Jan-.

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The New Analytics of Culture

  • Matthew Corritore,
  • Amir Goldberg,
  • Sameer B. Srivastava

work culture research paper

Culture is easy to sense but hard to measure. The workhorses of culture research—employee surveys and questionnaires—are often unreliable.

Studying the language that employees use in electronic communication has opened a new window into organizational culture. New research analyzing email, Slack messages, and Glassdoor postings are challenging prevailing wisdom about culture.

Some of the findings are (1) cultural fit is important, but what predicts success most is the rate at which employees adapt as organizational culture changes over time, (2) cognitive diversity helps teams during ideation but hinders execution, and (3) the best cultures encourage diversity to drive innovation but are anchored by shared core beliefs.

What email, Slack, and Glassdoor reveal about your organization

Idea in Brief

The problem.

Culture is easy to sense but difficult to measure. The workhorses of culture research—employee surveys and questionnaires—are often unreliable.

A New Approach

Studying the language that employees use in electronic communication has opened a new window into organizational culture. Research analyzing email, Slack messages, and Glassdoor postings is challenging prevailing wisdom about culture.

The Findings

  • Cultural fit is important, but what predicts success most is the rate at which employees adapt as organizational culture changes over time.
  • Cognitive diversity helps teams during ideation but hinders execution.
  • The best cultures encourage diversity to drive innovation but are anchored by shared core beliefs.

A business’s culture can catalyze or undermine success. Yet the tools available for measuring it—namely, employee surveys and questionnaires—have significant shortcomings. Employee self-reports are often unreliable. The values and beliefs that people say are important to them, for example, are often not reflected in how they actually behave. Moreover, surveys provide static, or at best episodic, snapshots of organizations that are constantly evolving. And they’re limited by researchers’ tendency to assume that distinctive and idiosyncratic cultures can be neatly categorized into a few common types.

  • MC Matthew Corritore is an assistant professor of strategy and organization at McGill’s Desautels Faculty of Management.
  • AG Amir Goldberg is an associate professor of organizational behavior at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. He and Sameer B. Srivastava codirect the Berkeley-Stanford Computational Culture Lab.
  • SS Sameer B. Srivastava is an associate professor and the Harold Furst Chair in Management Philosophy and Values at the University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. He and Amir Goldberg codirect the Berkeley-Stanford Computational Culture Lab.

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Toxic Culture Is Driving the Great Resignation

Research using employee data reveals the top five predictors of attrition and four actions managers can take in the short term to reduce attrition.

  • Workplace, Teams, & Culture
  • Leading Change
  • Organizational Behavior

work culture research paper

More than 40% of all employees were thinking about leaving their jobs at the beginning of 2021, and as the year went on, workers quit in unprecedented numbers. 1 Between April and September 2021, more than 24 million American employees left their jobs, an all-time record. 2 As the Great Resignation rolls on, business leaders are struggling to make sense of the factors driving the mass exodus. More importantly, they are looking for ways to hold on to valued employees.

To better understand the sources of the Great Resignation and help leaders respond effectively, we analyzed 34 million online employee profiles to identify U.S. workers who left their employer for any reason (including quitting, retiring, or being laid off) between April and September 2021. 3 The data, from Revelio Labs , where one of us (Ben) is the CEO, enabled us to estimate company-level attrition rates for the Culture 500 , a sample of large, mainly for-profit companies that together employ nearly one-quarter of the private-sector workforce in the United States. 4

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While resignation rates are high on average, they are not uniform across companies. Attrition rates for the six months we studied ranged from less than 2% to more than 30% across companies. Industry explains part of this variation. The graph below shows the estimated attrition rate for 38 industries from April through September, and the spread across industries is striking. (See “Industry Average Attrition Rate in the Great Resignation.”) Apparel retailers, on average, lost employees at three times the rate of airlines, medical device makers, and health insurers.

The Great Resignation is affecting blue-collar and white-collar sectors with equal force. Some of the hardest hit industries — apparel retail, fast food, and specialty retail — employ the highest percentage of blue-collar workers among all industries we studied. Management consulting, in contrast, had the second-highest attrition rate but also employs the largest percentage of white-collar professionals of any Culture 500 industry. Enterprise software, which also suffered high churn, employs the highest percentage of engineering and technical employees.

Industry explains some of the variation in attrition rates across companies but not all of it. Even within the same industry, we observed significant differences in attrition rates. The figure below compares competitors with high and low attrition rates within their industries. (See “How Culture 500 Company Attrition Rates Compare Within Industries.”) Workers are 3.8 times more likely to leave Tesla than Ford, for example, and more than twice as likely to quit JetBlue than Southwest Airlines.

Not surprisingly, companies with a reputation for a healthy culture, including Southwest Airlines, Johnson & Johnson, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, and LinkedIn, experienced lower-than-average turnover during the first six months of the Great Resignation.

Although the sample is small, these pairs hint at another, more intriguing pattern. More-innovative companies, including SpaceX, Tesla, Nvidia, and Netflix, are experiencing higher attrition rates than their more staid competitors. The pattern is not limited to technology-intensive industries, since innovative companies like Goldman Sachs and Red Bull have suffered higher turnover as well.

To dig deeper into the drivers of intra-industry turnover, we calculated how each Culture 500 company’s attrition rate compared with the average of its industry as a whole. This measure, which we call industry-adjusted attrition, translates each company’s attrition rate into standard deviations above or below the average for its industry. 5

We also analyzed the free text of more than 1.4 million Glassdoor reviews, using the Natural Employee Language Understanding platform developed by CultureX , a company two of us (Donald and Charles) cofounded. For each Culture 500 company, we measured how frequently employees mentioned 172 topics and how positively they talked about each topic. We then analyzed which topics best predicted a company’s industry-adjusted attrition rate.

Top Predictors of Employee Turnover During the Great Resignation

Much of the media discussion about the Great Resignation has focused on employee dissatisfaction with wages. How frequently and positively employees mentioned compensation, however, ranks 16th among all topics in terms of predicting employee turnover. This result is consistent with a large body of evidence that pay has only a moderate impact on employee turnover. 6 (Compensation can, however, be an important predictor of attrition in certain settings, such as nurses in large health care systems).

In general, corporate culture is a much more reliable predictor of industry-adjusted attrition than how employees assess their compensation. The figure below displays the five predictors of relative attrition. (See “Top Predictors of Attrition During Great Resignation.”) To give a sense of their relative importance, we’ve benchmarked each element relative to the predictive power of compensation. 7 A toxic corporate culture, for example, is 10.4 times more powerful than compensation in predicting a company’s attrition rate compared with its industry.

Let’s take a closer look at each of the top five predictors of employee turnover.

Toxic corporate culture. A toxic corporate culture is by far the strongest predictor of industry-adjusted attrition and is 10 times more important than compensation in predicting turnover. Our analysis found that the leading elements contributing to toxic cultures include failure to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion; workers feeling disrespected; and unethical behavior. In an upcoming article , we will dive deeper into each of these factors and examine different ways managers and employees can spot signals of toxic culture. 8 For now, the important point is that a toxic culture is the biggest factor pushing employees out the door during the Great Resignation.

Job insecurity and reorganization. In a previous article , we reported that job insecurity and reorganizations are important predictors of how employees rate a company’s overall culture. So it’s not surprising that employment instability and restructurings influence employee turnover. 9 Managers frequently resort to layoffs and reorganizations when their company’s prospects are bleak. Previous research has found that employees’ negative assessments of their company’s future outlook is a strong predictor of attrition. 10 When a company is struggling, employees are more likely to jump ship in search of more job security and professional opportunities. Past layoffs, moreover, typically leave surviving employees with heavier workloads, which may increase their odds of leaving.

Another reason job insecurity could predict turnover is related to our measure of employee attrition, which incorporates job changes for all causes — including layoffs and involuntary terminations. We would expect frequent mentions of reorganizations and layoffs to predict involuntary turnover. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, however, involuntary separations have accounted for less than one-quarter of all employee exits among large companies during the Great Resignation. 11 So it’s likely that poor career prospects and job insecurity contributed significantly to employees leaving on their own accord as well.

High levels of innovation. It’s not surprising that workers leave companies with toxic cultures or frequent layoffs. But it is surprising that employees are more likely to exit from innovative companies. In the Culture 500 sample, we found that the more positively employees talked about innovation at their company, the more likely they were to quit. The attrition rates of the three most innovative Culture 500 companies — Nvidia, Tesla, and SpaceX — are three standard deviations higher than those in their respective industries.

Staying at the bleeding edge of innovation typically requires employees to put in longer hours, work at a faster pace, and endure more stress than they would in a slower-moving company. The work may be exciting and satisfying but also difficult to sustain in the long term. When employees rate their company’s innovation positively, they are more likely to speak negatively about work-life balance and a manageable workload. During the Great Resignation, employees may be reconsidering the personal toll that relentless innovation takes.

Failure to recognize performance. Employees are more likely to leave companies that fail to distinguish between high performers and laggards when it comes to recognition and rewards. Companies that fail to recognize and reward strong performers have higher rates of attrition, and the same is true for employers that tolerate underperformance. The issue is not compensation below market rates, but rather recognition — both informal and financial — that is not linked to effort and results. High-performing employees are the most likely to resent a lack of recognition for their results, which means that companies may be losing some of their most productive workers during the Great Resignation.

Poor response to COVID-19. Employees who mentioned COVID-19 more frequently in their reviews or talked about their company’s response to the pandemic in negative terms were more likely to quit. The same pattern holds true when employees talk more generally about their company’s policies for protecting their health and well-being.

Short-Term Actions to Boost Retention

The powerful predictors of attrition listed above are not easy to change. A weak future outlook that spurs restructuring and layoffs may be difficult to reverse; it is too late to fix a poor response to the pandemic; and a toxic corporate culture cannot be improved overnight. Relentless innovation provides companies like Tesla or Nvidia with a competitive advantage, so they must find ways to retain employees without sacrificing their innovation edge.

