german culture research paper topics

• Architecture and Design
• Asian and Pacific Studies
• Business and Economics
• Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
• Computer Sciences
• Cultural Studies
• Engineering
• General Interest
• Geosciences
• Industrial Chemistry
• Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies
• Jewish Studies
• Library and Information Science, Book Studies
• Life Sciences
• Linguistics and Semiotics
• Literary Studies
• Materials Sciences
• Mathematics
• Social Sciences
• Sports and Recreation
• Theology and Religion
• Publish your article
• The role of authors
• Promoting your article
• Abstracting & indexing
• Publishing Ethics
• Why publish with De Gruyter
• How to publish with De Gruyter
• Our book series
• Our subject areas
• Your digital product at De Gruyter
• Contribute to our reference works
• Product information
• Tools & resources
• Product Information
• Promotional Materials
• Orders and Inquiries
• FAQ for Library Suppliers and Book Sellers
• Repository Policy
• Free access policy
• Open Access agreements
• Database portals
• For Authors
• Customer service
• People + Culture
• Journal Management
• How to join us
• Working at De Gruyter
• Mission & Vision
• De Gruyter Foundation
• De Gruyter Ebound
• Our Responsibility
• Partner publishers

Your purchase has been completed. Your documents are now available to view.

Interdisciplinary German Cultural Studies

• Edited by: Irene Kacandes

• University of Wisconsin–Madison
• University of Wisconsin-Madison
• Research Guides
• German Language Humanities
• German Culture

German Language Humanities : German Culture

• Dutch Language and Literature
• Bibliographical Information
• Biographical Information
• Book Reviews
• Dissertations
• Encyclopedias & Handbooks
• Image and Sound Resources
• Journal Articles
• Language Dictionaries
• Library Catalogs
• Manuscripts and Archives
• Print and E-Journals
• German-Americana Resources
• Film -- Print Resources
• Film -- Web Resources
• Race, Migration, and Critical Whiteness Studies in the German and European Context
• Theater -- Print Resources
• Theater -- Web Resources
• German Literary Studies -- Overview
• Bibliographies
• Dictionaries, Encyclopedias, and Guides
• Web Sites and Primary Sources
• German Linguistics
• Research in Germany
• Tips and Tools
• Philosophy, German
• Yiddish Studies

Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek

• Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek Seeks to provide unrestricted access to Germany’s cultural and scientific heritage, including millions of books, archived items, images, sculptures, pieces of music, and other sound documents, as well as films and scores, from all over Germany

Resources for German Film and Theater

German Film -- Print Resources |  German Film -- Web Resources

German Theater -- Print Resources | German Theater -- Web Resources

Black Central Europe

• Black Central Europe 1000 years of Black history in German-speaking lands, and why it matters

Diversity, Decolonization, and the German Curriculum

• Diversity, Decolonization, and the German Curriculum Forum for ongoing scholarly inquiry regarding how structural oppressions continue to inform German Studies and seeking to promote advocacy and access within the field
• Eurozine "Europe's leading cultural magazines at your fingertips"
• Transit Refereed, multidisciplinary online journal dedicated to the critical inquiry of travel, migration, and multiculturalism in the German-speaking world

German Studies Collaboratory

• German Studies Collaboratory A project of the German Studies Association, this "virtual hub of resources for those interested in German language, art, culture, and history" offers access to pedagogical innovations, scholarly lectures, and research materials that can be adapted for online teaching, flipped and hybrid courses, or face-to-face instruction. Also features blog posts on various teaching, diversity, and research-related topics, or face-to-face instruction. Also features blog posts on various teaching, diversity, and research-related topics
• << Previous: German-Americana Resources
• Next: Film -- Print Resources >>
• Last Updated: Mar 4, 2024 9:12 AM
• URL: https://researchguides.library.wisc.edu/german

Resources for: German Language and Literature

Related guides.

• German Language and Literature (Advanced Reseachers)
• German Film Resources related to German-language film, TV, and cinema culture

Have questions?

Contact me for research help on this subject.

