Corporate culture is a system of values and beliefs shared by all employees of the company, which predetermines their behavior and the nature of the organization’s life.
Any commercial organization is a complex system, the basis of the life potential of which is the organizational (corporate) culture. Corporate culture not only distinguishes one organization from another, but also determines the success of its functioning and survival.
It is advisable to consider work in a modern organization as a group rather than an individual one. Corporate culture gives people a sense of confidence and pride in their company, opens up the opportunity for a manager to lead, focusing on accepted norms and values, and make local decisions faster; offers clear quality standards, specific criteria for self-assessment and facilitates understanding of what is happening in the team, counteracts the possible departure of employees, which significantly increases the stability of functioning.
In organizations with an established corporate culture, it becomes an attribute of the organization, a part of it, and has a powerful impact on employees, transforming their behavior in accordance with the norms and values that form its basis.
When analyzing corporate culture, there are three main points to highlight.
The first is the basic assumptions that organizational members hold in their behavior and actions. They are often associated with a vision of the human environment (group, organization, society, etc.) and the variables that regulate it (nature, time, work, nature of relationships, etc.).
The second is the values (value orientations) that a person must adhere to. They define what behavior can be considered acceptable (or unacceptable). In some organizations it is believed that “the customer is always right” and should not be blamed for failure in work, in others it is the other way around. Accepted values help a person understand how he should act in a particular situation.
The third is “symbolism”, through which value orientations are transmitted to members of the organization. Some companies have special documents with a detailed description of value orientations. The content and meaning of the latter are most fully revealed through stories, legends and myths, which sometimes have a stronger influence on people than information from the company’s advertising brochure.
The concept of an organization's culture includes many components, but a special place in its formation is occupied by the opinion about the company and its public authority. If a leader wants an organization to succeed, he must constantly take care of its image.
Among the main components of a company's reputation is its name. We sometimes think that the name is not that important. There is a fairly wide “range” of long, colorless, imprecise, difficult to pronounce, and sometimes simply ridiculous names. And abroad, founders usually announce a competition and pay a lot of money for a successful name. A person, reading the name of a company, perceives the sound of words: some of them sound easy to him, others - rude, unpleasant. Thus, the foreign trade association "Avtoexport" was faced with the problem of selling the Zhiguli car on the foreign market, although the presented samples satisfied the needs of a certain segment of buyers. It turned out that the name caused unpleasant associations, since in a number of European languages it is consonant with the words “swindler”, “crook”. When the export version was renamed Lada, the implementation problem was solved.
Creating a corporate culture is important not only for maintaining team spirit, but the security of the company largely depends on it. When a person leaves the company, commercial information leaks; there are cases when people try to sell important information.
The point of corporate culture is that the values of the company and the person coincide. This applies even to external manifestations, so companies establish rules of conduct that must be followed by everyone. Many companies prohibit wearing jeans and sneakers to work, and smoking is only allowed in designated areas. A person himself must want to do what the company needs; he himself, without instructions from above, must determine what is needed for its good. If a person does not accept the rules, the company has to part with him.
The levels and scope of corporate culture management in countries with developed market economies and in countries with transitional economies are very different. In relation to the former, the state of this type of management is dictated by the level of post-industrial development, which requires not just a qualified performer who is part of the hierarchical bureaucratic structure of the corporation, but an active, energetic manager who has a certain freedom of action and responsibility within the company.
So, corporate culture goal company - achieving high results by improving human resource management to ensure employee loyalty to management and decisions made, and instilling in employees an attitude towards the company as their home. This leads to increased efficiency of production management and improved performance of the company as a whole.
Thus, a new type of personality is being formed in the company, a type of leader - a bearer of an innovative and entrepreneurial spirit, giving employees an example of socially significant behavior in various situations, capable of consolidating established cultural and economic traditions and creating new ones. The promotion of such leaders to the center of innovation activity is also due to the fact that any innovation, breaking the established order, causes quite strong opposition.
Innovative corporate culture is a system of norms and values common in the company, ensuring a high level of perception, initiation and implementation of innovations. According to research by the Association of Managers, 55% of respondents note the need for a more active innovation policy of the company as a whole.
