Report on Business Culture in Saudi Arabia

“Culture comprises traditional ideas and related values, and it is the product of actions” (Kroeber and Kluckhohn, 1952); “it is learned, shared, and transmitted from one generation to the next (Linton, 1945); and it organizes life and helps interpret existence” (Gordon, 1964).

Culture plays a paramount role in our lives. “It is what shapes who we are and how we view the world” (Thorp & Sanchez, 1998,

Culture is the pattern of action and the ways of perceiving, feeling, and thinking acquired growing up in a particular group of people

Every country differs in culture which has been there for centuries. The international market is growing rapidly, with more and more multinational organisations entering new markets each day. In this assignment I will evaluate how the difference in cultures affects the performance of international businesses.

Bevan & Sole (2014) proposes that culture is the cumulative knowledge deposits, opinions, morals, occurrences, outlooks, positions, consequences, orders, moments, spatial relations, the views of the world and the significant things that a collection of people has developed over generations throughout groups and personal endeavors. Culture is not stationary; it is lively and is continuously changing through human conduct, viewpoints, occurrences, concepts and manners including other things said.

The Geert Hofstede cultural dimensions seek to explain the culture of a country along five dimensions power distance, individuality, masculinity/femininity, uncertainty avoidance and long term orientation. Power distance reflects the degree to which a culture is accepting of differences in power. The higher the score, the more the country accepts inequalities among the people in the culture. The United Kingdom scores 35 and Japan 54. This means that the UK is in particular a low power distance culture, in that the people in the culture generally do not tolerate inequality in the society. For a society that has historically been class-based, this is an interesting finding, but Britain has also been home to many Enlightenment thinkers and their ideals about equality. Japan is a mildly hierarchical society with its score, and Japanese people are generally conscious of their hierarchical position. Japan tends to be fairly hierarchical in a business

Several factors affect the formation of one’s culture, Palispis, E. (2007) quoted Sir Edward Tylor, “Culture… refers to that complex whole which includes knowledge, beliefs, arts, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as member of society.” (Palispis, E., 2007) In this context culture is something we acquire from the people we have lived with since we were born, it is not something a person can learn overnight nor can be disposed effortlessly.

For the purposes of this piece, culture is defined as “the full range of human patterned experience” as described by Cole (1996) cited in Gla ̆veanu & Jovchelovitch (2017, p.113). This chapter also provides a description of the importance culture plays in psychological research.

The term culture is described as ‘a verb’. However it is explained that culture is difficult to define as it can be associated in different ways by different people. Some people think of culture as a thing while others term it as a set of beliefs,

With the unstoppable trend of globalisation, it becomes extremely significant for international businesses to have a thorough understanding of different cultures. Hofstede (1980, pp. 21-23) defines culture as ‘the collective programming of the mind distinguishing the members of one group or category of people from another’. This essay examines Hofstede’s cultural framework and suggests that Hofstede’s cultural framework is an outstanding and authoritative tool to analyze culture differences. In this essay, cultural frameworks will be discussed firstly, following by a discussion of my cultural scores and background. Finally, recommendations on cross-cultural management between China and Australia will be provided.

Culture can be defined as “the sum total of the beliefs, rules, techniques, institutions, and artifacts that characterize human populations” or “the collective programming of the mind.

The concept of culture is something that defines many aspects of one’s life. From physical objects to different ways of thinking, culture adds significance to human life and makes groups of people distinct from one another. Culture is essentially a group of people who come together with similar interests and points of view. According to the Center for Advanced Language Acquisition of the University of Minnesota, “culture is defined as the shared patterns of behaviors and interactions, cognitive constructs, and affective understanding that are learned through a process of socialization.” From a more sociological perspective, culture is a way in which people come together in order to fulfill their needs. These shared patterns and ideas identify the members of a culture group while also distinguishing those of another group.” Culture is one of the things that sets the United States apart from the rest of the world. Not that the rest of the world is not cultural, but the circumstance here is different. Many people of different cultural backroads come to this country in search of a better life. As a consequence, the United States has become a place where many cultures merge together like a colossal pot soup.

Culture is based upon two types which include: nonmaterial culture that is the ideas created by members of a society, and material culture that is the physical things created by members of a society.( Chapter 3, pg. 60) Nevertheless, Culture is the “base” of one’s background because it is the link to the past and our guide to the future. There is a diversity of cultures in the world and these different people have different symbols an aspect that separates them from each group. Culture can clearly be defined as a broad topic, since it has majors’ importance in society and in life. There is plenty of items focus by culture and the terms that comes a part of it.

The definition of culture offered in one textbook is “That complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man person as a member of society.”

Kroeber and Kluckhohn (1962) identify over 150 scientific definitions of the concept of culture. Indeed, many authors have tried to define culture and this is why there are so many definitions and that a unique one is hard to find. First of all, Kroeber and Kluckholn (1952) assume that culture is a suite of patterns, implicit and explicit, “of and for behaviour acquired and transmitted by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievements of human groups, including their embodiments in artefacts” (p.47). Later, Hofstede adds that culture is “the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one category of people from another” (Hofstede, 1991, p.51). This definition is the most widely accepted one amongst practitioners. For Winthrop (1991), culture is the distinctive models of thoughts, actions and values that composed members of a society or a social group. In other words,