Culture

• Ref: “Strategic Learning” by William G. Pietersen, Professor of the Practice of Management

Culture is probably the most misunderstood and mismanaged part of the business system—and arguably the most important success factor of all.

Culture expresses itself through specific values and observable behaviors.

In a particular society, culture is a set of beliefs and behaviors that persist over time because they help that society solve its problems. (whether social, economic, or political). Every society has an elaborate system of rewards and penalties designed to ensure that supportive behaviors continue and that that destructive behaviors are extinguished.

• "Cultures and Organizations--Software of the Mind" by Geert Hofstede ISBN: 0-07-029307-4

This word (Culture) has several meanings, all derived from its Latin source, which refers to the tilling of the the soil.
"Culture (One)": In most Western languages "culture" commonly means "cilivlization" or "refinement of the mind" and in particular the results of such refinement, like education, art, and literature. This is "culture in the narrow sense".
"Culture (Two)": Culture as mental software, however, corresonds to a much broader use of the word which is common among social anthropologists.
Social (or cultural) anthropology is the science of human societies, in particular (although not only) traditional or "primitive" ones. In social anthropology, "culture" is a catchword for all those patterns of thinking, feeling, and acting ... Not only those activities supposed to refine the mind, but also the ordinary and menial things in life: greeting, eating, showing or not showing feelings, keeping a certain physical distance from others, making love, or maintaining body hygiene.
"Culture (Two)" is always a collevtive phenomenon, because it is at least partly shared with people who live or lived within the same social environment. It is the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one group or categrory of people from another.

• Claude Levi-Strausse, the grand old man of French anthropology:

Cultural relativism affirms that one culture has no absolute criteria for judging the activities of another cultrure as "low" or "noble". However, every culture can and shouold apply such judgment to its own activities, because its members are actors as well as observers.