What factors influence cultural stability and cultural change? What factors influence how much cultural adjustment organizations must make in foreign countries?
Answer: Individual and cultural values and customs may evolve over time. Change may come about through choice or imposition. Change by choice may take place as a reaction to social and economic changes that present new alternatives. Change by imposition, sometimes called cultural imperialism, has occurred, for example, when countries introduce legal systems into colonies by prohibiting established practices and defining them as criminal. In addition to national boundaries and geographical obstacles, language is a factor that greatly affects cultural stability. Religion is also a strong shaper of values. International companies sometimes have succeeded in introducing new products, technologies, and operating procedures to foreign countries with little adjustment. That's because some of these introductions have not run counter to deep-seated attitudes or because the host society is willing to accept foreign customs as a trade-off for other advantages. Some countries are relatively similar to one another, usually because they share many attributes that help mold their cultures, such as language, religion, geographical location, ethnicity, and level of economic development.