Our analysis identified four actions that managers can take in the short term to reduce attrition. (See “Short-Term Steps for Companies to Increase Retention.”) As in the graph above, each bar represents the topic’s predictive power relative to compensation. This time, the topics predict a company’s ability to retain employees compared with industry peers. Providing employees with lateral career opportunities, for example, is 2.5 times more powerful as a predictor of a company’s relative retention rate compared with compensation.

Provide opportunities for lateral job moves. Not all employees want to climb the corporate ladder or take on additional work or responsibilities. Many workers simply want a change of pace or the opportunity to try something new. When employees talk positively about lateral opportunities — new jobs offering fresh challenges without a promotion — they are less likely to quit. Lateral career opportunities are 12 times more predictive of employee retention than promotions. We observed the same pattern in multinationals: The more frequently employees discussed the possibility of international postings, the more likely they were to stick with their current employer.

Sponsor corporate social events. Company-organized social events, including happy hours, team-building excursions, potluck dinners, and other activities outside the workplace are a key element of a healthy corporate culture, so it’s no surprise that they are also associated with higher rates of retention. 12 Organizing fun social events is a low-cost way to reinforce corporate culture as employees return to the office, and it strengthens employees’ personal connections to their team members.

Offer remote work options. Much of the media coverage of the Great Resignation has focused on the importance of remote work in retaining employees. Unsurprisingly, when employees discussed remote work options in more positive terms, they were less likely to quit. What you might not have expected is the relatively modest impact of remote work on retention — just a bit more powerful than compensation in predicting lower attrition. Remote work options may have a modest effect on employee turnover because most companies in an industry converge on similar policies. If companies cannot differentiate themselves based on remote work options, they may need to look elsewhere — providing lateral job opportunities, for instance, or making schedules more predictable — to retain employees.

Make schedules more predictable for front-line employees. When blue-collar employees describe their schedules as predictable, they are less likely to quit. Having a predictable schedule is six times more powerful in predicting front-line employee retention than having a flexible schedule. (A predictable schedule has no predictive power for white-collar employees.)

This finding is consistent with a study of 28 Gap stores, in which employees at randomly-assigned locations received their work schedules two weeks in advance, and their managers were barred from canceling their shifts at the last minute. Employees in the control stores were subject to the usual scheduling practices. 13 The stores with predictable schedules increased retention among their most experienced associates. Compared with the workers at the control stores, the employees with fixed schedules had a 7% improvement in their quality of sleep. The benefits were especially pronounced for workers with children, who reported a 15% reduction in stress.

Much of the media coverage of the Great Resignation focuses on high turnover among burned-out knowledge workers who are dissatisfied with their stagnant wages. Our findings are broadly consistent with this narrative. Industries that employ large numbers of professional and technical employees, like management consulting and enterprise software, have experienced high turnover. We found indirect evidence that burnout may contribute to higher levels of attrition among companies that excel at innovation. It’s worth noting, however, that our direct measures of burnout, workload, and work-life balance do not emerge as key predictors of industry-adjusted turnover.

The simplistic narrative of white-collar burnout misses other critical realities of the Great Resignation. Our findings reinforce recent government statistics showing that blue-collar intensive industries like retail and fast food are experiencing unprecedented levels of attrition. 14

Related Articles

More fundamentally, we found that corporate culture is more important than burnout or compensation in predicting which companies lost employees at a higher rate than their industries as a whole. A toxic corporate culture is the single best predictor of which companies suffered from high attrition in the first six months of the Great Resignation. The failure to appreciate high performers, through formal and informal recognition, is another element of culture that predicts attrition. A failure to recognize performance is likely to drive out a company’s most productive employees. This is not to argue that compensation and burnout don’t influence attrition — of course they do. The important point is that other aspects of culture appear to matter even more.

Our research identified four steps — offering lateral career opportunities, remote work, social events, and more predictable schedules — that may boost retention in the short term. Leaders who are serious about winning the war for talent during the Great Resignation and beyond, however, must do more. They should understand and address the elements of their culture that are causing employees to disengage and leave. And above all else, they must root out issues that contribute to a toxic culture. Our next article will explore, empirically, what constitutes a toxic culture and how organizations can address this challenge.

About the Authors

Donald Sull ( @culturexinsight ) is a senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management and a cofounder of CultureX. Charles Sull is a cofounder of CultureX. Ben Zweig is the CEO of Revelio Labs and an adjunct professor of economics at New York University’s Stern School of Business.

1. Microsoft sponsored a survey of over 30,000 employees across 31 markets in January 2021 for its Work Trend Index. See “ The Next Great Disruption Is Hybrid Work — Are We Ready? ” Microsoft, March 22, 2021, www.microsoft.com.

2. “ Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey ,” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, accessed Dec. 6, 2021, www.bls.gov. The data represents seasonally adjusted quits for total nonfarm employers in the U.S. from April through September 2021.

3. To test the accuracy of our estimates of employee attrition, we compared them with the November U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) for total separations (including employee resignations, layoffs, and other sources of job separations) for private companies with more than 5,000 employees. The BLS total separation rate was 10.8% for April through September 2021, and our estimates were 10.1% for the same period.

4. To estimate turnover at the company level, we identified all job transitions where a user left their current employer for any reason, including quitting, retiring, or being laid off, and divided these by corporate head count. Job transitions were measured for April through September 2021 for 538 Culture 500 companies. The attrition rates are adjusted for sampling bias related to who has an online profile and for lags in when users reported transitions on their profiles. To test the robustness of our estimates of attrition, we separately estimated the hiring rate for each company for the same period. Hiring rate is defined as employees who joined the company divided by corporate head count. We would expect hiring and attrition rates to be correlated, as companies replace employees who leave. The Spearman correlation coefficient was 0.81 between the hiring and attrition rates.

5. We assigned each Culture 500 company to a primary industry and calculated how many standard deviations the focal company’s attrition rate was above or below the industry mean. We used the resulting industry-normalized attrition rate as the dependent variable in our subsequent models. To identify which factors were most important in predicting each company’s normalized attrition rate, we used an XGBoost model and calculated the SHAP (Shapley additive explanations) value for 172 topics measured by the CultureX Natural Employee Language Understanding platform. The SHAP value approach analyzes all possible combinations of features in a predictive model to estimate the marginal impact that each feature has on the outcome — in our case, which cultural elements have the biggest impact in predicting a company’s industry-normalized attrition rate. For an overview of SHAP models, see S.M. Lundberg, G. Erion, H. Chen, et al., “ From Local Explanations to Global Understanding With Explainable AI for Trees ,” Nature Machine Intelligence 2, no. 1 (January 2020): 56-67.

6. A.L. Rubenstein, M.B. Eberly, T.W. Lee, et al., “Surveying the Forest: A Meta-Analysis, Moderator Investigation, and Future-Oriented Discussion of the Antecedents of Voluntary Employee Turnover,” Personnel Psychology 71, no. 1 (spring 2018): 23-65; and D.G. Allen, P.C. Bryant, and J.M. Vardaman, “Retaining Talent: Replacing Misconceptions With Evidence-Based Strategies,” Academy of Management Perspectives 24, no. 2 (May 2010): 48-64.

7. Relative importance is calculated by dividing each topic’s SHAP value by the SHAP value for the compensation topic. When highly predictive features are closely related (such as job insecurity and restructuring), we report their combined predictive impact.

8. Jason Sockin finds that “respect/abuse,” a topic that overlaps with our definition of toxic culture, is the single best predictor of employee satisfaction. See J. Sockin, “ Show Me the Amenity: Are Higher-Paying Firms Better All Around? ” SSRN, Nov. 18, 2021, https://papers.ssrn.com.

9. D. Sull and C. Sull, “ 10 Things Your Corporate Culture Needs to Get Right ,” MIT Sloan Management Review, Sept. 16, 2021, https://sloanreview.mit.edu.

10. B. Zweig and D. Zhao, “Looking for Greener Pastures: What Workplace Factors Drive Attrition?” PDF file (Mill Valley, California: Glassdoor, 2021), www.glassdoor.com. A recent meta-analysis also found that job insecurity was a strong predictor of voluntary employee turnover. See A.L. Rubenstein et al., “Surveying the Forest,” 23-65.

11. In the November BLS JOLTS, seasonally adjusted layoffs and discharges for all private companies with more than 5,000 employees represented 24% of total separations for April through September 2021.

12. D. Sull and C. Sull, “10 Things.”

13. J.C. Williams, S.J. Lambert, S. Kesavan, et al., “ Stable Scheduling Increases Productivity and Sales: The Stable Scheduling Study ,” PDF file (San Francisco: Center for WorkLife Law, 2018), https://worklifelaw.org.

14. “ Job Openings and Labor Turnover Summary ,” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Dec. 8, 2021, www.bls.gov.

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Comments (24)

Courtney breen, wayne anderson, donald sull, bonnie bailey, caitlin sattler, todd inskeep, david mullin, michael farrell, james logan, simon drake, timo marquez, muhammad hannan, dan holdsworth.

Organizational culture, innovation and performance: a study from a non-western context

Journal of Management Development

ISSN : 0262-1711

Article publication date: 13 January 2020

Issue publication date: 13 October 2020

The purpose of this paper is to examine the links between organizational culture, innovation and banks’ performance in Palestine.

Design/methodology/approach

Data were gathered from 186 employees working in the Palestinian banking sector. The data gathered were analyzed using the PLS-SEM approach.

The findings of the study show that organizational culture and marketing innovation have a positive impact on banks’ performance. Moreover, it was found that marketing performance partially mediates the relationship between organizational culture and banks’ performance.