Start with:

• Libraries Search Search the University of Minnesota Libraries to find books, scholarly journal articles, news, magazines, media, and other items in the University's collection. View this tutorial to learn how to go from a general idea to a very precise set of results of journal articles and scholarly materials.
• MLA International Bibliography Use the MLA International Bibliography to find scholarly books and articles on modern languages, literatures, folklore, and linguistics. This index has been compiled by the Modern Language Association of America since 1926.
• Oxford Companion to German Literature Covers German-language literature from the eighth century throught the mid-1990s. Has short, non-detailed articles with few bibliographical references. Includes authors, titles, themes, and characters.

Then try any of the following:

• Academic Search Premier A great place to start your research on any topic, search multidisciplinary, scholarly research articles. This database provides access to scholarly and peer reviewed journals, popular magazines and other resources. View this tutorial to learn how to go from a general idea to a very precise set of results of journal articles and scholarly materials.
• Linguistics & Language Behavior Abstracts (LLBA) Search journals in linguistics and language sciences from 1973 to the present including phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics in journal articles, book reviews, books, book chapters, dissertations and working papers.

Also check out:

• Dictionary of Literary Biography This link opens in a new window Provides biographical and critical essays on the lives, works, and careers of the world's most influential literary figures from all eras and genres. Includes the DLB main series, the DLB Documentary Series, and the DLB Yearbook Series. Search by full-text keyword, author, topic, volume title, publication date, or DLB series. more... less... Coverage varies by title. This is not an active subscription. All available content has been previously purchased by University of Minnesota Twin Cities.
• Cambridge History of German literature (1997) eBook. Describes German literary history up to the unification of Germany in 1990. The book is designed for general readers as well as students and scholars: titles and quotations are translated, and there is an extensive bibliography. Also available in print
• German literature: a very short introduction eBook. Traces German literature from the late Middle Ages to the present, focusing especially on the last 250 years.
• Beolingus German dictionary Online bilingual dictionaries from German-English/English-German and other languages
• LEO German-English/English-German Dictionary Online bilingual dictionaries to and from German English, and other languages.

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

• Publications
• Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

• Advanced Search
• Journal List
• Front Psychol

The German Ethical Culture Scale (GECS): Development and First Construct Testing

Carmen tanner.

1 Leadership Excellence Institute Zeppelin, Zeppelin University, Friedrichshafen, Germany

2 Department of Banking and Finance, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

Katharina Gangl

3 Department of Economic and Social Psychology, University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany

Nicole Witt

Associated data.

The datasets generated for this study are available on request to the corresponding author.

Misconduct in organizations (such as fraud, stealing, deception, and harming others) is not only a matter of some “bad apples” but also related to the organizational context (“bad barrels”), which can facilitate either ethical or unethical behaviors. Given the financial crisis and recurring corporate ethics scandals, policymakers, regulators and organizations are interested in how to change their organizational cultures to enhance ethical behavior and to prevent further disasters. For this purpose, organizations need to better understand what strategies and factors of the organizational environment can affect (un)ethical behavior. However, to assess the corporate ethical culture, solid measures are required. Since there is an urgent need to have a German measure to promote research in German-speaking countries, this research developed and tested the German Ethical Culture Scale (GECS). Drawing on a prominent approach that has received much attention from scholars and practitioners alike, the GECS attempts to integrate the notion of compliance- and integrity-based ethics programs (with its focus on how to steer organizations) with the notion of ethical culture (with its focus on what factors inhibit or foster ethical behavior). Three studies with heterogeneous samples of German and Swiss employees and managers were conducted to develop, test and validate the multidimensional scale (total N > 2000). Overall, the studies provide first evidence of the measure’s construct, criteria-related and incremental validity. The paper concludes with a discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of the GECS and implications for future research.

Introduction

The financial crisis and recurring corporate ethics scandals have strengthened the interest of policymakers, regulators and industry in leveraging corporate culture to enhance ethical behavior. There is broad consensus that misconduct in organizations (such as fraud, stealing, deception, and harming others) is not only a matter of some “bad apples” but also related to the organizational context (“bad barrels”), which can facilitate either ethical or unethical behaviors. To manage this challenge, organizations need to better understand what strategies and factors that make up the organizational environment influence (un)ethical behavior. For this purpose, solid measures are required that allow assessing those dimensions, help to provide benchmarks and allow reflecting progress in firms’ cultures. The goal of our research is to develop and provide a first testing of a German measure of features of a corporate ethical culture. While most research in this field has mainly been conducted drawing on English measures, a German measure on ethical culture is still lacking. There is an urgent need to develop a German measure to make it possible to advance research on ethical culture in countries with German-speaking populations, such as Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, which encompass an overall population of approximately 100 million people. However, it is about not only the possibility of advancing research in German-speaking countries but also offering organizations in those countries instruments to obtain information about the existing organizational environment in the firm, to deduce interventions and to monitor potential progress. Not all firms are international, so it cannot be expected that all people understand and speak English fluently.