At the same time, managers emphasize the importance of developing corporate culture for the successful implementation of organizational and managerial innovations in Russian companies. In particular, 54% of respondents noted the need for a broad internal campaign to explain to employees the essence of the proposed changes, and 39% highlighted the role of preliminary discussion of management innovations in the organization.
The development of corporate culture in the direction of increasing innovative receptivity and activity of personnel allows:
Ensure compliance and balance between the company’s strategic business objectives and innovative development trends in the industry and the business community as a whole;
Increase employee loyalty to the company, their creative activity in the direction of innovative development, stimulating the growth of proposals for improving business processes and other organizational changes related to increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of management;
Reduce resistance to the implementation of organizational changes that arises due to the characteristics of the existing corporate culture;
Accelerate the integration process and the formation of effective teams in the company that implement innovative projects.
The bearers of an innovative corporate culture should first of all be the head of the organization and top managers, who will “broadcast” elements of the culture to subordinates. To create an effective innovative organizational culture, the following are most widely used: technologies:
Training seminars to create a mindset among staff to initiate and perceive innovation;
Trainings for the management team aimed at developing specific skills that are adequate to the planned culture. They allow top managers to better understand the situation in the company and determine the role of each of them in the development of an innovative corporate culture;
Assistance in the development of specific tools (procedures for stimulating creativity, initiative, high innovative activity of staff, etc.);
Development and implementation of corporate events aimed at accelerating and increasing the effectiveness of the implementation of innovative corporate culture.
It should be borne in mind that not all recommendations of foreign experts on issues of organizational culture are applicable in Russian companies, since there are certain cultural differences in behavior and business ethics.
Abroad, the focus on quality has almost exhausted itself, and now the emphasis is on for innovative motivation. Personnel motivation prevails in Russia on quality and quantity, Moreover, motivation for quality encounters greater resistance. It is necessary to motivate staff to innovate, without yet bringing the focus on quality to the framework of business culture, when quality is ensured automatically.
Of no small importance not only in managing a company, but also for activating human potential is the management of communication of an organization that forms an image that must be constantly updated.
Every organization has external and internal customers. Each employee is an internal customer, and communication with him requires no less tact and thoughtfulness than communication with an external customer. Therefore, it is important to create and develop an Internet system in the company that will provide feedback and demonstrate the openness of management’s policies. Through the company’s Internet portal, it is possible to create an external environment, which is essentially an extension of the company itself, since each company structures its external environment in the same way as it organizes its internal activities. The strategy of a company's behavior in the external environment largely shapes its future.
An innovative organization encourages employee training and awareness of changes taking place in the economy and in the world; ensures the availability of information circulating in the organization for all employees; creates incentives to interest employees in corporate innovations.
Corporate behavior is a concept that covers a variety of actions related to the management of an organization. Corporate behavior influences its economic performance and its ability to attract capital for economic growth from domestic sources and from foreign investors. One way to improve corporate behavior is to introduce certain standards developed based on an analysis of best practices in corporate behavior.
Standards of corporate conduct apply to business organizations of all types, but are especially important for joint stock companies, where there is often a separation of ownership and management, and therefore conflicts related to corporate conduct are most likely to arise.
The purpose of applying corporate behavior standards is to protect the interests of all groups and individuals that significantly influence the functioning of the organization or are in the zone of its direct influence (stakeholders). These include shareholders, consumers, employees, suppliers, other business partners and local residents.
Corporate behavior should ensure a high level of business ethics in relations between market participants based on respect for the rights and legitimate interests of its participants, contribute to the effective operation of the organization (increasing the value of its assets, creating jobs, maintaining financial stability, profitability, etc.).
Conflict management is considered by many experts as transferring it into a rational channel, meaningfully influencing the behavior of the subjects of the conflict in order to achieve the desired results, and limiting the confrontation to a certain framework.
Conflict of interest owners and top managers of companies becomes an obstacle to innovation in management. The essence of the conflict is that the owner, in order to maximize capital gains and the efficiency of its use, allocates insufficient resources to the top manager. The latter, striving for the success of the company he leads, is forced to reserve resources, hide some information from the owner and increase the degree of his independence. As a result of the conflict, the top manager, when introducing innovations, strives to achieve tactical goals, rather than solving large-scale tasks of modernizing production and entering new markets, which can be risky and damage his reputation. Therefore, many domestic top managers are focused on short-term investments. A conflict of this type exists (and is not resolved) even when innovations in management are generated by the owners (founders) of companies, who are also their top managers. The essence of the conflict is that any entrepreneurial activity that brings income to the owners rejects new management technologies and additional investments, the return of which is long-term.