Practical implications

The paper may be of use for banks managers to create an organizational culture, which fosters both innovation and performance.

Originality/value

The paper is unique as it examines organizational culture, innovation and performance links in a non-western context.

  • Performance
  • Technological innovation

Organizational culture

  • Marketing innovation

Aboramadan, M. , Albashiti, B. , Alharazin, H. and Zaidoune, S. (2020), "Organizational culture, innovation and performance: a study from a non-western context", Journal of Management Development , Vol. 39 No. 4, pp. 437-451. https://doi.org/10.1108/JMD-06-2019-0253

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2020, Mohammed Aboramadan, Belal Albashiti, Hatem Alharazin and Souhaila Zaidoune

Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode

Introduction

Nowadays, organizations need to operate in business environments, which are characterized by fast technological changes, intensive international competition and continuous changing client’s preferences ( Droge et al. , 2008 ). Given these complexities, innovation is seen as one of the critical factors for achieving organizational success and sustaining competitive advantage ( Damanpour and Gopalakrishnan, 2001 ). It is well documented in the literature that innovative organizations have more flexibility and can respond quickly to changes, in order to take advantage of business opportunities ( Drucker, 1985 ). Innovation is considered as a competitive mechanism for organizations’ performance and success, and is regarded as an important instrument to adapt to a continuously changing business environment ( Blackwell, 2006 ). Furthermore, previous studies provide evidence that innovation can positively affect performance (e.g. Baker and Sinkula, 2002 ; Damanpour and Gopalakrishnan, 2001 ; Luk et al. , 2008 ; Naranjo-Valencia et al. , 2016 ; Uzkurt et al. , 2013 ).

Because of the critical role innovation plays in different organizational settings, several scholars have attempted to determine the factors that are associated with influencing innovation ( Koc and Ceylan, 2007 ). One of the factors that seems to have an impact on innovation is the organizational culture ( Büschgens et al. , 2013 ; Lin et al. , 2013 ; Martins and Terblanche, 2003 ; Tushman and O’Reilly, 1997 ).

On the other hand, organizational culture has been studied in terms of definitions, theoretical scopes, conceptualizations, characteristics and types (e.g. Lavine, 2014 ; Schein, 1996 ). Although organizational culture was argued to contribute to achieving common values promotion ( Naranjo-Valencia et al. , 2016 ), competitive advantage ( Calciolari et al. , 2018 ) desirables employees’ behaviors ( Nazarian et al. , 2017 ; Zhang and Li, 2016 ) and innovation ( Lin et al. , 2013 ), empirical support is still limited ( Hartnell et al. , 2011 ; Kim and Chang, 2019 ).

Regardless of the important role organizational culture plays in promoting innovation, most of the studies were carried out in western contexts. Moreover, a very limited number of studies examined the association between organizational culture and performance through the intervening mechanisms such as innovation (e.g. Martins and Terblanche, 2003 ; Naranjo-Valencia et al. , 2016 ; Uzkurt et al. , 2013 ).

Our study contributes to the literature in several ways. First, we attempt to investigate the “black box” of the organizational culture-performance relationship through the mediating effects of marketing and technology innovation. Based on a critical review of previous empirical studies, very limited research (e.g. Naranjo-Valencia et al. , 2016 ; Tseng et al. , 2008 ; Uzkurt et al. , 2013 ) examined the role of innovation as a mediator between organizational culture and performance. Second, our study responds to the different scholarly calls to advance empirical research on innovation and organizational culture ( McLaughlin et al. , 2008 ; Nakata and DiBenedetto, 2012 ; Tellis et al. , 2009 ). Finally, most of the studies examining organizational culture and performance were carried out in western setting. For instance, Budhwar et al. (2019) suggested that there is a need to enrich the literature of HRM and organizational behavior research in the Middle Eastern region. Among the suggestions made by Budhwar et al. (2019) was to investigate the mechanisms which govern the relationship between OB, HR factors and organizational performance. Given this discussion and to respond the scholarly calls to advance the organizational behavior and HR research in the Middle East, our study aims at investigating the relationship between organizational culture and banks performance via the mediating role of innovation. Moreover, we argue that more studies are needed in diverse non-western settings, in order to better understand the relationship between organizational culture and performance.

Theory and hypotheses

Organizational culture, definitions and models.

Chang and Lin (2007) consider culture as one of the vital factors for organizations and their activities. In literature, many definitions were given to organizational culture, each from a different perspective. Overall, organizational culture commonly represents the routine activities taking place in an organization ( Lundy and Cowling, 1996 ). More specifically, it refers to the shared set of values and behaviors inside an organization ( Deshpande and Webster, 1989 ). It is also used to describe the set of assumptions and behaviors employees within an organization have adopted ( Martins and Terblanche, 2003 ). Many researchers were interested in the field of organizational culture assuming it is a driving factor to the organization’s innovation, productivity and financial performance ( Blackwell, 2006 ).

Many studies were conducted to determine the different categories of organizational culture ( Blackwell, 2006 ; Martins and Terblanche, 2003 ). Some of them have considered that organizational culture can be divided into four categories, namely, clan, hierarchy, adhocracy and market ( Cameron and Freeman, 1991 ; Deshpande et al. , 1993 ; Quinn, 1988 ). Quinn and Spreitzer (1991) have suggested that organizational culture is composed of four different cultures: development culture, group culture, rational culture and hierarchal culture. Similarly, Chang and Lin (2007) believe that organizational culture follows the four concepts of: innovativeness, cooperativeness, effectiveness and consistency. In addition, Wallach (1983) suggested a simpler classification of the organizational culture following its functions: bureaucratic, innovative and supportive perspectives. A further classification for the culture was presented in the organizational culture profile suggesting that it is related to seven main values: innovation, aggressiveness, result orientation, stability, people orientation, team oriented and a detail focus culture. The organization’s culture can be also classified according to being a: service culture organization that focuses on providing the highest value to its customers, or a safety culture that focuses on having strong work-place standards, or both ( O’Reilly III et al. , 1991 ). Moreover, according to Robbins (2001) , characteristics like leadership, risk aversion, amount of detail, result focus, people focus, team focus, hostility and stability are the main characteristics of organizational culture.

Organizational culture and performance

Organizational culture has a significant impact on banks’ performance.

Innovation, on the other hand, is used to refer to new products, services, processes or technologies that require acceptance and eventually adoption and implementation ( Damanpour, 1991 ; Thompson, 1965 ; Zaltman et al. , 1973 ). Innovation is the factor that enables the innovative processes to produce new products and services, new technologies and new concepts ( Sutanto, 2017 ).

According to Padilla-Meléndez and Garrido-Moreno (2012) , knowledge of innovation needs more communication, and interaction between not only researchers, but also stakeholders affected by this, as well as, leaders. This way new ideas, processes and interactions can have an economic and commercial benefit. Hence, leaders, managers and researchers in organizations and universities should be aware of the different ways of innovation.

Innovation, in the literature, can be divided into different types. The most popular typology of innovation divides it into three types: “administrative vs technical,” “product vs process” and “radical vs incremental” ( Gopalakrishnan and Damanpour, 1997 ). Another classification of the typologies of innovation was developed by Jensen et al. (2007) . According to this classification, innovation can be classified as: “Science, Technology and Innovation” (STI) that is based on analytical knowledge and “Doing, Using, and Interaction” that is subject to knowledge retrieved from the engineering field ( Coenen and Asheim, 2006 ; Lorenz and Lundvall, 2006 ). Innovation can be divided into three groups: product-related, technology-related and behavior-related perspectives. The technology-related innovation is related to the readiness to adopt current technologies and processes and the tendency of the organization to adopt new technologies and processes internally ( Kitchell, 1995 ). Behavior-related innovation relates to the speed, at which the organizational system is ready to adopt new ideas relative to competitors ( Rogers, 1995 ). Lastly, product-related innovation is about the ability of an organization to generate new ideas, products, services and processes, or to buy them ( Stalk et al. , 1992 ). Moreover, as innovation is responsible for implementing totally new or ameliorated versions of products, services or processes within the organization, or in the external relations ( OECD and EUROSTAT, 2005 ), innovation can be classified into four categories. First, product innovation, which refers to the radical changes or ameliorations done to products and services. Second, process innovation, which refers to the major changes done to the production system or to the delivery mode. Third, organizational innovation, which refers to the adoption of new business processes that affect the business process within the organization and or on external relations. And fourth, marketing innovation, which refers to any change made to one of the four marketing Ps (product, price, placement and position) ( OECD and EUROSTAT, 2005 ).

Organizational culture and innovation

As innovation plays a significant role in determining an organization’s success, several studies attempted to examine its antecedences ( Crossan and Apaydin, 2010 ). Different studies found that organizational culture and organizational design are the most influential determinants ( Mumford, 2000 ).

Organizational culture can affect the innovative attitude in two ways. The socialization process teaches individuals how to behave and act toward one another. Moreover, the organization’s structure, policy system, procedure and management orientation can be affected by the basic “values, beliefs and assumptions” ( Martins and Terblanche, 2003 ). Hence, culture can encourage innovation among employees, because it drives them toward accepting innovation as a philosophy of the organization ( Hartmann, 2006 ). Different values of culture were regarded as means to foster innovation. Examples of these cultural values were creativity and initiative ( Jamrog et al. , 2006 ), entrepreneurial mindset ( McLean, 2005 ), freedom and autonomy ( Ahmed, 1998 ), risk taking ( Wallach, 1983 ), teamwork ( Arad et al. , 1997 ), marketing orientation and flexibility ( Martins and Terblanche, 2003 ).

Organizational culture has a significant impact on marketing innovation.

Organizational culture has a significant impact on technology innovation.

