chapter TWENTY-FOUR
Culture and Cultural Intelligence
What is culture exactly? A few definitions: “Culture is the way in which a group of people solves problems and reconciles dilemmas. … A problem that is regularly solved disappears from consciousness and becomes a basic assumption, an underlying premise” (Trompenaars & Hampden-Turner, 1998, pp. 3, 7). “Culture consists of shared mental programs that condition individuals’ responses to their environment” (Hofstede, quoted in Thomas & Inkson, 2003, p. 22). “[Culture is] the sum total of all the shared, taken-for-granted assumptions that a group has learned throughout its history. It is the residue of success” (Schein, 1992, p. 29).
Culture has been compared to an iceberg. Its ...