To resolve this conflict, top managers are most often included in the composition of the owners or the owners are more actively involved in the process of managing the company. Another way to resolve the conflict between owners and top managers is to introduce the position of director of strategic development or director of business development, etc. The development director implements most of the innovations in management in the process of strategic planning, assessing the company’s potential and opportunities for business diversification, promoting profitable mergers and acquisitions, risk assessment, restructuring. To do this, he usually introduces innovations into existing business processes, control and accounting systems, creating a special direction for the company's development.
Innovation conflict between top managers and staff om arises when choosing a production development strategy. It manifests itself in the clash of different management teams, the change of which can occur, for example, during bankruptcy proceedings and the introduction of external management. This conflict leads to the substitution of corporate goals at the functional level for managing the personal goals of employees, which affects the effectiveness of their work. It is the company's employees who slow down all changes carried out by management. The staff becomes insensitive to the company's goals and does not make efforts to achieve them. People tend to support only those decisions that they have “passed through themselves,” and reject those that they are trying to impose on them. A way to resolve this conflict may be to increase the material interest of employees in the results of the entire company, as well as to involve employees in the management process. The latter is largely determined by the existing corporate culture.
It is also typical for Russian companies conflict between consultants and top management. When engaging a consultant, company managers often believe that organizational problems will be solved on their own and are not ready to change their own principles and approaches to management. The problem of relationships between company executives and consultants is aggravated by the fact that consultants promote organizational and managerial innovations without disclosing detailed information about the essence of decisions. In addition, organizational and managerial innovations initiated by consultants are in the nature of individual decisions that correspond to the operating conditions of a particular company and are of little use for replication. This raises doubts among managers about their effectiveness and appropriateness.
The best managers capable of solving problems of initiating and implementing organizational and managerial innovations are creative employees who are open to change. However, for managers of Russian companies to remain creative, open to change and receptive to innovation is a very difficult task, since many companies are built on a leadership type, where the role of the first manager is decisive, and the initiative to implement innovation is seen as an “attack on management” and a desire for “ seizure of power."
Modern operating conditions of companies force us to accelerate the processes of innovative transformations in business, and managers, when implementing organizational changes, have to simultaneously solve quality problems and form attitudes towards innovation. According to statistics, not every manager is ready to carry out the entire range of necessary changes.
Russian organizational culture is characterized by the absence of the main resource for management innovations – a professional management team. An authoritarian leadership style either does not allow the formation of a team of the most qualified specialists (who may be more competent in their field than the leader) or limits the initiative of team members.
An innovative organization constantly improves its structure, supports and develops informal structures based on sociocultural values, focused on creativity and innovation. Such an organization “grows” innovative teams, takes care of their integration into the company, helps young employees obtain resources to initiate new projects, and is not afraid to liquidate hopelessly outdated projects, even those headed by reputable specialists.
The formation and development of innovative organizations is a natural sociocultural process, and the process is very slow, measured over generations of entrepreneurs.
National report “Organizational and managerial innovation: development of a knowledge-based economy” / ed. S. E. Litovchenko. – M.: Association of Managers. – 2008. – P.104.
National report “Organizational and managerial innovation: development of a knowledge-based economy” / ed. S. E. Litovchenko. – M.: Association of Managers, 2008. – P.104.
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Traditional culture is a stable, non-dynamic culture, the characteristic feature of which is that the changes occurring in it are too slow and therefore are practically not recorded by the collective consciousness of this culture.
There have been a number of civilizations in history whose culture can be considered traditional. We are talking about Ancient Egypt, Ancient China, Sumer, Assyria, Ancient India, etc. These traditional societies reproduced the existing way of life for thousands of years, when the past of adults turned out to be the future of their children. The death of some states and the emergence of others in their place did not change the type of culture itself. The foundation of culture was preserved and passed on as social heredity, ensuring the reproduction of the traditional type of development. Not only did man not feel any discord with society, but nature also organically interacted with this culture, proving its unity with it through numerous examples.