Innovation and performance

Research has found that innovation plays a significant role in organization performance ( Higgins, 1995 ; Hult et al. , 2004 ). Organizations able to innovate are more capable to deliver new products and services, improve processes in a faster way to fit the market’s needs and capitalize on opportunities better than non-innovative organizations ( Jiménez-Jiménez et al. , 2008 ). Moreover, innovation has been associated with higher levels of growth and profitability ( Li and Atuahene-Gima, 2001 ).

Marketing innovation has a significant impact on banks performance.

Technology innovation has a significant impact on banks performance.

The present study is a quantitative study applied to the Palestinian banking sector with the purpose of examining the hypothesized positive relationships between organizational culture, marketing innovation, technological innovation and banks’ performance. Data were gathered using a self-administered questionnaire distributed to the employees of banking sector located in Gaza strip. The distribution and collection method were the drop-off and pick up approach. A total of 320 employees were invited to fill the questionnaire. A total of 186 filled and usable questionnaires were gathered and valid for statistical analysis. The response rate in our study is 58 percent.

Respondents’ profile

Most of the respondents were male (70 percent). In total, 25.8 percent of the respondents were aged higher than 44 years, 25.8 percent were aged less than 30 years, 38.7 percent were aged from 30 to 38 years and 9.7 percent were aged from 38 to 44 years. Regarding experience, 32.3 percent had 5–10 years of experience, 16.1 percent had 10–15 years of experience, 22.6 percent had an experience of more than 15 years and 29 percent had less than 5 years of experience. Concerning education, most of the respondents had a bachelor’s degree (87.1 percent).

This scale is measured using 22 items adopted from previous studies, such as Claver et al. (1998) , Denison and Mishra (1995) , Jamrog et al. (2006) , McLean (2005) and Wallach (1983) . These items were “teamwork, communication, openness, work autonomy, commitment, employee’s involvement, flexibility, creativity, responsibility, objective orientation, customer focus, continuous learning, risk taking, adaptability, entrepreneurial mindset, performance incentives, excitement, work engagement, decision making, marketing orientation, and high standards and values.” The internal consistency was 0.956. A five-point Likert scale was used to assess the items of this construct.

Marketing and technology innovation

Marketing innovation and technological innovation were measured by a three-item scale for each. Both scales were adopted from Hogan et al. (2011) . A sample item for marketing innovation is “Our bank develops, revolutionary for the industry, marketing programs for our services/products” and a sample item for technology innovation is “Our bank adopts the latest technology in the industry.” The values of international consistency for marketing and technological innovation were 0.848 and 0.765, respectively. A five-point Likert scale was used to assess the items of these two constructs.

Banks’ performance

Respondents assessed this measure using a seven-item scale adopted from Agbényiga (2011) . Examples of this self-reported assessment were “effective services, customer satisfaction, organizational reputation, quality of the service.” The internal consistency value was 0.921. A five-point Likert scale was used to assess the items of this construct.

Initial analysis

Table I shows correlations and descriptive statistics of the research variables. The means and SDs for the examined variables were (Mean: 4.15, SD: 0.55) for organizational culture, (Mean: 4.44, SD: 0.48) for marketing innovation, (Mean: 4.56, SD: 0.45) for technology innovation, and (Mean: 4.30, SD: 0.60) for banks’ performance. According to the results, correlations were significant between marketing innovation, organizational culture and performance.

Assessing the measurement model

For the purpose of checking the internal consistency of the items, factor loading was calculated for each variable. Three items of organizational culture were removed from the model due to their low loading. All other items loadings were retained as their factor loading was higher than 0.5 as presented in Figure 1 . Furthermore, we have checked for the variables’ reliability by calculating the average variance extracted and composite reliability ( Hulland, 1999 ). As presented in Table II , AVE values for all variables were higher than 0.5 and CR values were higher than 0.7 ( Hulland, 1999 ). Hence, all variables in the model can be regarded as internally reliable and consistent.

For the purpose of examining discriminant validity, two approaches were utilized. First, the heterotrait–monotrait (HTMT) method was used, in which the results ( Table III ) show that HTMT values are lower than the value of 0.90, as suggested by Henseler et al. (2015) . The second method was the Fornell and Larcker (1981) technique by estimating the square root of the AVE and comparing it with the correlations between latent variables. The results in Table IV show that all square roots of the AVE are higher than the correlations between the examined variables. Hence, the discriminant validity condition was met.

Assessing the structural model

Table V shows that the R 2 values for banks’ performance and marketing innovation exceed the acceptable moderate ratio as suggested by Chin (1998) . Banks performance has an R 2 value of 0.561, marketing innovation an R 2 value of 0.112. Technological innovation had a week value of R 2 of 0.055. On the other hand, the effect size f ² for the research variables was also calculated. Results of f ² values presented in Table VI showed medium effects for the following relationships: organizational culture on performance, organizational culture on marketing innovation and marketing innovation on performance. On the contrary, the effect was week for the technological innovation and performance link.

Testing the hypotheses: direct and mediating effects

For the purpose of testing the research hypotheses H1 – H5 , we have calculated the direct effects. Table VII shows all the hypotheses were supported expect for H5 . Organizational culture is positively related to banks’ performance ( β =0.596, p =0.000). Organizational culture is positively related to both marketing innovation ( β =0.334, p =0.000) and technology innovation and ( β =0.234, p =0.000). Marketing innovation was found to exert a positive effect on performance ( β =0.297, p =0.000). The relationship between technology innovation and performance was not significant ( β =−0.001, p =0.982).

For the purpose of testing the mediating effects of both marketing and technology innovation, we have calculated the indirect effects. The results show that marketing innovation mediates the relationship between organizational culture and banks performance ( P =0.007, t =2.698***). Technology innovation did not exert a significant mediating effect between organizational culture and performance.

Discussion and implications

The purpose of our study was to examine the links between organizational culture, innovation and banks’ performance in a non-western context (Palestinian context). The findings of our study provide evidence for the relationship between organizational culture and banks performance, supporting H1 . The results of our study are in line with previous studies demonstrating a positive relationship between organizational culture and performance (e.g. Daft, 2007 ; Fey and Denison, 2003 ; Kim and Chang, 2019 ; Kraśnicka et al. , 2018 ; Ngo and Loi, 2008 ; Salimi and Aveh, 2016 ). The results imply that the values and philosophy adopted within Palestinian banks contribute positively to the banks performance.

Concerning the relationship between organizational culture and innovation, our results show that organizational culture is a significant predictor of both marketing and technology innovation at Palestinian banks, lending a support for H2 and H3 . The results are consistent with previous studies, which investigate organizational culture-innovation links ( Büschgens et al. , 2013 ; Chang and Lee, 2007 ; Lau and Ngo, 2004 ; Lin et al. , 2013 ; Miron et al. , 2004 ; Naranjo-Valencia et al. , 2016 ; Rezaei et al. , 2018 ; Tseng et al. , 2008 ; Uzkurt et al. , 2013 ). The results imply that organizational culture fosters both marketing and technology innovation.

Although our results provide empirical evidence on the links between marketing innovation and banks’ performance ( H4 ) and are in line with previous empirical support ( Afcha, 2011 ; Artz et al. , 2010 ; Baker and Sinkula, 2002 ; Damanpour, 1991 ; Farley et al. , 2008 ; Luk et al. , 2008 ; Tseng et al. , 2008 ), technology innovation did not exert any significant effect on banks performance, lending no support for H5 . These results can be justified by the fact that in a developing country like Palestine, technology-related innovation might not attract customers, due to the lack of culture and trust in using different technologies (ATM machines, online banking, etc.). This means that innovating at the technological level does not necessarily contribute to higher performance in the Palestinian banking sector.

Finally, our results show that marketing innovation plays an intervening role in the relationship between organizational culture and banks performance. Marketing innovation partially mediates this relationship, suggesting that organizational culture affects marketing innovation and marketing innovation, in turn, generates higher performance.

Implications

Our results contribute both to the theory and practice. Theoretically, the study is one of the very few studies conducted in a non-western context in the banking sector. In Middle Eastern region and specifically in Palestine, there is a lack of research on the culture-innovation-performance relationships.

Practically, our results provide useful recommendations to banks’ senior management on the significance of organizational culture and innovation and their contribution to performance. Our findings provide fertile grounds for the banking sector in Palestine on the importance of organizational culture as a tool for encouraging innovation and banks performance. The presence of a strong culture that is characterized by teamwork, communication, openness, work autonomy, commitment, employee’s involvement, flexibility, creativity, responsibility, etc., will positively contribute to innovation and firm performance alike. The existence of a climate that is characterized by objective orientation, customer focus, continuous learning, risk taking, adaptability, entrepreneurial mindset, performance incentives, excitement, work engagement, decision making, marketing orientation, and high standards and values, is of extreme importance to the firm success at different levels. Moreover, the results provide insights to the banking sector which is striving to be responsive to challenging environments through successfully adopting innovation.

The Palestinian banking sector encountered several environmental complexities in the last years, hence, innovation can be very useful in order to sustain competitive advantage. Managers in Palestinian banks should encourage their staff members to create innovative ideas and provide them the right reward to establish an innovative culture in the organization. Furthermore, communication between banks’ employees at the horizontal and vertical level can be very beneficial to find the best ways to implement innovation at different levels.