Conceptually, over the past decades, three main research lines have emerged that examine the ethical environment of an organization: A first stream is related to the notion of ethical climate. Most research in this field has referred to the seminal work by Victor and Cullen (1987 , 1988) . According to them, ethical climate refers to shared perceptions about “what constitutes right behavior” in an organization, thus delivering guidelines for the employees on how they should behave ( Martin and Cullen, 2006 , p. 177). In their pioneering work, Victor and Cullen also developed the Ethical Climate Questionnaire (ECQ), which was originally designed to assess nine various types of ethical climates ( Victor and Cullen, 1987 , 1988 ). Although this measure has been criticized for its inability to provide a consistent factor structure, most research has used the ECQ. This research has often found that an employee’s perception of the organization’s focus is associated with unethical behavior and the employee’s attitudes toward the organization (for a review, see Kish-Gephart et al., 2010 ; Mayer, 2014 ).

A parallel stream is related to the notion of ethical culture . In contrast to ethical climate, ethical culture focuses more on the perceived formal and informal elements of an organizational context that may be likely to encourage ethical conduct ( Treviño et al., 1998 ; Kaptein, 2008a ; Ruiz-Palomino and Martínez-Cañas, 2014 ). As was true for ethical climate, research on ethical culture has consistently found that the perception of an ethical culture among employees is, e.g., associated with more-favorable job attitudes, ethical intentions and behavior (for a review, see Mayer, 2014 ). In comparison to ethical climate, we believe that the concept of ethical culture better allows interventions, since it draws more directly on the conditions of (un)ethical behavior. However, as Mayer (2014) pointed out, there is still little consistency in not only the conceptualization but also the measurement of ethical culture. While previous studies treated ethical culture as a one-dimensional construct ( Treviño et al., 1998 ), Kaptein, for instance, conceptualized ethical culture as a multi-dimensional construct. Drawing on a virtue-based theory of business ethics, he developed the Corporate Ethical Virtues questionnaire (CEV; Kaptein, 2008a , 2011 ), which was designed to assess eight organizational virtues. These virtues are posited to represent organizational conditions that may be likely to stimulate employee ethical conduct.

Finally, there is a third prominent stream targeting corporate ethical culture, which has received much attention from scientific scholars and practitioners alike. Since Paine’s (1994) groundbreaking article on how to manage organizational standards, it has become an integral part of organizational discussions on distinguishing between compliance and integrity . Yet, the governance strategies associated with a compliance- or integrity-based approach are quite different. The compliance-oriented approach (also called the command-and-control approach) is mainly designed to prevent violations through control, detection and threats of punishment for misconduct. The integrity-oriented approach (also called the value-oriented or self-regulatory approach), on the other hand, combines a concern for legal issues with the goal of supporting ethically sound behavior through encouraging moral self-governance and responsibility for shared values. In contrast to ethical climate and ethical culture, the notions of compliance- and integrity-oriented programs emphasize how to steer organizations toward profitability while taking into account consistency with legal and ethical standards ( Verhezen, 2010 ; Webb, 2012 ; Wieland et al., 2014 ). Despite their varying characteristics, both ethics programs represent organizational control systems that aim to encourage rule adherence ( Weaver and Treviño, 1999 ; Weaver et al., 1999 ; Tyler and Blader, 2005 ).

There is no doubt that compliance- and integrity-based ethics programs are currently the leading pragmatic approaches to ethics used in the business environment (see e.g., OECD, 2009 , for a recognition of this general trend in business, or see Wieland et al., 2014 , for acknowledging this trend in Germany). Surprisingly, despite this dominance, it has not been adopted in the (empirical) research on ethical culture. To our knowledge, no sound measure assessing those components has thus far been developed.

