In this lesson we'll be speaking about material cultural artifacts, which refer to the activities and the ways that the members of a given culture work together to produce goods and services. There are 10 material cultural artifacts. Let's start by looking at the first three. Material artifacts include cultural traits, such as these customer orientation, employee communications, and employee risk taking. Let's look at each one. In the area of customer orientation.

This refers to the degree to which there exists formal policies, procedures and programs aimed at continually maintaining and improving an organization wide focus on customers and more broadly, engaging in an active dialogue with customers such as for product development purposes and employee communications. This refers to To the nature scope and importance that management places on communications aimed at the employee base in support of the company's overall operations and growth in the area of employee risk taking, this refers to the degree to which senior management encourages and rewards employees when they take chances in devising untried managerial techniques or approaches. And this includes fostering an entrepreneurial mindset. Now, let's talk about the next three material cultural artifacts as areas of analysis for your CULTURAL MANAGEMENT PROGRAM. Material artifacts include cultural traits, such as these, inclination to innovation and continuous improvement interdepartmental coordination and knowledge sharing in the area of inclination to innovation and continuous improvement.

This refers to the extent to which the organization fosters and rewards employee efforts to devise new and improved ways of doing business from an administrative operational or strategic standpoint. In the area of interdepartmental coordination, this refers to the extent to which there is close interaction between the organizational functional units, for example, sales, marketing and product development. And that means coordination in the context of planning and executing specific management initiatives in the area of knowledge sharing. This refers to the degree to which the organization actively amasses and distributes institutional knowledge and market intelligence to employees from managerial decision making, and to support employees professional growth. Now, here are the Final Four material cultural artifacts that you'll want to look at as part of your research. Material artifacts include cultural traits, such as these metrics and measures orientation to planning patterns of external communication and a tendency toward clarity or ambiguity.

Let's look at each one. In the area of metrics and measures. This refers to the extent to which organizational planning and performance are based on rigorous quantitative factors. In terms of orientation to planning, this refers to the extent to which the organization engages in formal and detailed departmental operational and strategic planning and the frequency with which it does so, in terms of patterns of external communication, this refers to the degree to which the organization actively disseminates communications, via advertising, public relations, direct marketing, etc. And these would be communications aimed at external stakeholders, including customers, suppliers and business partners. Lastly, in the area of a company's tendency toward clarity or ambiguity, this refers to the degree to which the organization issues explicit guidelines to managers in order for them to carry out tasks.

The opposite of this would be management providing very little direction, very little input and managers would be required to proceed as they see fit. As you can tell from these descriptions, material cultural artifacts, they refer to a wide range of activities that the members of the given culture engage in to produce goods and services. And again, it's how they work together from a functional standpoint to produce their specific market offerings. Remember, not all these artifacts will necessarily appear in your company. And you may have very specific material cultural artifacts that are unique to your organization. Let's come up with three key takeaways.

First, material culture and artifacts relate to the processes and activities involved in producing and delivering goods and services. Secondly, material cultural artifacts reveal how an organization's people work together from a functional standpoint. And third, all companies may exhibit unique material cultural artifacts based on their particular market offerings in the next lesson we'll be looking at ideological cultural artifacts which relate to a company's fundamental set of beliefs and the things that they hold to be important as they do business on a day to day basis.