Limitations and future research

Like any other study, our study has some limitations. First, marketing innovation, technology innovation and banks’ performance were assessed by subjective measures. Future research might consider using more objective measures of innovation. Second, data were collected only from the Palestinian banking sector and this might restrict the generalizability of the results to other sectors. Hence, future research might replicate and extend this study to other sectors in Palestine and similar national contexts in the region such as Jordan and Lebanon. Future research using larger data and across different sectors will give more insights on the association between organizational culture and performance through innovation. Third, our research design does not allow the researchers to establish cause and effect links between the examined variables, hence, longitudinal research is recommended for future devours. In general, organizational culture research conducted using only quantities techniques provide restricted understanding. Hence, future studies might consider using qualitative methods to provide better explanation of the organizational culture, innovation and performance associations. Finally, our research analyzed only the role of marketing and technology innovation in the banking sector. Future studies might consider examining the role of other forms of innovation. Finally, it would be also interesting for future studies to investigate the different types of organizational culture and their impact on innovation and performance in the Middle Eastern region.

work culture research paper

PLS measurement model analysis

Means, standard deviation and correlation matrix

Heterotrait–monotrait ratio for the research variables

Fornell–Larcker criterion for the research variables

Direct and mediating effects analysis

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A STUDY ON PERCEPTION OF WORK CULTURE AND ITS IMPACT ON EMPLOYEE BEHAVIOR

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Culture is a social norm, way of behaviour, conduct, believe etc. held and practiced by majority of the people in the society. An organisation culture also reflects all the possible elements of culture mentioned here through its policies, practices and people. The culture develops in organizations due to external pressures and internal integration, which help them to survive and flourish. The organisational culture has the potential for generating sustained competitive advantages through employee involvement and empowerment, which in turn bring innovation and creativity to the table. The culture plays a very important role of creating an environment of openness, trust and collaboration, which provides multi-fold benefits to the organisation and society as a whole. This research work tries to ascertain the influence that organizational culture has on employee work behavior, and to formulate recommendations regarding organizational culture and employee work behavior. The attempt is to analyse the way the culture creates an impact on employee and vice-versa.

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Every human being has certain personality traits which help them stand apart from the crowd. No two individuals behave in a similar way. In the same way organizations have certain values, policies, rules and guidelines which help them create an image of their own. Organization culture refers to the beliefs and principles of a particular organization. The culture followed by the organization has a deep impact on the employees and their relationship amongst themselves. Every organization has a unique culture making it different from the other and giving it a sense of direction. It is essential for the employees to understand the culture of their workplace to adjust well. Achieving and maintaining quality of product and customer satisfaction are two most important factors of successful organization. To achieve these twin objectives, an organization has to marshal various resources, plan its use over a period of time and produce a product or service, which meets the consumer needs, desi...

work culture research paper

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Objective: This paper focuses on diverse parameters of organizational culture so as to determine and understand the culture of an organization effectively. The parameters are the key to recognize the employee’s mindset towards the organization and the various key factors that are driving the culture of the organization. Moreover it also provides insights on the impact of various parameters on the employee’s performance. Design/methodology/approach: A structured questionnaire is used for the purpose of research. It was divided into the various parameters of organizational culture so as to analyze its impact on the employee’s performance and satisfaction Findings: The paper reflects that the parameters of organizational culture has a major impact on the performance of employees. The organizational culture is a very important aspect of a successful organization. It affects the organizations productivity, efficiency and performance. A strong culture helps in retaining employees and it strengthens the company’s brand. Research limitations: The study is limited only to a certain group of employees Implications: The paper will show direction to the top management of organizations regarding the importance of diverse parameters of organizational culture such that it will impact the performance of employees so as to sustain in the current dynamic competitive era. Originality/value: Marking out the parameters of organizational culture where the management need to work so that the productivity of employees increases.

ABSTRACT This research work tries to examine the influence of organisational culture on employee work behaviour. We try to ascertain the influence that organisational culture has on employee work behaviour, and to formulate recommendations regarding organisational culture and employee work behaviour.

The aim of this study is to find how organizational culture affects employee behavior. Organizational culture was into divided three parts: symbols, rituals, and values. It is noteworthy that values were categorized according to six dimensions: power distance, collective and individual, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity and femininity, long-term orientation, indulgence and restraint. The hypothesis, that employee behavior is affected by symbols, rituals, and the six dimensions of values, is tested through interviews and observation in the case company.

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The research purpose is to determine the study of the organizational culture and its impact on employee’s behavior. Organizational culture refers to a pattern of basic assumptions discovered or developed by a group as it learns to cope with its problems of external adoption and internal integration that has worked well enough to be considered valuable, and therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think and feel, in relation to those problems. Organizational culture is a system of philosophies, ideologies, values, assumptions, beliefs, attitude and expectation that knit the organization together and shared by its employees. It reflects characteristics of an organization which differentiates one from another, ranging from internal policies, public relation and customer service. Organizational culture has an impact on various activities in organizations, including human resources management every organization develops and maintains a unique culture, which provides guidelines and boundaries for the behavior of the members of the organization. It also refers to the values, ethics and behaviors that contribute to the unique social and psychological environment of an organization which is based on shared attitudes, beliefs, norms and written and unwritten rules that have been developed over time and are considered valid. Thus, the organizational culture is a product of inputs (action) and outputs (results). The inputs are the beliefs, norms, assumptions, values and the outputs are the courses of actions i.e. the goals, work task, planning, decision making and the procedures. A healthy work environment will always motivate the employees to stay in the organization and thus will reduce employee turn overs. The reveals that organizational culture leads to improved employees’ performance. This results from increased productivity in the organization. The majorities of the employees are motivated of the organization through feedback and increased productivity.

Euro Asia International Journals

Abstract This study describes the concept of organizational culture. Organizational culture is the driving factor of the employee satisfaction, employee growth and consequently company growth. Every organization has different organizational culture, impacting the behavior of its employees in different manner. The effect of culture of the organization upon the performance of company’s employees and their job satisfaction has been discussed in this work. Different parameters to access the employees’ job satisfaction, work culture and client satisfaction are presented here. Different dimensions of organizational culture like power distance, Individualism and collectivism, Masculinity and Femininity, and uncertainty avoidance, have been illustrated with their key features. In overall, this work posits the importance of organizational culture and its role in the sustainable development of company which is dependent on the employees’ job satisfaction and client’s satisfaction with the company’s culture Keywords: organizational culture, motivation, employees, job satisfaction.

Mohammedhussen Mama Irbo

The purpose of any organization is to enhance level of performance by designing different strategies which would help employees achieve high level of performance. This study tried to make an assessment on the impact of organizational culture on employee job performance by going through detailed reviews of previous researches. Literature review was used to conduct the study; hence, detail reviews of relevant literatures were made. The findings of this study revealed conclusive evidence in the sense that the reviewed literatures all indicated organizational culture as having very important effect on employee job performance. It was also identified that organizational culture determines the productivity level of organizations. Certain dimension of cultures actually identified to affect employee performance in particular ways in the sense that strong culture of an organization helps in improving level of employee performance more than others. Managers relate organizational culture...

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Culture Research Paper

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This sample culture research paper features: 6400 words (approx. 22 pages), an outline, and a bibliography with 31 sources. Browse other research paper examples for more inspiration. If you need a thorough research paper written according to all the academic standards, you can always turn to our experienced writers for help. This is how your paper can get an A! Feel free to contact our writing service for professional assistance. We offer high-quality assignments for reasonable rates.

While disputes surrounding the concept of culture reflect valid ideological disagreements, they are sometimes obscured by misunderstanding; not only is the term commonly used to signify vastly different concepts, but it is also frequently defined in vague and unclear terms (if explicitly defined at all). This research paper tries to clarify the notion by tracking its usage from its earliest applications to its place in contemporary anthropological discourse. First, the concept’s origins and evolution are examined, with a special focus on its development in American anthropology. The modern notion of culture as meanings and symbols is then investigated in depth. Finally, significant criticisms of the concept and responses to those criticisms are provided.

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Get 10% off with 24start discount code, introduction, cultural relativism, culture and the individual, culture as meaning, culture as symbolic systems, the nature of symbols, the pervasiveness of symbols, methodological implications, social anthropology, postmodern anthropology.

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Culture is one of the most complicated academic concepts now in use. It is defined and implemented in numerous and frequently contradictory ways, and there are considerable disagreements within academic disciplines regarding the fundamental nature of human social life and the appropriate method for studying it. For anthropologists, culture typically refers to symbolic systems of ideas, values, and shared understandings that give meaning and comprehension to the world for a certain group of people. While these systems, which provide the foundation for such fundamental concepts as food and kinship and even influence how individuals experience time, space, and other aspects of reality, may appear to their adherents to be natural and objective, they are, in fact, variable, socially accepted models. In order to find order and significance in a world devoid of both, humans must create their own models.

Ironically, just as the anthropological idea of culture has achieved enormous traction in popular culture and fields such as law and politics, it has come under fire from within the study of anthropology. Some anthropologists assert that the concept of culture oversimplifies and stereotypically treats entire societies as isolated and homogeneous, while downplaying individuality and diversity of thought. Others argue, however, that the notion has never involved such assumptions, and that culture is merely a useful method to consider the ideas and shared understandings that enable humans to comprehend their reality.

The Evolution of the Concept of Culture

Both the literal sense of cultivation (as in “of a crop”) and the metaphorical sense of self-improvement (the “cultivation of the mind”) are derived from the Latin term cultura , from which the English word culture derives. This phrase was frequently used in 18th-century England to describe to the improvement of one’s character through the refinement of judgment, taste, and intelligence; and, by extension, to those activities believed to express and maintain this sophistication (Williams, 1983). This basic connotation underlies the most prevalent popular use of the term today, which designates a specific segment of society (such as theater and art) as cultural to the exclusion of others.

The anthropological idea of culture entered the English language via a less direct route, first going through German as the philosophical concept kultur . Kultur was also derived from the concept of cultivation, but shortly thereafter began to evolve in opposition to the French term civilisation as the philosophical traditions of the two countries came into conflict. Civilization was associated with the French Enlightenment and the notion that civilization evolved from a primitive state characterized by ignorance and barbarism toward universal ideals in science, secularism, and rational thought. The “national character” of a people has come to be symbolized by the term Kultur , which has come to represent local and personal notions such as religion and tradition. In 1871, British anthropologist Edward Tylor blended parts of both notions to define culture as “that complex whole that includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom, and any other skills and practices acquired by man as a member of society” (as cited in Kroeber & Kluckhohn, 1952, p. 81). This is largely regarded as the first formal anthropological definition of the term, as it introduced the concept of culture as a taught, shared, and inclusive framework that encompasses practically every aspect of human social life.