However, despite all the originality and originality of these cultural formations, they have some common features:
- focus on repeating a once given way of life, customs, traditions and reproduction of existing social structures;
- adherence to existing patterns of behavior;
- the dominance of sacred, religious-mythological, canonized ideas in the mind;
- slow pace of changes in types, means and goals of activities.
The first historical form of traditional culture was primitive culture. The traditional nature of this culture ensured its longer existence than all subsequent historical types of culture. And yet, over tens of thousands of years, changes occurred in primitive culture, which were named by archaeologists as different stages of the Stone Age, which were replaced by centuries of metal - bronze and iron.
Traditional culture is inherent in pre-industrial society, in which the main occupation is agriculture, hunting and gathering. As a rule, such cultures do not have writing.
Innovation culture is the knowledge, skills and experience of targeted preparation, integrated implementation and comprehensive development of innovations in various areas of human life while maintaining the dynamic unity of the old, modern and new in the innovation system; in other words, it is the free creation of something new in compliance with the principle of continuity.
Innovativeness and traditionalism are interconnected aspects in the development of production, science, technology, economics, art, etc. In a broad cultural context, traditions can (and should!) be considered as a necessary condition for any development. A society that has lost traditions and its historical memory ceases to develop and degrades, since the connection between generations is interrupted and marginalization (from the French margo - edge) of large social groups and other destructive processes occur. On the other hand, society cannot exist without changing. Thus, the unity of innovation and traditionality, which is fixed in the general cultural principle of continuity, is the most important prerequisite for social progress.
At the same time, it is obvious that in each specific case, innovation, associated with the necessary negation of previous norms and rules, begins with the manifestation of creativity, originality, and a departure from existing generally accepted traditions. of people.
The effectiveness of the innovation activities of social actors is largely determined by the state of the so-called innovation climate of society, which, in turn, depends on the nature of the attitude towards innovation on the part of the main social groups, on the part of different generations. As a rule, innovation leads to an increase in conflict in society, which, in turn, slows down the implementation of innovations. This phenomenon is referred to as the innovative inertia (incapacity) of society.
Strict adherence to the principles of consistency is intended to contribute to enhancing the innovative culture when designing and implementing various types of innovations. Some of the basic principles of the systems approach in relation to innovation are modified as follows:
A) the most important principle – primacy of the whole in relation to its constituent parts. For the innovation system as an integrity (the essential characteristic of which is novelty) such its parts are old, modern and new. It is the dynamic unity of the old, modern and new that is primary in relation to each of these elements (including the new!) and ensures the optimal functioning of the innovation complex as a whole;
b) the principle of non-additivity(the irreducibility of the properties of a system to the sum of the properties of its constituent elements) in relation to innovation is manifested in the non-identity of characteristics old, modern and new(!), How parts innovative object, its dominant characteristics as an integrity. Thus, economic liberalization cannot be reduced to the free purchase and sale of state property ( new), since true freedom is that which promotes the good of all, which is by no means a consequence of privatization;
c) the principle of synergy(the unidirectionality of the actions of the system elements enhances the efficiency of the functioning of the entire system) necessitates the search for a balance of goals old, modern And new in a single innovation complex while maintaining the essential difference ( novelty);
d) the principle of emergence (incomplete coincidence of the goals of the system with the goals of its components) when implementing an innovative project requires the construction of precisely goal tree(hierarchy of parameters) for the system as a whole and each of its components;
d) when designing innovative systems, one should take into account multiplicative principle, meaning that the effects of the functioning of components in the system (positive and negative) have the property of multiplication rather than addition (for example, the probability of failure-free operation of a computer network is work probability of failure-free operation of its components);
f) the principle of structure suggests that the optimal structure of innovation should have a minimum number of components; at the same time, these components must fully perform the given functions and maintain the dominant properties of the innovation system, i.e. those who provide it novelty;
and) At the same time, the structure of systemic innovation must be mobile, i.e. easily adaptable to changing requirements and goals, which follows from principle of adaptability;
h) effective innovative design also presupposes, as a prerequisite, the implementation principle of alternativeness, according to which it is necessary to develop several interchangeable innovative versions. For example, the higher the uncertainty of the situation in the proposed sales market or its segments, the more options for alternative development (number of versions, forms of implementation, replication, etc.) of the designed innovation should be;
And) finally, principle of continuity requires providing opportunities for the productive existence of the old in the appropriate innovation space and, conversely, the effective functioning of the new in the conditions of the persisting old.
