Tag: environment

Social & Cultural Capital, Part 2: How to Benefit from Each in the Workplace

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Cultural capital can be considered an important workplace resource, as it often shows a person in a certain light.

Although this type of capital is centered around competence, qualifications, and experience (universal assets), it is specific to each culture, because the values of society set the tone for what assets are most prized. 

We talked about social capital last week, which is all about who you know.

But cultural capital is about what you know and can do – the skills and knowledge you bring to the table as an individual. 

This can include anything from being a master wordsmith to having an eye for art that’ll blow your socks off.

In that way, you have more control over cultural capital than you do social.

But…cultural capital is like a secret weapon that not everyone knows how to wield. 

And that weapon comes in several forms, including embodied and institutionalized cultural capital.

Embodied & Institutionalized Cultural Capital

Embodied cultural capital refers to the skills and knowledge that you’ve acquired through personal experience, training, and education. 

This type of cultural capital is highly subjective, as it’s shaped by your unique experiences and background.

Think language skills, artistic talent, physical coordination, social grace, and more. 

View embodied cultural capital as the foundation of who you are as an individual.

It’s something that can have a significant impact on your social class, career prospects, and overall success.

Institutionalized cultural capital, on the other hand, refers to the formal credentials and recognition that you’ve acquired through institutions such as universities, colleges, and professional organizations.

Institutionalized cultural capital can include degrees, certificates, and other formal qualifications. 

It can also include the prestige and reputation of the organizations with which you’re affiliated.

But it’s not just about what you know and what you can do. It’s also about who you know and where you belong. 

Institutionalized cultural capital can give you access to certain social networks, job opportunities, and higher-paying positions.

How Can You Earn Cultural Capital?

Understanding the cultural capital that holds value within your environment is crucial, as certain skills and attributes are prized and can lead to greater opportunities, career success, and social status. 

For example, if you want to make it big in a high-wheeling law firm, you’ll need to be able to flaunt your fancy degree and show off your deep understanding of legal culture.

Or if you’re in the tech industry, having skills in programming languages like Java, Python, or C++ will be a game changer. 

The bottom line is: You need to know what skills and attributes are highly valued within your environment, and then develop those skills and cultivate those attributes. 

You also need to make connections and build relationships with people who can help you advance in your career. 

And, of course, you need to stay up-to-date on the latest trends and developments in your field.

Who knows, if you build up enough social and cultural capital, maybe someday you’ll be able to cash it all in for a fancy corner office and a solid gold stapler.

Does Culture Drive Human Behavior More Than Genetics?

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Biologists say that behavior is ultimately determined by natural selection.

This is because genetic structures are constructed according to the mental processes and learned patterns and responses to different environments.

As Richerson and Boyd, authors of Not By Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution, note: physiological changes that shape behavior are evolutionary.

Take bird migration, for instance.

Instead of passing winter in harsh environments, birds have acquired their migratory behavior according to evolutionary physiological reactions.

The brain has formed evolutionary strategies across time to send hormonal signals that trigger annual migration to warmer climates.

So, while genes may determine the traits and behaviors best suited to the environment, the environment has helped shape these genes. 

Where does culture come into play?

Culture is part of the environment, especially where humans are concerned.

Culture Drives Human Evolution

Taking the environment’s impact on evolution a step further, in a study by the University of Maine, culture was found to drive human evolution even more so than genetics.

According to the 2021 study by researchers, Tim Waring and Zach Wood, humans adapt to their environment and challenges in their environment via culture – in the form of learned knowledge, skills, and practices –more effectively and at a faster pace than through genetics.

One reason for this “special evolutionary transition” is that the cultural transfer of knowledge is flexible and fast when compared to genetic transfer.

Waring notes that:

“Gene transfer is rigid and limited to the genetic information of two parents, while cultural transmission is based on flexible human learning and effectively unlimited with the ability to make use of information from peers and experts far beyond parents.”

This results in a stronger adaptation via cultural evolution than genetic evolution allows.

