cultural layers

Corporate cultures don’t exist in isolation. They are usually embedded into a national culture. Even multinational companies’ cultures in most cases are dominated by the original founding environment.

But is that all already? If we take a closer look we can detect a fine structure consisting of several layers; each representing some local entity.

Let’s take an example: I once was asked by a company located in the German city of Neuss if their corporate culture should be considered as an enabler or rather as an inhibitor for the implementation of some strategic changes.

So the 1^st step was to assess their corporate culture. I found, that there were indeed several layers:

1. The 1^st cultural layer below the corporate culture that influenced it was some typical Neuss contribution. Neuss, located at the left banks of the river Rhine is one of Germanys oldest settlements and dates back to roman times. But what is even more important is that in the late middle ages Neuss was a rich merchant’s metropolis and clearly outperformed its rivalling neighbour Düsseldorf those times – very much unlike today.  And not surprisingly the citizens of Neuss never miss an opportunity to demonstrate that they are different from Düsseldorf. They are more sober than those silly people from opposite the Rhine, they work harder and value the celebration of their local town guards shooting competition much higher than the carnival … and so on. Yes, there was some kind of attitude among the corporations employees: “We need to be better because we have to outperform those bloody Düsseldorfians!”.
   
2. The 2^nd layer could be called the Rhineland contribution. Indeed there is something in common among all inhabitants of the so called Rhineland. There is the legendary cheerful Rhinish nature, the enduring influence of French occupation by Napoleon Bonaparte. You can feel some form of hidden resistance still when you see them dancing in ancient French army uniforms at carnival. Later when the French troops withdrew their resistance was directed towards their new rulers, the Prussians because in the wake of the French revolution Napoleon also had brought them a modern political system as opposed to the traditional Prussian corporate state. So there is still some resistance against / making fun of authorities to be felt in their local culture.
   
3. The national influence could only be found in the 3^rd layer in this case. Certainly there is something like a typical German cultural element. Although in general the variance within a country is usually higher than the difference between two countries’ averaged cultures some typical German cultural elements can be factored out. The ‘German culture’ first of all is determined by the common language which has been synthesized from the central European local dialects – a (typical German?) attempt to achieve some unification and order. Then there is the common history – but to a much lesser extend, as it was not so common for all of the Germans for many years and rather than unifying the people left deep rifts between the catholic south and the protestant north, the ex-GDR east and the lucky rest. And finally we have our constitution, our ‘Grundgesetz’ which is incomplete in a sense and hence typical German as well.
   
4. There are several ingredients of what Germans consider as part of their very culture which are in fact common to a European layer, the 4^th layer. First the Christian background in common to most Europeans may come into our minds. To my opinion the influence is definitely there but it should not be taken too literally. Christianity over the centuries of is existence has suffered too much from continuous fragmentation followed by fierce rivalry and bloody religious wars then to serve as a firm common ground. But besides all scars from ancient and recent fights a fuzzy common understanding still has survived. Possibly it boils down just to the bible, the Ten Commandments and the common feeling, that they all together differ from other religions. More important for the typical European flavour and more distinguishing from the rest of the world seem to be the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, the labour movement, in general the (to a certain degree successful) fight for  freedom of thought, civil rights and a civil secular constitutions. This is what our forefathers spilled their blood for during the last few centuries. This is what Europe distinguishes most from any other cultural region. The allegory ‘enlightened liberal Europe versus despotic east’ might be a bromidic inequation but it nevertheless still fuels many cross-cultural conflicts.
   
5. And finally there is a 5^th layer which is common to the whole family of mankind. It is taken as given because it cannot be used for differentiation purposes – at least as long as we don’t have to conduct disputes about culture with aliens. All human beings tend to conduct wars and to make peace, to trade and do business – even with enemies, to believe in religions regardless whether strictly or more relaxed. We all – at whatever level – established some kind of civilisation we live in and we regard as indispensable. This layer comes into sight in cases only when values and behaviours are requested from us which are clearly beyond any human common ground.

May be there are more – intermediate – layers which I did not consider to worth an extra category. Race for example is not among them as to my perception race – apart from being poorly defined – doesn’t contribute to our cultures. It is only used as an instrument to distinguish from ‘the others’.

But there is surely an ancient heritage that is common to all of us – and even not only to human beings. It is much more archaic more systemic. It’s about the common characteristics of species living in collectively organized groups which gave them an evolutionary advantage.

These systemic roots of collective behaviour have been uncovered by evolutionary biology just recently and will be laid out in a bit more detail in my next contribution.