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Definition

The term “culture” refers to the finer things in life, such as the fine arts, literature, and philosophy. This term has been defined in a variety of ways. There is no agreement on a single definition of the term. Kroeber and Kluckhohn (1952) identified over 160 different definitions of culture. (Ferraro, 1998) Probably the best known is by Hofstede (1984): “Culture is the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one human group from another. Culture in this sense includes systems of values; and values are among the building blocks of culture.” (Hofstede, 1984 in Mead, Andrews, 2010)Culture refers to the learned norms based on attitudes, values, and beliefs of a group of people.
Culture is transmitted through the process of learning and interacting with one´s environment rather through the genetic process. (Ferraro, 1998) By the age of five we were already experts in using our language. We had learned how to communicate different language functions appropriately; for example, how to:

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  Interact with other members of your family;
  
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  Elicit rewards and avoiding punishments;
  
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  Negotiate for what you wanted;
  
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  Cause, avoid, and resolve conflict.
  

The differences among cultures begin already here. Here is an example of difference between our culture and the Korean one. Koreans learn in their childhood to be cautious of claiming “my” relationship; rather than “my mother” and “my house”, the well-behavied child soon learns how to refer to “our mother”, “our house”.
Values are defined here as assumptions that members of a culture group about how they should behave and do behave. (Mead, Andrews, 2010)
Rolný (2009) states that culture is also shared (culture is located and transmitted in groups, the social transmission of culture tends to unify people by providing us with a common experience) and symbolic (the human ability to use symbols is the basis of culture, while human symbol use is overwhelmingly linguistic, a symbol is anything that is used to represent any other thing, when the relationship between the two is arbitrary (e.g., a flag).
58 Daniels, Radebaugh and Sullivan (2007) state that the major problems of
cultural collision in international business are when:

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  A company implements practices that work less well than intended.
  
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  A company´s employees encounter distress because of an inability to accept or adjust to foreign behaviors.
  

Because international business includes people from different cultures, every business function – managing a workforce, marketing output, purchasing supplies, dealing with regulators, securing funds – is subject to potential cultural problems. (Daniels, Radebaugh, Sullivan, 2007)