In this article we discuss how culture is perceived by managers in three Swedish multinational companies. The cases show that empirical notions of culture build on perceived differences in organizational, national and technical characteristics. Theory that applies to the different bases of cultural perceptions generated in the case studies is presented and discussed. We conclude with a framework describing culture as a system of meanings, carried by individuals, that interprets a group’s situation to itself. This system has functional, social and spatial bases simultaneously, although one base may dominate.
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