The researchers also argue that culture’s group-oriented nature produces more group-oriented evolution as well.

Ways in Which Humans Have Evolved

How have humans evolved via culture?

Humans have adapted in several key ways over the millennia.

These include:

  • Capacity for social learning
  • Predisposition to be cooperative
  • Capacity to collaborate
  • Diminishing aggression

Genetics and culture work together to adapt behaviors, but as Waring and Wood’s research suggests, culture is becoming even more influential on the evolution of human behavior.

As Waring concludes:

“This research explains why humans are such a unique species…We are slowly becoming ever more cultural and ever less genetic.”

Nature Vs. Nurture & Cultural Evolution

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Language is culture. Food is culture. Customs are culture.

They are all taught. They are all shaped and communicated across generations through group orientation and primary socialization.

In the book, Not By Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution, authors Peter J. Richerson and Robert Boyd explain that some scientists argue that culture and human behavior cannot be tied to evolutionary theory and biology, quoting the concept of nature versus nurture.

Culture is something created via nurture, while biology is formed by nature.

An individual’s concept of time, her values and customs, her language – all of this is formed by the environment in which she grows up.

It is nurtured.

An individual’s eye color, his height, any genetic disease he may have – all of this is formed by genes.

It is the result of nature. 

Considering this, many argue that evolutionary theory does not come into play in regards to learned behaviors that are shaped by the environment.

As we’ve discussed in many blog posts, cultural behaviors – and most other human behavior – is learned; therefore, the argument is that biology has little to do with creating it.

But Richerson and Boyd suggest that this is not the case, due to the symbiotic nature of genes and their environment.

Genes & the Environment Interact

Genes are not blueprints specifying an organism’s final draft.

Instead, the genetic information stored in an organism interacts with the environment around it while the organism is developing.

As Richerson and Boyd describe it:

“Genes are like a recipe, but one in which the ingredients, cooking temperature, and so on are set by the environment.”

And like any recipe, the traits of the organism will vary based on the differences in the environment.

Some traits are more affected by environment than others.

For instance, most humans develop two ears, despite the environment they’ve grown in, but depending on their nutritional environment during youth, they can develop different growth and health outcomes into adulthood.

Environmental differences can also cause differing behaviors in organisms that are genetically the same.

In such circumstances, the environment is the direct cause of different traits and behaviors.

And because culture is both a part of the environment and a reaction to it, while genes are the evolutionary response to past environments, neither can be removed from the equation.

They are symbiotic.

We’ll take a closer look at the degree to which genes and culture influence human behavior next week.

A New Frame of Interpretation: How Analogies Can Help Direct Cross-Cultural Behaviors

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Meet Marie.

Marie is a German business consultant tasked with reorganizing a French company.

Excited with the prospect, Marie initially enjoyed her frequent trips to Paris and the directive with which she was tasked. But soon, she faced regular roadblocks that would make the fun project a chore.

The French company she was to reorganize was hierarchical and centralized. Despite this, Marie had difficulty identifying the appropriate decision-makers, as a number of people claimed to be in charge though they didn’t actually hold any power in moving the project forward.

Their interference threw rocks into the cogs of this project, slowing it to a standstill, and the delay resulted in even less support from the French team.

At this point, she wasn’t even able to secure a meeting with management or access the information required to complete her mission.

Marie had two choices: a) abandon the project, or b) find someone who could assist in her cross-cultural understanding of the way a stereotypical French company functions.

The Working Parts of a French Company

Marie was lucky enough to find her Zookeeper at the wedding party of a friend.

Using an analogy, this Zookeeper – a French manager who’d worked for over a decade in Germany – managed to crystalize Marie’s understanding of the hierarchy in the French office and the politics with which it functioned.

The Zookeeper told her, first of all, to abandon her German ideas of how an office should function. Unlike in Germany, companies in France don’t function like well-oiled machines.

Instead, he said, they are more like royal courts, in which the CEO reigns supreme. He is the king, and surrounding him, are his noblemen, knights, servants, etc. – all of whom vie for his attention.

