# Culture and Organizational Values

Business I · Sociology · https://tryals.app/learn/business-i/culture-and-organizational-values

## The Software of the Group

**Culture** is everything a group shares: **symbols**, **language**, **values**, **norms**, and **material artifacts**. If structure is the hardware, culture is the software.

**The working parts:**
- **Symbols**: Things carrying shared meaning, like logos or meeting access.
- **Values**: Shared judgments of what is **desirable** (e.g., innovation over safety).
- **Norms**: Behavioral rules operationalizing values. 
- **Sanctions**: Enforcement systems, from a raised eyebrow to firing (negative) or promotion (positive).

**The chain:** values -> norms -> sanctions.

**The iceberg property**: Artifacts sit above the waterline; tacit assumptions sit below. A visitor sees the open office; only insiders know if speaking up is actually safe.

**Hygiene rules**: Avoid **ethnocentrism** (judging other cultures by your standards) and expect **subcultures** where internal groups differ widely.

## Norms and Reality

| | Folkways | Mores |
| --- | --- | --- |
| **Rule Type** | Custom and convenience | Morally charged conduct |
| **Violation** | Mild eyebrow raise | Outrage, expulsion |
| **Business** | Dress code, punctuality | Honesty, non-discrimination |

**Espoused vs Enacted**: **Espoused values** are what the group says it prizes; **enacted values** are what actually gets rewarded and tolerated.

> **Common pitfall:** Reading the culture off the lobby poster. When espoused and enacted values diverge, behavior follows enacted values, always.

**The management punchline**: Culture eats strategy for breakfast. A written value that contradicts the felt norm loses every time. If the poster demands balance, but promotions go to midnight emailers, staff learn the real value by Tuesday.

## Practice questions

8 of this lesson's 14 practice questions, with answers. The full set is in the app.

### 1. A firm’s posters proclaim "work-life balance," but promotions consistently go to those emailing at midnight. What do employees learn?

A. The promotion criteria are the real norm
B. That values and norms are unrelated
C. That posters override behavior
D. That the firm has no culture

**Answer:** A. The promotion criteria are the real norm

**Why:** Norms are read from sanctions, and promotion is the strongest positive sanction a firm owns. When espoused values and enacted rewards conflict, the rewards *are* the culture; the posters become symbols of something else, cynicism.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/business-i/culture-and-organizational-values/a-firms-posters-proclaim-work-life-balance-but-promotions

### 2. A firm's stated value is 'fail fast, learn faster', and the last three people who ran failed experiments were quietly moved sideways. Which reading is right?

A. There is no culture problem; three cases are too few to signal anything
B. The espoused value is contradicted by the enacted one
C. The culture is in transition and the stated value will eventually take hold
D. The value is real but poorly communicated to middle management

**Answer:** B. The espoused value is contradicted by the enacted one

**Why:** Culture is inferred from consequences, so the promotion list overrides the poster every time, and Schein's espoused/enacted split is exactly this gap. Publishing a value the organisation does not enforce is worse than publishing nothing, because it teaches that the stated values are decoration.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/business-i/culture-and-organizational-values/a-firms-stated-value-is-fail-fast-learn-faster-and-the-last

### 3. A Spanish retailer expands to Japan. Which moves show cultural competence rather than ethnocentrism?

A. Hiring local managers and treating their judgment as data
B. Assuming its home sales script works because "customers are customers"
C. Researching local gift-giving and greeting norms before negotiating
D. Adapting store layouts to local shopping customs

**Answer:** A. Hiring local managers and treating their judgment as data; C. Researching local gift-giving and greeting norms before negotiating; D. Adapting store layouts to local shopping customs

**Why:** Competence = treating the other culture’s norms as facts to learn, not deviations to correct. "Customers are customers" is ethnocentrism compressed into four words, and a well-documented way to lose a market.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/business-i/culture-and-organizational-values/a-spanish-retailer-expands-to-japan-which-moves-show-cultural

### 4. A firm’s stated value is "the customer comes first" while the reserved parking spot goes to the executive. Why do analysts treat the symbol as better evidence of the culture?

A. Because stated values change more often than physical arrangements
B. Because parking arrangements are decided by senior management
C. Because employees rarely read the stated values
D. Because symbols and sanctions record what is actually rewarded

**Answer:** D. Because symbols and sanctions record what is actually rewarded

**Why:** Culture is inferred from what is rewarded and enacted. Where espoused values and enacted ones diverge, the enacted ones are the culture, and the gap itself teaches employees to discount the statements.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/business-i/culture-and-organizational-values/a-firms-stated-value-is-the-customer-comes-first-while-the

### 5. Within a single company, the engineering and sales departments can hold genuinely different subcultures with conflicting norms.

**Answer:** True

**Why:** Subcultures form wherever groups share distinct work, jargon, and incentives. Engineering’s "never ship bugs" and sales’ "never miss the quarter" are both authentic norms, and their collision is a structural feature, not a personality clash.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/business-i/culture-and-organizational-values/within-a-single-company-the-engineering-and-sales-departments-can

### 6. Complete the chain of cultural control.

**Answer:** Shared **values** are operationalized by norms, which are enforced through **sanctions**.

**Why:** Values set the direction, norms translate them into expected behavior, sanctions make the expectation real.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/business-i/culture-and-organizational-values/complete-the-chain-of-cultural-control

### 7. Folkway or more? Sort each workplace norm by the heat of its violation.

**Answer:**

- Folkway (custom): Wearing jeans to a formal client meeting, Skipping the office birthday cake ritual, Replying to emails after a week
- More (moral rule): Taking credit for a colleague’s work, Leaking confidential salary data, Harassing a subordinate

**Why:** Folkway violations make you odd; mores violations make you dangerous. The sanction’s temperature reveals which rule you broke.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/business-i/culture-and-organizational-values/folkway-or-more-sort-each-workplace-norm-by-the-heat-of-its

### 8. Match each concept to its definition.

**Answer:**

- Ethnocentrism → Judging other cultures solely by your own yardstick
- Subculture → A group’s distinct culture inside a larger one
- Sanction → Reward or punishment enforcing a norm
- Artifact → The visible, material tip of culture

**Why:** The analyst’s toolkit: name the bias, expect internal variety, follow the enforcement, and don’t confuse the tip for the iceberg.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/business-i/culture-and-organizational-values/match-each-concept-to-its-definition