4.11 The Conditional Motion of Culture

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From the course by University of Pennsylvania

The Power of Team Culture

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University of Pennsylvania

The Power of Team Culture

122 ratings

Course 1 of 5 in the Specialization Culture-Driven Team Building

Behind the success and failure of teams lies team culture. But what exactly is culture? How and why does it contribute to success and failure? In this course, you learn how to recognize aspects of team culture of which most people are typically unaware. It is often these seemingly unimportant aspects that have the greatest effect on the outcomes of group tasks. Your recognition of them enables you to form, join and lead teams more effectively. You also come to appreciate the role of ritual and symbols in the daily operation of teams, as well as in situations of change and crisis. Knowledge of the ideas and information in this class enables you to be a better team player and a more effective team leader.

From the lesson

Effecting Cultural Continuity and Change

In this unit, we will examine inertia, change, and metaculture, introduce interest as a force at work on the motion of culture as well as provide a conclusion to the concepts covered in this course.

4.1 Culture in Time4:48

4.2 The Inertial Forces5:08

4.3 Habit and Drift5:02

4.4 Inertia and Change: An Ancient Egyptian Case, Part 15:40

4.5 More on Reflective Culture or Metaculture as a Force4:31

4.6 Inertia and Change: An Ancient Egyptian Case, Part 24:37

4.7 Inertia and Change: An Ancient Egyptian Case, Part 36:00

4.8 Secret to Successful Cultural Change4:56

4.9 Introducing the Force of Interest4:47

4.10 Interest at the Interface between Different Inertial Patterns6:20

4.11 The Conditional Motion of Culture5:35

4.12 Conclusion5:39

Meet the Instructors

Greg Urban, Ph.D.
Professor
Anthropology

Interest in a way of speaking considered to be cool or stylish may mask

the underlying interest in being like the people who talk that way.

Still the interest seems to focus on the way of speaking or for

that matter more generally on the clothing styles, hair styles,

broader lifestyles of the people who support them.

Culture seems to move directly because of the interest in it.

However, in some cases the movement of the culture is more obviously just a condition

for something else in which people are interested.

In discussing Akhenaten, we said that Akhenaten's

ideas spread because he had the power as Pharoah to issue commands and decrees.

And so to tell people what religion to practice and how to practice it.

Power is of major concern among anthropologists

interested in culture this days, but let's take a closer look from the point of view

of cultural motion at just what power means.

I think it means in this case that people were at least somewhat

willing to accept the new religious patterns

because of their interest in complying with the existing power structure.

We don't know exactly what the consequences of resisting might be, but

it does seem that power in this case means accepting the new culture,

because of one's interest in something else.

Whether that something else is avoiding punishment or

reaping some rewards for compliance.

Similarly, anytime a regime is put in place with the aid of military force,

there's a conditional movement of the culture propagated by the regime.

The interest is in the consequences of accepting or not accepting the culture.

Say that again, the interest is in the consequences of accepting or

not accepting the culture.

Here interest more explicitly drives the motion of culture conditionally.

We might say that the same is true for the use of wages in employment.

The employment involves culturally acquired practices,

whether operating a stud gun on an assembly line, making a hamburger, or

closing a business transaction.

The reason for engaging in those practices need not be a direct interest in them.

The interest maybe rather in the money they acquired from engaging in

the practice.

And more specifically in what cultural practices they can engaged in.

Such as travel or leisure as a result of getting that money.

Here again the movement to culture is conditional.

Having formulated the idea of culture as being propelled conditionally by interest,

let me say that my own research indicates that the distinction may not be always

crystal clear in reality.

In the case of business people may not be working just for the money.

I have many,

many interviews with working people that I have accumulated over the years.

One question I ask is, what would you be doing if you didn't need the money?

If you were independently wealthy?

In so many instances people say that they would probably be doing something not

unlike what they're currently doing, but they would be doing less of it.

Maybe doing it somewhere else, or doing a different version of it.

Doctors often would want to be doing something related to healthcare,

although maybe not working as doctors the way they were.

Teachers often wanted to be helping people to learn.

Even finance people talk about the excitement of closing deals and

finding something that would replicate that in their lives.

So there seems often to be a fit between the culture of the workplace and

the interest of the people.

You might remember that when we talked about hiring in an earlier lecture we

stressed looking for cultural fit.

But I want to qualify that here.

Conditional cultural motion where the interest is in something

other than cultural elements that move, such as the work patterns,

gets entangled with the interest in the cultural patterns for their own sake.

Work culture overtime can become habitual inertial culture.

At that point, the motion is not only conditional.

Consequently, when the habit is disturbed

interest can arise to attract the individual back to the habitual culture.

This is the elastic effect we mentioned earlier

as associated with resistance to culture change.

An interview with a night club exotic dancer stands out in my memory.

The interview was actually done by one of my former students, not by me.

When the student asked the dancer what she would be doing

if she were independently wealthy and

did not need to work, the woman said she would definitely not be an exotic dancer.

But she went on to clarify that people have the mistaken idea

that the dancers hate stripping and only do it for the money.

She explained that if you saw how much the girls and here I'll quote,love

what they do, unquote you would come away with a different opinion.

Well, there's something to think about.

But the general point here is that a conversion can take place between

the conditional and habitual motion of culture,

such that the interest that is initially in something else can become interest in

the cultural practices themselves.

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