They do this by constructing their own fiefdoms.

As Marie was someone sent in from the outside to manage a project, she should navigate this world like an earl.

As quoted from I am the Monkey, the Zookeeper advised:

“Be humble in the right moment. Be bold in the right moment. Be courteous when required. Be rude when needed. Build your political relationship and network, until you have the ear and favor of the king or one of his important ministers.”

By abandoning her expectations that a French office should function like a German one, Marie would be able to get the job done effectively in this foreign culture.

A Culture’s Office Hierarchy is Often a Microcosm of the Country’s Structural Macrocosm

France, itself, has a thousand-year-old history of strong monarchies. Further, its current politics is centered around a strong presidential state; so much so that President François Mitterand was deemed the “last French King.”

French thinking and the stereotypical hierarchies of French companies have been influenced by this historical structure and the way in which it functions.

In understanding this, Marie was able to adapt her behavior to a new frame of interpretation.

The idea that “French companies are like royal courts” created a firmer, almost visceral blueprint for not only what was expected from her, but for the methods by which she could achieve her goal in this setting that differed greatly from her own back in Germany.

This is one example of how analogies can aid a manager’s understanding of a new cross-cultural environment. We’ll be talking more about creating analogies in the coming weeks.

Corporate Social Responsibility Model: Changing the Way Corporate Giants Do Business

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Enhancing education, partnering with the World Wildlife Fund, committing to Conservation International’s sustainability efforts.

These are just some ways in which big corporations are leaning hard on a corporate social responsibility business model.

Last week, we talked about social responsibility and how it can be passive or active.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is an active approach in which businesses consciously change the way they do business in order to positively impact society.

CSR Objectives

There are two main motives to CSR:

  1. To improve quantitative social aspects – including the company’s societal impact
  2. To improve qualitative social aspects – including efficient employee management and processes

This relatively new concept of CSR has evolved as shareholders have. Today’s shareholders are often concerned in a company’s ripple-effect – its impact on the environment and society – rather than simply on the bottom line.

Industrial repercussions are at the forefront of the social conscience, thus shareholders are more apt to hold a corporation responsible for environmental and social impact.

This is not an individualist approach to business; it’s a collectivist approach.

personal values societal resp.jpg

As you can see in the chart above, rule-based/individualist cultures lean towards personal responsibility, while relationship-based cultures lean towards societal responsibility.

In this way, you can see how economic management business models can benefit from cultural values other than our own.

CSR injects rule-based cultures with relationship-based cultural values.

And it’s a beautiful thing.

Mandated CSR

In some cases, governments mandate corporate social responsibility.

India, for example, required that companies donate 2% of net profits to charitable organizations in 2014, becoming the first country to enact such legislation.

The law required that a CSR board committee be established within the company, designating that 2% over the previous three years’ net profit to CSR. The board director would, at fiscal year’s end, review the company’s efforts to ensure compliance.

But, oftentimes, CSR is voluntary, as in the following cases.

Voluntary CSR

Microsoft’s Bill Gates is well known for his charitable efforts.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has done a huge part in eradicating hunger and poverty.

The Microsoft company, itself, has focused its efforts on social responsibility, with the Reputation Institute’s Chief Research Officer, Stephen Hahn-Griffiths, stating:

“Microsoft is committed to enhancing education as a highly relevant global human issue – and, unlike Apple, operates as an open-source platform that fosters perceptions of good citizenship and good governance.”

Another example of CSR done right is the Danish company, Lego.

Lego promotes sustainability, partnering with the World Wildlife Fund to fulfill its “Build the Change” and “Sustainable Materials Center” initiatives.

In 2017, Lego extended this partnership, with goals to push global action on climate change and reduce manufacturing- and supply chain-CO2 emissions.

These are just two examples of CSR in action.

What do you think of corporations taking an active approach in positive social change? As a conscious consumer, does a corporation’s social responsibility influence your purchases?