The purpose of this paper is to take first steps to address this gap by developing a new measure. We believe that there are several reasons that it is necessary to expand previous scales. (1) The prior ethical climate/culture approaches do not say a great deal about how to embed ethics in organizations and managerial practice. Adopting the compliance and integrity framework in a new measure thus complements prior work by emphasizing more how to steer an organization. (2) Integrating the compliance and integrity framework into a measure not only better matches trends in practice but also offers an important means to organizations, risk managers, compliance or ethics officers of reflecting current states and progress in their firm. It also allows comparing the utility of both approaches to achieve adherence to rules and ethical standards. (3) A new measure is also needed to be able to conduct rigorous empirical research on the antecedents, consequences and effectiveness of the applied governance strategies. Astonishingly, empirical studies in this domain are thus far nearly absent. Most inferences for organizations are, as far as we can see, mainly based on theory and cased-based studies (e.g., Paine, 1994 ; Verhezen, 2010 ). As rare exceptions, we mention Treviño et al. (1999) , Weaver and Treviño (1999) , and Tyler and Blader (2005) , who have provided first empirical evidence that integrity-based programs are likely to make a unique contribution to predicting unethical behavior and employee attitudes compared to programs that are solely based on command and control. However, our knowledge about what those various programs actually accomplish and how they affect employee’s attitudes and ethical behavior is still severely limited. Thus, developing a measure integrating this framework offers opportunities to examine more thoroughly possible antecedents and consequences of a compliance- and integrity-based culture and the interplay of those programs. (4) A further reason we decided to start developing a new measure was to better account for essential findings from the field of behavioral ethics and social psychology. In particular, behavioral ethics research has, in recent years, provided many important insights about organizational factors that can affect ethical behavior but which have, as far as we can see, not been considered in prior ethical culture measures.

Overall, we aim to develop a new scale that adopts both a compliance and integrity orientation, representing two steering strategies to implement ethics programs, and adopting features of the organizational culture, which can inhibit or facilitate the effectiveness of those governance strategies. Specifically, we propose that to manage ethics, compliance- and integrity-based programs should be supplemented by knowledge about features of the organizational culture, which can inhibit or facilitate the effectiveness of the governance strategies.

Adopting the Compliance and Integrity Framework

As mentioned above, compliance- or integrity-based programs focus on different strategies for how to steer the organization. However, while both compliance- and integrity-based approaches share the same goal (behavior in accordance with organizational rules and values), the procedures to steer the organization are quite different. Whereas the former emphasizes regulation through lawful rules, the latter emphasizes regulation through values ( Paine, 1994 ; Weaver and Treviño, 1999 ; Verhezen, 2010 ; Webb, 2012 ; Wieland et al., 2014 ). Ethics policies, however, whatever aim they have, have to rely on an effective implementation. Obviously, there may be key features of the organizational environment that can affect the effectiveness of the policies. For example, an organization may attempt to build on shared values such as honesty, fairness and respect; however, the leaders in the firm may not “live” those values, thereby potentially undermining the effectiveness and credibility of the ethics program.

To implement effective ethics programs, board and managers need therefore to know how members of an organization perceive and evaluate the firm’s policies and activities; however, it is also important that they have insights into factors of the organizational context that may affect the effectiveness of the firm’s strategies. The goal of the proposed German measure here is to assess both (1) people’s belief about the extent to which an organization relies on compliance and/or integrity governance procedures and (2) people’s perception about the unwritten but lived norms, expectations and behaviors. Consistent with this goal, we define ethical culture as perceptions about the governance strategies and the effectively implemented norms and expectations that are shared by the members of the organization.

As mentioned earlier, we believe that adopting the compliance and integrity distinction will, among other things, identify new research questions that can advance our knowledge about the consequences of ethical culture. This framework points to the possibility that compliance- or integrity-oriented approaches, despite sharing the same goal, may have different implications for employee motivation, attitudes and behavior (see Stimmler and Tanner, 2019 , for developing various propositions). For example, whereas compliance factors may likely be associated with controlled motivation, integrity factors may likely foster autonomous motivation ( Gagné and Deci, 2005 ). Indeed, prompted by corporate scandals and the financial crisis, compliance officers and risk managers have mainly implemented compliance-based programs to prevent legal violations ( Paine, 1994 ). Several authors have pointed out the necessity to move beyond an exclusively compliance-based approach ( Paine, 1994 ; Verhezen, 2010 ; Webb, 2012 ; Wieland et al., 2014 ). For example, it is proposed that an integrity-oriented culture may be more advantageous in managing misconduct, since it builds on encouraging people’s intrinsic motivation to follow the organizational standards. This suggestion is intuitively appealing, but it still awaits empirical examination.

