In his book ‘Interkulturelle Wirtschaftskommunikation’ Jürgen Bolten specifies four areas in which the term Culture can be encountered:
· nature (agri cultura)
· one’s soul, mind and body (cultura animi)
· transcendent relationships (cultura Dei)
· interpersonal relationships
Source: Generated with AI in Microsoft Copilot
Looking back, it is impossible to determine exactly by when the usage of the word Culture originated in those four areas and what it exactly meant.
Considering its Latin root “to cultivate, to care for” (from Latin ‘colere’, ‘colō’) Culture could historically have referred to following examples in each of the area:
Agriculture = A person who wants to grow his own vegetables, must plant seeds into the soil first before being able to harvest them.
Personal Growth = A person who wants to become literate in a new language must spent time and study first before being able to use it.
Transcendent Relationships = A person who believes that only a higher being can help him in something, will have to ask for help before being helped.
Interpersonal Relationships = A person who wants to be trusted, must give trust.
It becomes apparent that cultivating, caring in each of the single area comes along with some kind of mutual influence (also called reciprocity).
When people encounter a different Culture in the international business context (dealing with foreign entities, customers, suppliers, on a business trip or as Expat), they will most of the time face challenges with “interpersonal relationships”.
Knowing that the basic meaning of the word Culture is "cultivating, caring for something" and that it comes along with mutually influencing each other (reciprocity) in an intercultural setting is a good first step to sensitize, before learning how to navigate successfully. More details to that in a later blog post.
Source: Interkulturelle Wirtschaftskommunikation, Jürgen Bolten, 2007
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