Every culture combines traditions and innovations. Depending on the relationship between traditions and innovations, traditional and innovative types of culture can be distinguished.
Traditional culture characterized by the dominance of tradition over innovation. Its characteristic features:
♦ strict adherence to behavioral patterns learned from childhood from elders. Imitation and obedience ensure the preservation of social experience and its transmission from generation to generation. The decisions and instructions of the elders - the guardians of social experience - are unquestioningly carried out;
♦ a high level of normativity, covering all aspects of people’s lives. Many different prohibitions are taboos that are not subject to discussion and rational justification. The dominance of the collectivist and conformist spirit in the minds of people;
♦ intolerance towards everything foreign that came from another culture ( xenophobia). Condemnation of attempts at creativity aimed at updating traditional norms of life and activity.
It is clear that traditional culture puts obstacles in the way of changes in the way people live and think. The consequence of this is the stability of everyday life, everyday psychology, economic structure, and forms of social structure. Society has remained almost unchanged for centuries.
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IN innovative culture, on the contrary, innovation dominates traditionality. It is distinguished by the following features:
♦ erosion of the scale of life values. Various deviations of behavior do not meet with much indignation in society. The weakening of morals, the decline of morals;
♦ weakening of cultural normativity. The collectivist principle gives way to individualism. Increased personal autonomy, the ability to independently determine life goals, ideals, forms and means of activity. Personal freedom is one of the most important values;
♦ creating favorable conditions for the development of creativity, social recognition of its results. Intensive development of art, science, technology, high prestige of knowledge and education. Criticality and independent thinking. Belief in the power of the human mind.
An innovative culture stimulates the development of production and consumption. Conditions are created for the technical and socio-economic progress of society.
The general trend in human history is the movement from traditional culture to innovative culture.
The archaic culture of primitive societies was traditional. It could not be otherwise: the arsenal of means of struggle for existence was still too small, and precious grains of the experience of our ancestors, which gave people the opportunity to withstand this struggle, had to be carefully preserved and used in order to survive. Archaic tribal cultures existed in an almost unchanged state for thousands of years. The cultures that arose in the states of the Ancient World - Egypt, China, India, Asia Minor - were also traditional. In the countries of the East and a number of Muslim states, they largely continue to remain so until the present day. Traits of traditional culture can be found today among peoples who, for one reason or another, have not accepted the achievements of modern civilization.
The culture of medieval Europe (including Russia) was also traditional. Since the Renaissance, an innovative culture has been developing in Western countries. In modern times, religion loses its former power over the minds of people. Free-thinking emerges, and society’s attitude towards creative activity changes. The flow of new ideas captures philosophy, art, science, and technology. This leads to significant changes in all areas of society
Chapter 13. Mechanisms of cultural dynamics 347
Chapter 13. Mechanisms of cultural dynamics 353
There are general trends that have existed throughout human history - for example, an increase in the volume of knowledge, an increase in the vocabulary of a language. There are also private ones that act in the culture of a certain people for a relatively short time - for example, the weakening of morality in Italian society of the Renaissance, the spread of the French language among the Russian nobility from the end of the 18th to the beginning of the 20th century. In the history of culture, often the growth of a parameter gradually fades and then begins to decrease, and vice versa. As a result, waves and cycles are formed.
N.D. Kondratiev is credited with the discovery of cycles in economic development lasting 48-55 years (“long waves” by Kondratiev) 1 . During each cycle, economic growth is followed by recession. At the same time, there is a trend of historical economic growth. In Fig. Figure 13.1 shows the chronological framework of Kondratieff waves 2.
Rice. 13.1. Chronological framework of Kondratieff waves
Waves similar to Kondratieff's in economic development are also observed in the development of various areas of culture. J. Schumpeter and L. Lowe connected the cycles discovered by Kondratieff with waves of inventive activity. Thus, during the first Kondratieff cycle (1780-1840s), the water wheel was replaced by a steam engine, wood was replaced by coal and iron, and the textile industry arose; in the second cycle (1840-1890s), railways and steamships came into use, iron began to give way to steel; the third cycle (1890-1930s) is associated with the widespread use of electricity, the creation of an internal combustion engine, and the development of chemistry.
