ABSTRACT
Every MDV practitioner is familiar with the notion of culture as a medium in which organisms flourish, reproduce, survive or perish. The organisms interact with the culture, and in so doing may change the culture. In social sciences, this notion of culture is extended to include the culture of a society, an organization, a group or an individual. At the societal level, culture embraces the technologies, artefacts, religions, the arts, core values, beliefs and myths of a society. At the organizational and group level, culture usually refers to the artefacts, shared values, attitudes, expectations and patterns of behaviour. Sometimes this form of culture is referred to as ethos, climate, learning context, learning environment or simply environment (Genn, 2001). At the level of the individual, culture refers to the internalized values, attitudes and consequent behaviours, which occur through the processes of socialization (sometimes described as enculturation or acculturation).
