A definition of culture

From an NBER review of the economics of company culture. The authors describe the varied ways “culture” has been defined, not just with respect to companies, and then offer this list:

A sensible list of elements in that package, though neither nearly exhaustive nor likely satisfactory to all, is as follows, adapted from a variety of such lists in the literature:

• unwritten codes, implicit rules, and regularities in interactions;

• identities,self-image, and guiding purpose;

• espoused values and evolving norms of behavior;

• conventions, customs, and traditions;

• symbols, signs, rituals, and group celebrations;

• knowledge, discourse, emergent understanding, doctrine, ideology;

• memes, jokes, style, and shared meaning;

• shared mental models, expectations, and linguistic paradigms.