Seeing Business Cultures

In this chapter, the authors focus on the essential elements of culture and consider the factors that may contribute to shaping an organization's unique culture. The authors caution that this is a rich chapter – the goal is to help business managers make the transition from understanding culture at a theoretical level to seeing and managing it on an everyday practical level. In this chapter, the authors explain what we need to know about business cultures. They define business cultures in terms of their structural and dynamic aspects. The authors define three structural levels, including macro-level (global, national), meso-level (organization, unit), and micro-level (individual) culture. For each level, a rich set of dynamic factors are identified. This chapter prepares the manager for describing his/her organization's business culture.