We also expand previous measures by including important insights from the fields of behavioral ethics, social psychology and organizational psychology into organizational factors that are likely to be related to ethical behavior. Drawing on this research, our measure will incorporate dimensions such as the role of ill-conceived goals, accountability or pressure to compromise (which will be detailed below). These dimensions have thus far not been addressed in prior ethical culture measures. With rule viability and rule defectiveness (which will also be detailed below), we will adopt two new dimensions. We learned from discussions with practitioners about those dimensions allegedly representing two essential challenges of compliance management. We continue by describing the German Ethical Culture Scale (GECS).

Building Blocks of the Gecs

As is common in research on ethical climate or culture, we measure employee perception of both formal elements (e.g., code of ethics or availability of a hotline) and informal ones, since their perception is the reality based upon employee reactions. Building on the converging features of previous measures, we also conceptualize ethical culture as a multi-dimensional concept. The focus will be on dimensions that are proposed to match with a compliance- or integrity-based strategy. As mentioned earlier, the GECS will be designed to assess (1) people’s belief about the extent to which an organization relies on compliance and integrity governance strategies and (2) people’s perception about the lived norms and expectations. These factors might inhibit or promote the implementation of the strategies.

Compliance Factors

A compliance-based approach to ethics management focuses on preventing misconduct through control, monitoring and punishment ( Paine, 1994 ; Weaver and Treviño, 1999 ). Such procedures are based on classic economic theory that following rules is a function of extrinsic costs and benefits associated with questionable behavior (e.g., Sutherland, 1983 ; Tyler and Blader, 2005 ). Such strategies are also implicitly based on the assumption that people cannot be trusted and are ethically incompetent, which is why external controls are inevitably to prevent wrongdoing ( Weaver and Treviño, 1999 ; Verhezen, 2010 ; Webb, 2012 ). Building on past studies and converging elements of previous measures, we propose the following five aspects to reflect a compliance-based culture:

(1) Controlling and (2) Sanctioning reflect classic governance procedures clearly associated with a compliance strategy. Controlling is the degree to which people believe that they are being monitored and that misconduct is likely to be detected. Sanctioning refers to the extent to which people believe that unethical conduct is not tolerated and will be punished. However, for sanctions strategies to work, organizations must also be willing to invest resources into monitoring behavior and make detection of misconduct sufficiently likely. These two dimensions are similar to previous ethical culture models, which have posited that visibility and punishment of unethical behavior is likely to inhibit unethical behavior ( Treviño et al., 1998 ; Kaptein, 2008a ). Empirical studies on the effects of supervision and incentives on unethical behavior are, however, controversial. Some studies suggest that command-and-control strategies do affect undesirable behavior, whereas other studies question the effectiveness of such strategies (see Tyler and Blader, 2005 ).

Furthermore, we propose three dimensions to reflect the (in)effectiveness of rule-based compliance strategies. (3) Rule clarity is the extent to which rules and expectations, as they are often portrayed in codes of ethics or conduct, are sufficiently clear and concrete to employees. This aspect is consistent with Kaptein (2008a) , who posited that ethical standards should be concrete, comprehensible and understandable if employees and managers are expected to follow them. Clear rules help to reduce ambiguity and vagueness of ethical expectations, thereby supporting ethical behavior in positive ways. Other authors also pointed out that, for rules to become effective for influencing behavior, one important precondition is that they are accessible, clearly communicated and easy to understand ( Schwartz, 2001 ; Stevens, 2008 ).