Although Edward Tylor’s definition was innovative, it missed a crucial part of the original German notion that would later become a central aspect of the anthropological concept of culture. Tylor was a cultural evolutionist; he believed that, given sufficient time and favorable conditions, societies evolved toward increasingly superior forms. Consequently, he viewed 19th-century England to be the apex of human civilisation and all other societies (particularly those outside of Western Europe and North America) to be less evolved and fundamentally inferior. Franz Boas, a German-American scientist often considered as the creator of cultural anthropology, was one of the first to challenge the evolutionist perspective. Boas considered the concepts of cultural evolutionism to be unscientific, and he contested the fundamental premise that the prevalence of identical activities across nations inevitably indicates their shared evolutionary origin. He presented counterexamples in which substantially identical cultural institutions arose in various contexts for notably distinct reasons. Boas (1940/1995), using a historical and comparative methodology, contended that society did not follow a linear progression toward a single ideal form, but rather moved in many ways in response to fluid historical conditions.

Importantly, Boas maintained that individuals experience reality differently depending on the cultural context in which they are nurtured; he stated that “the seeing eye is the organ of tradition” (1940/1995). This resulted in the conclusion that a community’s ideals and practices could only be comprehended in relation to how its members experienced and envisioned their reality (1889). Boas reasoned that if cultural patterns of perception and evaluation were the result of socialization, then their adherence must be based on emotions and unconscious attachment rather than rational or practical evaluations of their value or efficacy. Therefore, he decided that any attempt to rank or compare the customs of other communities would be absurd.

Cultural evolutionists erred by considering their own culturally developed concepts and perceptions to be universally applicable and uniquely valid. Boas used the analysis of voice sounds as an example of why this is a dangerous activity. A person inexperienced with the sounds employed in a specific language will frequently perceive those sounds differently than a native speaker, for example, by failing to distinguish between two sounds that are functionally equivalent in his or her own language. The Japanese language, for instance, does not differentiate between the English /r/ and /1/ sounds, and unless exposed to English at a young age, native Japanese speakers tend to wrongly regard those sounds as identical. This tendency led to an unpleasant (though hilarious) incident in which early cultural evolutionists misunderstood the speech sounds of an indigenous American language and deemed it inferior due to what they erroneously perceived to be the absence of a stable phonemic system.

According to Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf’s “linguistic relativity hypothesis,” the principle of relativism extends to linguistic meaning systems. Sapir and Whorf believed that the language a person speaks affects not only their ability to communicate, but also how they perceive what would otherwise appear to be fundamental components of reality. Thus, Sapir concluded that learning a language is equivalent to learning the “world.” Whorf drew on his expertise as a fire teacher to demonstrate how the connotation of a word like empty could cause individuals to behave irresponsibly around spent gasoline drums containing hazardous fumes. Subsequent research in this subject has revealed language implications on aspects such as color vision and spatial orientation, as well as on moral reasoning and other types of decision making. Whorf observed that the majority of linguistic categories are “covert,” or existing below conscious awareness; anthropologists Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn (1952) concluded that all cultural knowledge consists of both conscious and unconscious categories that “screen and distort” one’s conception of reality.

Although language analysis may provide the clearest example of relativism in action, the idea appears to apply to a wide variety of cultural phenomena. Not only do views, attitudes, and values vary significantly from one society to the next, but comparative study has demonstrated that people of different cultural groups can also have diverse emotional and physiological responses to stimuli. Many Americans, for instance, would feel disgust and possibly even nausea at the mere prospect of consuming live grubs. However, in many other communities, insects are regarded tasty, whilst the intake of onions and mushrooms is deemed repulsive.

As a result of this relativistic aspect, the concept of culture has been challenged for what is viewed as its role in undermining efforts to construct objective and universally binding principles for moral human action. Moreover, if it is illegitimate to compare distinct beliefs and behaviors, and if everything from nausea to the essence of existence is experienced via the lens of culture, then it becomes extremely challenging to argue in favor of objective, universal moral truth. However, as other theorists have argued, this does not necessarily imply that moral ideas are impossible. It simply means that in order for normative assertions to make meaning, they must be based on commonly held beliefs about the world. As with differing conceptions of the nature and significance of reality, the fact that conceptions of moral truth are unavoidably local and specific does not imply that they are irrational, invalid, or untenable.

An important question in anthropology is whether culture reflects its own level of analysis or whether it can be explained in terms of the thoughts and behaviors of individuals. Alfred Kroeber (1917), an eminent anthropologist and the first of Franz Boas’s several PhD students, believed that it was only a matter of time before culture established a “second level” once it was identified as a “distinctive product of men living in societies.” Kroeber referred to this tier as the superorganic . According to this perspective, the conduct of individuals combines to form a system governed by its own set of rules. In light of the fact that cultural phenomena are emergent aspects of this system, they demand their own degree of explanation. Thus, Kroeber claimed, anthropologists need not be concerned with individuals when dealing with culture; in fact, disregarding individuals could result in more comprehensive analysis.

Edward Sapir (1917), a student of Boas and one of the founders of linguistic anthropology, criticized the superorganic as reflecting “a social determinism amounting to religion.” Sapir argued that the idea regarded culture too much like a thing or a concrete entity, as opposed to an abstract concept, and allowed little room for individuals to behave according to their own free will. Sapir was also critical of the influential theories of Ruth Benedict (1934), an additional student of Boas who pushed the concept of civilizations as highly interwoven, “personality-laden” wholes. Benedict famously stated in a survey of three indigenous people from Melanesia and North America that each might be characterized by a certain personality type (the Dobu of Papua New Guinea, for example, were defined as “paranoid schizophrenic”). Famously, Sapir told his pupils that a culture cannot be “paranoid” in response to this attempt to apply psychological words to characterize entire cultures.

Sapir’s own thesis, outlined in a 1924 essay titled “Culture, Genuine and False,” viewed culture as the peculiar attitudes and methods of living that gave a people their unique position in the world. According to Sapir, a “genuine” culture is a harmonic, balanced, and healthy “spiritual organism.” Nonetheless, while this did necessitate a substantial degree of integration, a genuine culture was not merely “efficient”; that is, humans could not exist as simple gears in a machine. According to Sapir, culture and the individual are inseparable, as culture cannot sustain itself without individuals as “nuclei” and individuals cannot generate culture from nothing. Sapir’s solution and attempt to reconcile the contradictions he perceived in Benedict and others were fundamentally humanistic: The individual discovers a “mastery”—a profession that expresses his or her distinct particular skill while also being congruent with the will and desires of the other community members. Sapir was cautious to note, however, that the terms “culture” and “individual” could only be identified from an anthropologist’s perspective, as the individual himself could not cognitively detect such a distinction. The more humanistic aspects of Sapir’s theory were never widely accepted, but his thoughts on the relationship between culture and the individual foreshadowed numerous critiques present in “postmodern” anthropological theory (see “Criticisms of the Culture Concept”)

The Contemporary Concept: Culture as Meanings and Symbols

Later, some referred to Edward Tylor’s 1871 definition of culture as the “everything-is-culture” definition, as it encompassed not just knowledge, belief, and values, but also customs and conduct, as well as the miscellaneous category “other capabilities.” In the early 20th century, Franz Boas and his pupils gave the notion a more scientific appearance and included the key element of cultural relativism. The belief in the power of sorcery, for example, was culture, as was the ritual dance performed by the sorcerer and possibly even the artifacts made for the rite. Margaret Mead, a student of Boas and one of the most renowned cultural anthropologists in history, utilized a concept of culture that relied on the notion of a “complex of behavior.”

As part of a landmark work on the notion of culture, Kroeber and Kluckhohn (1952) were among the first to advocate excluding conduct from the concept of culture. Their conclusion was founded on the realization that human cognition and behavior is also influenced by causes other than culture. The issue with treating a specific conduct as part of culture was that it implied that the behavior belonged to or was a unique product of culture, while neglecting the important psychological, social, biological, and material components that also influence action. As with the other components, culture could not incorporate behavior because, as Kroeber and Kluckhohn pointed out, culture itself was a “pattern or design” abstracted from observable behavior — something that gave behavior meaning.

However, this concept does not imply that culture is identical to politics, economics, or any other aspect of human social life. Due to the fact that culture is not conduct but rather the beliefs and ideas that give behavior meaning, culture is a vital component of practically every area of social-scientific investigation. Even behaviors that look on the surface to be solely economic or political in nature, for example, are incomprehensible without a grasp of the specific cultural forms that make the contexts in which they occur reasonable and meaningful (see Sewell, 2005).

The contemporary concept of culture, then, focuses not only on behavior and artifacts as such, but also on what that behavior means and what those artifacts symbolize. For David Schneider (1868), an American anthropologist who helped found the approach known as “symbolic anthropology,” this meant that even behavioral norms should be excluded from cultural analysis. Schneider defined culture as a set of “definitions, premises, postulates, presumptions, propositions, and perceptions about the nature of the universe and man’s place in it” (p. 202), explaining that while “norms tell the actor how to play the scene, culture tells the actor how the scene is set and what it all means” (p. 203).

