ABSTRACT
The term culture is used in many ways and has many meanings, but we can define it, roughly, as follows: a set of spiritual, axiological and cognitive traits (values, norms, knowledge, meanings, representations), which, together with material ones (arts, traditions, techniques, and so on), are shared to varying degrees by a community of individuals and work to shape specific, distinctive ways of thinking, judging and acting. Understood in these terms, culture is a valid means of distinguishing between widely varying social entities. We readily speak, for example, of national cultures, professional cultures, subcultures (cultures of subgroups), and company cultures.