1 See: Problems of economic dynamics. - M., 1989.
2 Kondratieff developed his theory in the 1920s, and his analysis carried through to the beginning of the “downward wave” of the 1914-1920s. I added approximate dates for the next waves
354 Part III. Dynamics of culture
Chapter 13. Mechanisms of cultural dynamics 357
motion vectors inside the cone inevitably lead to an attractor. While the system moves towards the attractor, this determines the direction of its evolution, so that the course of its change can be generally predicted. But near the limiting states, its state becomes unstable, and a fan of possibilities arises. The choice of one of them may depend on minor random circumstances and therefore becomes unpredictable. Unstable states from which the system can evolve in different ways are called branch points, or bifurcation points(from English fork - fork) 1, and various paths of further development - bifurcation branches.
In synergetics, the processes of system evolution are depicted using bifurcation diagrams (Fig. 13.2).
Rice. 13.2. Bifurcation diagrams
Y is a characteristic parameter of the system
(level of complexity, organization, differentiation, etc.);
X 1 , X 2 , X 3 , X 4 - bifurcation points;
Y 0 - parameter value Y at the point X 2 .
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At the point X 4 the lower bifurcation branch leads to the system slipping onto the lower branch of the previous bifurcation
TO 1 and TO 2 - attractor cones
It would be more accurate to talk not about bi-furcation, but about polyfurcation, since there can be many trajectories emanating from the branch point.
358 Part III. Dynamics of culture
The synergetic interpretation of cultural dynamics explains the wave-like nature of cultural processes. Waves arise because in the evolution of dissipative systems, phases of increasing order alternate with phases of increasing chaos. The rise and fall of waves characterize the evolutionary type of development of a cultural system, and the upper and lower “inflection points” in each cycle correspond to moments of instability and explosion, changing the direction of development of the system.
The gradual evolution of a cultural system represents its movement in an attractor cone. In this case, both the integration and rise of a powerful cultural movement can occur, as well as its decomposition, ideological confusion and decline. The explosive process occurs when approaching the bifurcation point. The unpredictability of the course of events in this process is due to the presence of various bifurcation branches, the choice of which is not predetermined in advance. True, this unpredictability is relative: the choice of bifurcation branch is free, but limited, since the number of attractors and bifurcation branches leading to them is limited.
At bifurcation moments in the development of society, periods arise when accepted norms of behavior break down, freedom of morals sets in, outdated foundations and restrictions are shaken, and chaos grows. But then comes the era of “normal”, more or less smooth development, in which the selection and consolidation of proven forms of behavior takes place. As a result, a new social organization is established, limiting chaos to a certain order at a new level.
Dynamics of Ideals
Every culture combines traditions and innovations. Traditions embody the conservative principle. They ensure the stability of social order; without them, chaos would reign in society. Thanks to innovations, society and culture develop, the horizons of knowledge and the spiritual world of people expand, and living conditions improve. The relationship between traditions and innovations in culture develops in different ways. Traditional culture is characterized by the dominance of tradition over innovation. In an innovative culture it is the opposite. A distinctive feature of traditional culture is strict adherence to customs and rituals. These patterns of behavior are learned from childhood by elders. Imitation and obedience are the most important conditions for ensuring their preservation and transmission from generation to generation. Another trait is honoring elders, cat. act as guardians of accumulated social resources. experience. There is a high level of normativity. She establishes many different kinds of prohibitions, taboos, cat. are not subject to discussion and rational justification. Public opinion has enormous power. A collectivist and conformist spirit dominates in the minds of people, in a cat. the will of the gods is seen to be manifested. Anything that violates the “testaments of our fathers and grandfathers” is met with wariness and apprehension, which is why xenophobia and condemnation of any attempts at creativity are typical. This culture puts barriers to any changes in the way of life and thinking of people. Society has remained almost unchanged for centuries. An innovative culture is receptive to innovation and dynamic. She is not concerned with the thrifty preservation of traditions coming from the past and easily allows various kinds of deviations from them. This leads to a weakening of the normative nature of culture and a blurring of the scale of life values. As a result, morality is undermined and morality declines. At the same time, the individual gains autonomy and gets the opportunity to more or less independently determine his life goals and ideals. A liberal attitude towards non-standard forms of thinking and behavior creates conditions for the development of various forms of creativity, the results of which are cat. receive social recognition and enter life. In these conditions, there is an intensive development of art, science, and technology. Knowledge, education, criticality and independent thinking are highly valued here. Changes in society do not frighten, but delight. However, the general trend in human history is the movement from traditional culture to innovative culture.
