Business Culture Ideology Represented In Its Educational Practice

Sub-value “Internationalism”

The prime discourse markers for this sub value are proper names. Anglo-Saxon names mostly prevail among the others: they have 43% out of all the mentioned; French names follow them with 17% share; proper names of another Roman origin (Latin Americans and Italian) are represented with 12% for each group; Arab names are found in 6% of cases and Slav as well as Chinese in 5% cases for each.

The figures reflect the representation of culture types, based on the “activity kinds” (Lewis, 1999): monoactive (task-oriented), polyactive (people-oriented) and reactive (respect-oriented listeners). The authors of the textbook give preference to the Anglo-Saxons as the most task-oriented nationality (among the mentioned ones) according to Lewis’ line scale of monoactivity and polyactivity; then the middle position is given to French as a weakening polyactive culture; Italians and Russians as polyactive nationalities are placed near the polyactive pole though Latin Americans and Arabs are at the end of Lewis scale because reactive cultures occupy the peripheral position.

To a certain extent, Lewis’ (1999) culture typology corresponds with the culture typology by criterion “Individualistic cultures/ Collectivistic cultures” for his monoactive culture is individualistic and polyactive and reactive cultures are collectivistic ones. Thereby we conclude the preference of individualistic cultures: Anglo-Saxons and French, represented by proper names as discourse markers for the “Internationalism” sub-value to the collective cultures, represented by proper names of another ethnic origin, mentioned in the texts: 60% and 40%, respectively. This correlation is reasonable for the current authentic textbook. However, it should be mentioned that according to the research carried out in 1990 70% of the world population live in collectivistic cultures (Kulinich & Kostrova, 2017). That fact has not been fully taken into consideration by the authors.

On the other hand, the revealed culture preferences marked by the proper names are absolutely in correspondence with the sub value constituent “Partnership” of “A New Type of Worker” value as in the stated sense it requires task-oriented persons and the successful accomplishment the project serves as a proof of each team member’s individuality.

It should be also noted that there is no correlation between the hierarchy in the business world and the nationality though the figures allow to point out a preference tendency in respect to the employees of the international companies as being dependent on their nationalities as well as the authors’ aspiration to represent the companies which have a staff of Anglo-Saxon origin as leading global corporations in the world business.

The company names confirm the stated tendencies: British and American corporations, e.g. IBM, Nerada, Westfield Electronics, Hemmingway Consultants, Raven Ltd. are mentioned in 52% cases, French and Italian such as Luxottica, Bulgari, Renault, Fiat, Dior, Marquis Lane Industries are in 38% and Asian (Chinese, Japanese, Indian) such as Shanghai Tang, Mahindra & Mahindra, Junko Fashions are in 10%.

The results of the above-mentioned considerations in respect to global economics can be generalized by a train metaphor where Anglo-Saxons is a locomotive but Romans are the first-class carriages and other nations are second-class carriages.

From the linguistic point of view, all proper names are direct nominations for the sub-value “Internationalism” as well as the following collocations: an international association; an international company; Vinway International; an international magazine; international employees; a multinational company; global business.

Sub-value “Multiculturalism”

The discourse markers for this sub-value are on the contrary direct sentence nominations, expressing the peculiarities of the business and corporate culture in different countries. An illustrative example is the following exercise that represents all culture types on both criteria mentioned above:

Read about business cards in different countries. Complete the information with countries in the box.

The difference between British and American cultures is expressed in the following antithesis: British companies don’t have regular picnics whereas annual office picnics are a popular social event for many companies in the USA.

The sentences express a hedonistic value per se, and it can be interpreted as a marker for multiculturalism only in a narrow sense by taking into account the stated antithesis. In other words, in this educational text the hedonistic value “Joy of Life” is transformed from being a person - individual one into becoming a collective-corporative one. This new cognitive essence allows it to function as a marker for the sub-value “Multiculturalism”.

Hedonistic values

The hedonistic value “Joy of Life” also has its own peculiarities resulting from the general goal of the current educational discourse: the joy of life provided by the company. Due to this, we consider the collocations “office picnic”, “corporate event” to be core discourse markers for this value. Near the core of this value’s field structure, we place the discourse markers which gradually concretize the content of events nominated by the core collocations. These are the substantive “entertaining” and the collocation “to have fun”, followed by “free drinks/food”, “to relax”, “to play games”. The peripheral collocations are “Christmas party”, “delicious opportunity”, “to celebrate special occasions”, “to enjoy the picnic”.

Positioning the markers in the quasi-core zone and in the periphery within the field structure of the value “Joy of Life” is based on the following considerations: they express the events occurring under any other circumstances and not depending on some corporate arrangements. However, all expressions are direct nominations for this value.

The cognitive function of these educational texts as a component of the educational discourse conditions a presence of a transitional value type: from a hedonistic value to an altruistic one marked by the collocation “to entertain clients”. The reason for such a definition is the reverse orientation of hedonistic values when a centripetal vector of hedonistic value changes and becomes a centrifugal vector of an altruistic value (Janich, 2005).

Altruistic values

In the current texts, two simple structure altruistic values are found: “Charity” and “Environment Protection”. The discourse markers for both are direct nominations, comprising the substantive “charity” and various collocations: the business of giving; to give money to charity; to make the world a better place. The consequences of the charity are marked by the collocations: to reduce health problems; to give more time to study; i.e. the parts of the cognitive content of this value are in causal relations.

Demonstrative examples are phrases which have public persons’ names that also appeal to the strategy “authority argumentation/arguing”: Bill Gates’ donation; Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; Pierre Omidyar, the founder of the eBay, and Jeff Skoll, the eBay’s first CEO, want to use their billions to help ‘make the world a better place’.

The discourse markers for the value “Environment Protection” are rare: the substantive ‘environment’ itself and a sentence: It (oil – S.A.) causes indoor and outdoor air pollution.