The importance placed on meaning in the modern concept of culture—not only for the anthropologist attempting to understand social life, but for the individual who lives it—is perhaps best accounted for in the writings of Clifford Geertz, whose influential ideas helped to redefine the discipline of anthropology in the late 20th century. Geertz (1973a) observed that humans are “unfinished animals,” set apart not just by our ability to learn, but by the astounding amount that we must learn in order to be able to function at the most basic level. Geertz attributed this to the fact that cultural evolution and biological evolution overlapped by millions of years in the phylogenetic development of the species, such that the human brain became utterly dependent on inherited systems of meaning. While our biological “hardware” might furnish us with basic capabilities, we must be socialized into specific social systems in order to use them. We cannot, for instance, simply speak; we must learn to speak English or Japanese or some other highly particular linguistic form. This accounts for the high degree of variability seen across human societies. As Geertz put it, “We all begin with the natural equipment to live a thousand kinds of life but end having lived only one” (p. 45), since the gap between what biology dictates and what we need to know in order to survive can only be filled with highly particular cultural forms. Without culture, then, humans would not revert to some basic and primary hunter-gatherer form, but would instead be “monstrosities” unable to accomplish even the simplest tasks (1973a, p. 49).

A central feature of the contemporary concept of culture is the emphasis placed on symbols. More than just providing the means to express and transmit cultural knowledge from person to person and generation to generation, symbols are seen as essential to the building of that knowledge in the first place. Anthropologists now tend to regard culture itself as a collection of symbolic systems, where the construction of cultural models and concepts relies on the unique properties of symbolic representation.

According to David Schneider (1968), a symbol is “anything that stands for something else.” The idea is that this “something else,” called the symbol’s referent, is not logically deducible from any characteristic of the symbol itself, but is associated with it purely on the basis of an agreement made by a social group. The word dog, for instance, really has nothing to do with the actual thing that speakers of English call a dog, but the connection is made because a group (the speakers of English) has agreed that a particular symbol (the word dog ) will stand for a particular referent (the domesticated descendants of the Asian red wolf). At first glance, this might seem unremarkable. But as Clifford Geertz (1973a) pointed out, while there are many instances in nature of “patterns for processes”—such as when a duckling learns a set of behaviors by imprinting on his mother, or when DNA issues “instructions” on how to build certain tissues—the capacity to represent objects and occurrences as they are is exceedingly rare, and probably unique to humans. Symbolic representation allows the users of symbolic systems to make reference to and reflect on things that are not actually present at the time, converting them into ideas that can be analyzed, manipulated, and combined with other such concepts in the medium of abstract thought.

Furthermore, symbolic reference involves much more than merely matching a word or other symbol to its counterpart in the “real world” of objects. In a famous example, Edward Sapir illustrated that when someone uses the word house in the general sense, they do not think of any one house, but of any and all houses that have ever existed or could possibly exist, as well as the set of collective beliefs, attitudes, and judgments associated with that class of objects. This is what is called a concept. Conceptual thought opens the door to the imaginative and productive capacities of the mind, allowing humans to do such extraordinary things as wonder about our place in the world, reflect on things that could have happened, but didn’t, and then lie about all of it. Closely related to the ability to lie is the ability to form conceptions of things pregnant with collective attitudes and value judgments that far exceed the natural or objective characteristics of the referents themselves. As French sociologist Émile Durkheim (1912/1995) emphasized in his landmark treatise on religion, symbols allow groups to focus their collective mental energy on concretized representations of social phenomena and give tangible expression to bundles of emotions and attitudes that might otherwise remain ineffable. As anthropologist Marshall Sahlins (1976) phrased it: “Men begin as men . . . precisely when they experience the world as a concept (symbolically)” (p. 142). It is for this reason that symbols are seen as the building blocks of culture.

Language is the most highly developed symbolic system, and the most common form in which cultural meanings are expressed. As the foremost means of “cutting up” the world into sensible and meaningful categories, language is virtually impossible to distinguish from culture, and it’s not surprising that the idiosyncrasies of its particular forms can have a powerful impact on how its speakers perceive reality (see earlier section, “Cultural Relativism”). But words are far from the only type of symbols used by humans. Clifford Geertz (1973b) regarded any “object, act, event, quality, or relation” as a potential symbol, and as it turns out, human social life is replete with organized systems of them. Geertz held up religion as a prototypical example, where acts, artifacts, relationships, and even people serve to symbolize the abstract concept of the supernatural and the beliefs and values associated with it (1973b). Religion also offers examples of what Roy D’Andrade (1984) would later call the directive and evocative functions of symbolic systems, as it serves to guide and motivate action by, as Geertz (1973b) put it, forming an idea of what the world is like and “clothing” that idea in such an “aura of factuality” as to make it seem self-evident.

Symbolic systems can become so engrained in a community’s understanding of the world that they become difficult to spot. Kinship systems, for instance, appeared for a very long time (even to anthropologists) to be deeply rooted in biology. But David Schneider (1968) argued that there is nothing about shared ancestry or genetic relatedness that necessarily leads to a recognition of the rights, duties, and responsibilities associated with cultural systems of kinship. Numerous kin classifications, in fact, ignore that criterion completely. Schneider concluded that biological relatedness is a symbol just like any other, arbitrarily designated to denote shared identity and mutual responsibility among social groups.

The Constitutive Power of Culture

The very act of perceiving an object or event in the world as being a type of something (e.g., perceiving a certain creature as a dog, the clasping of hands as a prayer, or the meeting of lips as a kiss ) entails the symbolic interpretation and generalization of a specific, concrete event. Because symbols represent concepts rather than just things as they exist in the world, almost everything humans perceive is at least partially constituted by collective representations and interpretation. But the power of culture is such that, in many cases, symbols do not attach to any referent at all, and instead actually create the objects or events to which they refer. Philosopher John Searle (1969) referred to this as the capacity to enact constitutive rules. In statements like “when a player crosses the goal line, he scores a touchdown” or “the candidate who receives the plurality of votes in the general election becomes president,” constitutive rules actually create the categories of touchdown and president. Societies are built upon intricate systems of these constitutive rules, which generally take the form “ x counts as y in context c. ” While usually thought of by the members of the community as natural or even commonsensical, these rules are entirely a matter of social agreement. The idea that one owns a house or car or any other piece of property, for instance, is based on the collective belief that transferring something called “money” to an institution called a “bank” entitles one to special rights over some material thing. Most often, others will not even question those rights. But when someone does seek to violate the agreement through force, such as by stealing a car or invading a home, it is understood that people in uniforms with guns will (hopefully) show up to stop them. Those uniformed enforcers of social consensus will only do so, however, insofar as they agree to obey the orders of an imaginary chain of authority that runs all the way to the president of the United States, whose power comes not from any physical or mental capacity of his, but from the collective agreement that he is to have such authority. Thus, personal property—like civil government or American football—relies on a complex, ordered hierarchy of constitutive rules and social facts that have no basis in material reality.

These institutions reflect a more basic property of symbolic representation: The meaning of cultural units tends to be layered upon many other orders of meaning. Something as simple as reading this sentence, for instance, plays upon such varied levels of conventional meaning as the denotation of speech sounds by individual letters, the definitions of words and groups of words, the grammatical rules that operate at the sentence level, and matters of tone and style conveyed by the structure of the paper as a whole.

The centrality of meanings and symbols in contemporary concepts of culture poses challenges for the study of social life. To begin with, there really is no such thing as a symbol per se, although almost anything can function as one. Symbolism is not an inherent quality of any word or sign, but rather a product of interpretation and consensus. Nor is the meaning of a symbol rigidly determined even by the force of collective agreement. As a number of theorists have argued, the interpretation of symbols relies on complex and often emotionally charged processes in the mind of the interpreter, which it must call upon a broad range of preexisting schemas, scripts, and tacit understandings in order to make any sense at all. Consider the following short description of a sequence of events: “Roger went to the restaurant/The waiter was unfriendly/Roger left a small tip.” In their work on artificial intelligence, Schank and Abelson (1977) showed how little sense such a sequence makes without detailed prior knowledge of what normally happens at a restaurant, what is expected of a waiter, and what is communicated in the complex practice of tipping.

For Clifford Geertz (1973c), the ambiguity and polysemy of the subject matter of anthropology meant that cultures could not be explained, but instead could only be interpreted through a process he called “thick description.” To truly grasp the meaning and significance of a belief or action, Geertz argued, one must first acquire a comprehensive understanding of the social and cultural context in which it occurs. Drawing on literary theory, Geertz suggested that culture must be “read” like a text—a text that, from the anthropologist’s point of view, is “foreign and faded,” full of abbreviations, omissions, and contradictions, and written not by anyone’s pen but by sporadic instances of socially meaningful behavior.

Critiques of the Culture Concept

While culture has long been the central object of inquiry in American anthropology (hence the term cultural anthropology ), scholars in the British social-anthropological tradition have historically been skeptical of culture, and have instead framed their investigations around the concept of society . In social anthropology, society refers to a complex web of social relationships and systematized patterns of behaviors and ideologies known as institutions (e.g., the military, primitive magic, the nuclear family, or the National Football League). Social anthropologists compare institutions across different societies in order to ascertain their “function.” They are particularly interested in “latent” functions: those consequences of institutionalized behavior of which the actors are unaware, but which nevertheless work to motivate the very existence of the institution. The functionalist approach rests on the assumption that particular types of institutions, such as kinship or government, are motivated by the same basic factors and oriented toward the same basic ends in all human societies in which they are present. Underneath their superficial differences, the various cultural manifestations of these institutions are seen as essentially similar, like species belonging to the same genus.

As concepts, culture and society are not necessarily incompatible, and have been viewed by some as closely related and even complementary. But for several generations of social anthropologists, culture was something of a taboo term. A. R. Radcliffe-Browne, one of the discipline’s founders, insisted that the concept of culture erroneously treated abstract ideas as real and concrete, and was too broad a concept to be useful in the study of social life. He claimed that society, on the other hand, was the proper object of anthropology, since societies were bounded and concrete, and social structure was embodied in directly observable social behavior. Eventually, however, social anthropologists recognized that no attempt to study social relationships could be successful without consideration of the cultural beliefs and values associated with them. Oxford anthropologist John Beattie (1964) identified this as the primary reason that Radcliffe-Browne’s limited conception of social anthropology as “comparative sociology” never fully caught on: The behavior of people in society cannot be understood without reference to what social relationships mean to those who participate in them.