Characteristics of the subculture
Every society has a certain set of cultural patterns that are accepted by the majority of members of the society. This totality is usually called the dominant culture. At the same time, society includes groups of people who develop certain cultural complexes that are characteristic only of these groups. Such cultural patterns are usually called subcultures. Subcultural trends are largely determined by the desire of any culture that has the status of officialness to fill all the compartments of life, to become universal and total. Any unification always gives rise to an alternative. It is acceptable to talk about special codes of rules and moral norms within subcultural formations. SCs are hermetic and durable, they can reproduce for quite a long time.
The cultural creative impulses emanating from the middle class are integrated into the general mainstream of the leading trends of the era, acting as a unique variation, even a very bright one, of the general cultural panorama. Subcultures can be distinguished according to many criteria: professional, territorial (urban, rural culture), demographic (youth, women), ethnic (culture of ethnic minorities), religious, lifestyle (corporate social networks). Thus, a subculture is a sovereign integral formation within the dominant culture, distinguished by its own system of values, customs, norms, vocabulary, and attributes. Subculture is a way of institutionalizing certain interests, of which there are infinitely many in a culture. By entering a certain subculture, an individual can accept and realize the basic values of society in different ways. A distinctive feature of subcultural formations is the fact that they do not seek to impose their dominance in culture; most often, on the contrary, they isolate their characteristics from another cultural layer. Subcultures are very dynamic elements of the cultural structure and can develop independently of the core of the dominant culture. The existence of subcultures is due to the complexity of the process of entering the world of the dominant culture (socialization), and is also associated with counteracting the desire of official culture to fill the entire life of society. In modern culture, the range of different subcultures is so wide that it is becoming increasingly problematic to identify a single generalized dominant culture.
Subk-ra are such phenomena, cat. go against, deny the values, norms, principles, ideals accepted in society. The being of the subkry is explained by social, ethnic, demographic differences, beings in society. The sub-ra develops its own special standards, patterns, its own style, its own code of rules and norms of behavior. Subk-ry in known. least autonomous, closed, not a claimant. to close the domination
Every culture combines traditions and innovations. Tradition is the transmission and consolidation of social experience from generation to generation, in which the maintenance of this experience is justified and legitimized by a simple reference to existence in the past. (Tradition covers a wider range of phenomena than custom is a stereotype in behavior. Ritual or rite- this is a certain order of actions by which a custom is performed and consolidated.) Traditions embody a conservative principle. They ensure the stability of social order; without them, chaos would reign in society. Thanks to innovations, society and culture develop, the horizons of knowledge and the spiritual world of people expand, and living conditions improve. The relationship between traditions and innovations in culture develops in different ways. Traditional culture is characterized by the dominance of tradition over innovation. In an innovative culture, on the contrary, innovation dominates over traditionality.
Primitive, Asian, patriarchal social forms possess the traits of traditional cultures to the greatest extent. Their features: eradication of all innovations in the mechanism of tradition; preservation and strengthening of the existing social order; intolerance, suspicion of the smallest manifestations of individualism and spiritual independence.
Distinctive feature of traditional culture- strict adherence to behavioral patterns adopted from previous generations. The spirit of collectivism dominates in people's minds. An individual lives according to given laws and is completely dependent on them. Society has remained almost unchanged for centuries.
Innovation culture is not concerned with preserving traditions coming from the past and easily allows deviations from them. This leads to a weakening of the normative nature of culture and a blurring of the scale of life values in society. The collectivist principle gives way to individualism. The individual gains autonomy and freedom. In an innovative culture, knowledge, education, criticality and independent thinking are highly valued. Belief in the power of the human mind is spreading. The desire for something new is one of the most important factors stimulating the development of production and consumption in society.
It should be recalled that in the typology of culture we are talking about ideal types. Real, historically existing societies do not necessarily fully and precisely possess all the features that characterize any of them. It is not always possible to unambiguously classify a particular culture as a traditional or an innovative type. But in many cases there are sufficient reasons for this. However, the general trend in human history is the movement from traditional culture to innovative.
One of the notable attempts to give a new historical typologization of culture is the work of M. Mead.
Outstanding anthropologist and ethnographer M. Mead, author of the book “Culture and Childhood”, in her research drew attention to the fact that with different ratios of cultural traditions and innovations, the interaction between generations living in society develops differently of people. This led her to distinguish three types of culture:
1) postfigurative , based on the fact that the younger generation learns from their elders;
2) cofigurative , Where both children and adults learn not only from their elders, but also from their peers;
3) prefigurative , in which not only children learn from their parents, but and parents have to learn from their children.
Traditional culture postfigurative: it changes slowly and imperceptibly, grandchildren live in the same conditions as their grandfathers. Such a culture is preserved under the condition that three generations live together, in which the old people act not only as leaders and mentors, but as role models. Only a small part of cultural norms is consciously understood. Unconsciousness, automaticity, and absence of doubt are the key conditions that ensure the long-term stable existence of a postfigurative culture. Although postfigurative cultures usually exist in societies living for centuries on the same territory, they can be found among nomadic peoples and among groups in diasporas. These cultures can be found in groups of aristocrats or social outcasts.
Cofigurative culture is a culture in which behavioral patterns set by contemporaries predominate. It exists where changes occur in society. People learn to live from each other, adopting the paths to success found by their peers and avoiding the mistakes they made. Those whose experience turns out to be the most successful become models for other representatives of their generation. In the modern world, for example, the culture of immigrant families who have to quickly adapt to life in another country takes on a cofigurative character: children, as a rule, adapt to a new cultural environment faster parents. Cofigurative culture is formed during socio-political, economic and technical transformations in economically backward countries. “In India, Pakistan or the new countries of Africa, children also become experts in the new way of life, and parents lose their right to evaluate and guide their behavior,” notes M. Mead. A similar thing is observed in our country during the transition from a socialist system to a modern market economy. However, the pace of development of modern society, according to M. Mead, becomes so high that past experience sometimes turns out to be not only insufficient, but also harmful, interfering with a creative approach to new , unprecedented circumstances. Given this, Mead foresees the possibility of a prefigurative culture.
Prefigurative culture is a culture of even more intense and rapid transformations than the cofigurative one. Innovations in it can occur at such a frantic pace that the adult population simply will not have time to assimilate them. If postfigurative culture is focused on the past, and cofigurative culture is focused on the present, then prefigurative culture is focused on the future. The spiritual potential of the younger generation, which will develop a community of experience that the elders have not had and will not have, will acquire decisive importance in it.
Let us remember that, along with the division of culture into traditional and innovative, a historical typology has received wide recognition, in which three types of culture, characteristic of three stages of development of society:
- pre-industrial (agricultural);
- industrial;
- post-industrial.
1. Pre-industrial society is a society with an agrarian economy and traditional culture. There are two subtypes here:
1) primitive (“barbarian”) primitive societies in which a communal-tribal way of life dominates;
2) later emerging “civilized” societies, organized as states.
The dominant place in the culture of pre-industrial societies is occupied by religion (in the early stages - mythology). Ancient pre-industrial culture was non-literate. Both the economy and culture are developing slowly. In Europe, societies of this type existed until the modern era, and in Asia, Africa, and Oceania they are still found today.
2. Industrial society characterized by the emergence and accelerating growth of industrial production over time, an increase in the urban population, and the formation and development of national cultures. Societies of this type are dynamic, the way of life of people in them changes rapidly. Religion is losing its dominant position in culture, education and science are gaining great importance. Industrial culture - innovative culture. The industrial type of culture first appeared in Western Europe, then spreading to other regions of the Earth.
3. Post-industrial society ( it is also called informational society ) - product scientifically - technical revolution of the 20th century. In the post-industrial era, information becomes the main object of human activity (its receipt, processing, transmission, distribution, management of information flows). The role of the individual is increasing, ensuring human rights is becoming a necessary factor in social development.
St. Petersburg culturologist M. Kagan also proposed a historical typology based on the identification three stages of development of human culture.
First stage - theocentric- was based on mythological consciousness, which reached its highest form in world religions.
Second - nature-centric- began with the Renaissance; she put nature in the place of the gods: she is worshiped, studied, transformed, depicted in art.
Third - anthropocentric - starts from the middle of the 20th century. The highest value in it is the person’s personality.