Still, a number of social anthropologists remain reluctant to refer to the semiotic dimension of social life as culture. Adam Kuper (1999) argued that it is more legitimate to analyze religious beliefs, arts, and other institutions as separate domains than as “bound together in a single bundle labeled culture” (p. 245). But as William Sewell (2005) observed, and as Ruth Benedict (1934) noted before him, basic beliefs and symbolic representations of the world tend to cut across the lines that sociologists would use to carve up the social sphere, reaching across institutions, linguistic communities, age-groups, and even religions to span entire societies. This suggests that any attempt to approach such beliefs as though they were miscellaneous qualities of separate institutions risks completely missing the presence of a single, pervasive cultural theme. The more or less unquestioned belief in the sanctity of human life in modern society, for instance, affects almost every conceivable institution, from industrial development and urban planning to the cultivation of food and medicinal testing. To effectively treat such an idea as a product of any one institution would thus be a significant analytical mistake.

In recent years, some of the strongest criticisms of the culture concept have come from within the discipline of cultural anthropology itself. Adherents of a loosely defined movement known as “postmodern anthropology” (also variably referred to as postcultural, poststructural, and reflexive anthropology) have questioned the very usefulness and validity of culture as an abstract concept. Often associated with a 1986 collection of essays edited by James Clifford and George Marcus called Writing Culture, the movement can be viewed an extension of the theories of Clifford Geertz—particularly his use of literary theory and his emphasis on the importance of context. Michael Silverstein (2005) identified the “symbols and meaning-ism” that Geertz helped usher in as the point at which anthropology became a hermeneutic and interpretive project rather than an observational science. But for those affiliated with the Writing Culture movement, Geertz stopped short of the inevitable conclusion of his argument—that the description or “interpretation” of a culture is as much a reflection of the point of view of the anthropologist as it is of the culture itself. From this perspective, the anthropologist does not simply record facts about others’ ways of life; instead, she actually creates (or at least coconstructs) the culture as she describes it. This is obviously very troubling for the credibility of anthropological knowledge, and it becomes especially problematic when, as was traditionally the case, the anthropologist is a member of a dominant society granted unilateral authority to depict the beliefs and practices of a subjugated population. Critics point to this unequal power dynamic as at least partially to blame for misguided attempts to capture complex realities using false dichotomies like “savage vs. civilized,” “rational vs. irrational,” or “individualist vs. collectivist.”

This “reflexive” critique is linked to an older, more basic criticism in anthropology, suggesting that culture is a tool for the preservation of existing systems of power and oppression. Proponents of this view argue that by ascribing too much importance to tradition, the concept of culture legitimates the domination and mistreatment of traditionally powerless segments of societies. A frequently cited example is the disadvantaged place that women are perceived as occupying in traditionally patriarchal societies. Others have argued, however, that the perception of inequality and discrimination in other cultures is prone to error, since it often fails to take into account the subtle cultural mechanisms that redistribute power and shape social relationships. And while there certainly are cases where the idea of culture is misused to justify atrocities, this does not explain why the concept should be rejected as an analytical tool.

Another dimension of the postmodern critique takes specific aim at the practice of referring to a culture or to cultures in the plural. Some feel that this use—which is often traced, somewhat controversially, to the theories of Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead—oversimplifies and stereotypes other societies, erroneously treating entire communities as uniform, isolated, and unchanging while downplaying diversity and internal disagreement. This implication is ever more frequently seen in popular usage, where terms like Japanese culture imply a universally shared, unquestioned, and totaling “way of life.” And while integration is not necessarily synonymous with cultural determinism, Benedict (1934), for her part, did little to dispel that interpretation in asserting that the individual “is the little creature of his culture. . . . Its habits are his habits, its beliefs his beliefs” (pp. 2–3). In response, critics like Clifford and Marcus (1986) stressed the importance of individual agency and “resistance” to cultural norms, pointing out that cultures are not bounded, homogeneous, or “pure.” Instead, culture is contested, contradictory, and only loosely integrated, constantly subject to change both from within and without. Postmodernists note that cultures have always been hybridized and permeable, but that this has become increasingly so in recent decades in the face of globalization and capitalist expansion. As Clifford and Marcus (1986) observed, difference is now routinely found next door and familiarity at the end of the earth, suggesting that received notions of culture are not only mistaken, but also irrelevant.

Others maintain, however, that the concept of culture has never implied uniformity, and that no serious anthropologist ever viewed individuals as mindless automatons totally controlled by a self-contained and unchanging cultural system. They argue that culture has always been an abstraction; that is, culture does not represent a “thing” that exists in the world as such, but is instead separated by way of observation and logical inference from the context of real-world actions and utterances in which it is embedded. Alfred Kroeber (1952) defended the practice of speaking of cultures in the plural on this basis, anticipating contemporary critiques in pointing out that one could speak at the same time of a Tokyo or a Japanese or an East Asian culture without implying that any of them represented a homogeneous or totalizing way of life. More recently, Marshall Sahlins (1999) has asserted that the concept of culture critiqued by postmodern anthropologists is a myth. Sahlins does argue that cultural communities can have boundaries, but that these boundaries, rather than being barriers to the flow of people, goods, or ideas, represent conscious designations of identity and inclusion made by the members of the community themselves.

Regarding the uniformity and homogeneity of cultural knowledge, anthropologist Richard Shweder (2003) has argued that culture never implied the passive acceptance of received beliefs and practices or the absence of dispute or debate. Shweder points out that every culture has experts and novices, but that such unequal distribution of knowledge does not mean that anyone is more or less a member of that culture. As one of the chief proponents of the resurgent interdisciplinary field of “cultural psychology,” Shweder has helped demonstrate that basic psychological processes such as selfhood and emotion, rather than being products of deep structural similarity, are rooted in culturally specific modes of understanding (Shweder & Bourne, 1984). Such findings have provided some of the driving force behind the growing influence of the concept of culture in the field of social psychology (e.g., Markus & Kitayama, 1991; et al).

Whether prior theories or particular uses of the term carried misguided implications or not, anthropologists continue to recognize culture as an indispensible consideration in the analysis of human social life. As theorists from nearly every area of study surveyed in this research paper have agreed, shared cultural knowledge is absolutely essential for individuals to function in a way that is recognizably human (see Geertz, 1973a, 1973b, 1973c; Whorf, 1956; Beattie, 1964; Clifford & Marcus, 1986; Sewell, 2005; Sahlins, 1976). Clifford Geertz referred to a gap that exists between our species’ innate biological predispositions and what humans must know in order to survive and function— a gap that could only be filled with highly particular systems of beliefs, values, and representations expressed and transmitted through symbols.

Even those most critical of the concept tend to recognize the centrality and pervasiveness of culture. Culture represents the shared ideas that define and give meaning to objects, events, and relationships in our world and the collective representations that create and maintain social institutions. This is true even of those domains of human activity appearing to follow their own logic and obeying their set of rules and principles. Renato Rosaldo (1989), whose work was also included among the 1986 collection of essays that kindled the postmodern anthropological movement, wrote as follows:

Culture … refers broadly to the forms through which people make sense of their lives … It does not inhabit a set-aside domain as does politics or economics. From the pirouettes of classical ballet to the most brute of brute facts, all human conduct is culturally mediated. Culture encompasses the everyday and the esoteric, the mundane and the elevated, the ridiculous and the sublime. Neither high nor low, culture is all-pervasive. (p. 26)

Thus, the concept of culture, in one way or another, is likely to remain of central concern to the discipline of anthropology for the foreseeable future.

Bibliography:

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  • Boas, F. (1995). Race, language, and culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (Original work published 1940)
  • Clifford, J., & Marcus, G. (1986). Writing culture: The poetics and politics of ethnography. Los Angeles: University of California Press.
  • D’Andrade, R. (1984). Cultural meaning systems. In R. Shweder & R. Levine, Culture theory (pp. 88–119). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
  • Darnell, R. (2001). Invisible genealogies: A history of Americanist anthropology. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
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  • Levine, R. (1984). Properties of culture: An ethnographic view. In R. Shweder & R. Levine (Eds.), Culture theory (pp. 67–87). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
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  • Sahlins, M. (1976). Culture and practical reason. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  • Sahlins, M. (1999). Two or three things I know about culture. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 5, 399–421.
  • Sapir, E. (1917). Do we need a superorganic? American Anthropologist, 19, 441–447.
  • Sapir, E. (1924). Culture, genuine and spurious. American Journal of Sociology, 29, 401–429.
  • Schank, R., & Abelson, R. (1977). Scripts, plans, goals, and understandings. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
  • Schneider, D. (1968). American kinship. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  • Searle, J. (1969). Speech acts: An essay in the philosophy of language. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
  • Sewell, W. (2005).The concept(s) of culture. In W. Sewell, Logics of history (pp. 152–174). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  • Shweder, R. (2003). Anti-postculturalism (or, the view from manywheres). In R. Shweder, Why do men barbecue? Recipes for cultural psychology (pp. 1–45). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
  • Shweder, R., & Bourne, E. (1984). Does the concept of the person vary cross-culturally? In R. Shweder & R. Levine (Eds.), Culture theory (pp. 158–199). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
  • Silverstein, M. (2005). Languages/cultures are dead: Long live the linguistic-cultural. In D. Segal & S. Yanagisako (Eds.), Unwrapping the sacred bundle: Reflections on the discipline of anthropology (pp. 99–125). Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
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  • Williams, R. (1983). NewYork: Oxford University Press.

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