(4) Rule defectiveness is the extent to which employees believe that there are ethical gray areas or other challenging situations where corresponding guidelines are missing. According to Jackson (2000) , an issue that has been mainly neglected in prior studies on ethics programs is how organizations deal with “ethical gray areas,” i.e., decisions that do not overly attract ethical condemnation but that nevertheless represent characteristic daily work topics that may be considered as ethical issues (e.g., Should I call in sick to have a day off? Should I do personal business on company time? How should I deal with giving and receiving gifts or ethical dilemmas?). Cross-cultural studies have usually found differences between nations and companies concerning which ethical gray areas are perceived as important and which are adopted in the codes of ethics (see Jackson, 2000 ). It is plausible to assume that a compliance program’s efficiency in shaping behavior is limited if employees believe that important ethical issues and daily challenges are not appropriately addressed in the proposed rules. To render unethical behavior less likely, employees must believe that they have some guidance when they are faced with important ethical issues.

(5) Rule viability refers to the degree to which the company’s rules are perceived to complicate and hinder daily work rather than to provide support. Various authors have expressed concerns that if codes and rules are not deemed relevant and useful for daily work, they are less likely to be accepted and adopted for guiding behavior ( Schwartz, 2004 ; Bageac et al., 2011 ). An additional aspect of rule viability that has thus far hardly been addressed in prior studies is the issue of being faced with too many rules. This aspect can also minimize the perceived usefulness of rules. In fact, the most prominent response to scandals in business in general and the last financial crisis in particular has been to revise laws and to increase regulation. More rules may increase bureaucratic demands, but they may also confuse and disenable employees, limiting the effectiveness of compliance strategies.

Integrity Factors

An integrity-based approach to ethics management focuses on promoting ethical behavior through encouraging self-governance and responsibility ( Paine, 1994 ; Weaver and Treviño, 1999 ). Such programs are based on the view that following rules is a function of an individual’s intrinsic desire to follow organizational rules ( Tyler and Blader, 2005 ). Such strategies are also implicitly based on the assumption that employees can be trusted and are prone to follow ethical values. Hence, integrity-oriented approaches are designed to support ethical aspirations and the identification with and internalization of ethical standards ( Weaver and Treviño, 1999 ; Verhezen, 2010 ; Webb, 2012 ). We propose the following aspects to reflect an integrity-based culture:

We deem (6) accountability and (7) leader’s role modeling to reflect two essential governance procedures that are associated with an integrity strategy. Accountability refers to the extent to which people are clear about who is responsible for which tasks and has to justify one’s actions to others. To our knowledge, accountability has not been addressed in previous ethical cultural models. The argument is, however, that if an organization makes clear that its members are responsible for what they do, this action can intrinsically motivate employees to feel a personal responsibility and a desire to bring behavior in line with corporate rules and ethical standards. We believe that, in contrast, an organization lacking such a governance strategy is more likely to encourage rationalization processes, such as denial of responsibility ( Anand et al., 2004 ).

It is important to acknowledge, however, that accountability has at least three facets. We use the term “task accountability” to refer to who is accountable for which tasks. Being a member of an organization with a hierarchical structure or being involved in teams and collective decision-making tasks is likely to provide people with opportunities to free themselves from personal responsibility. Bandura (1990 , 1999) called, e.g., passing the cause of wrongdoing to others displacement of responsibility, and the dispersion of tasks and blame across the members of a group diffusion of responsibility. Consistent with past research in social psychology and behavioral ethics, we refer to “outcome” and “procedural accountability” when organizational members are expected either to justify the results of their decisions (outcome) or to justify how decisions were made (procedural). Empirical studies have shown that accountability can encourage self-critical and deliberate thinking (e.g., Lerner and Tetlock, 1999 ). The studies by Pitesa and Thau (2013) are also noteworthy. They have provided evidence that organizations holding their employees accountable for their choice procedures (compared to holding them accountable for performance outcomes) reduced agents’ propensity to behave in a self-serving, unethical manner. In other words, employees should in practice be judged on not only the basis of the achieved outcomes but also how those outcomes were accomplished.

Leader’s role modeling refers to the extent to which employees perceive their top management or direct supervisors as role models for ethical conduct. Several authors have proposed ethical leadership to be a crucial element of a value-based organization that guides employee thought and action (see e.g., Treviño et al., 1998 ; Kaptein, 2008a ; Ruiz et al., 2011 ; Wieland et al., 2014 ). Leader’s behaviors do reflect the values of the organizational culture. Therefore, managers and supervisors do play a crucial role in setting the ethical tone in an organization and by living up to the values. Furthermore, through a process of social learning ( Bandura, 1986 ), employees are likely to adopt the values and behaviors of the managers.

Many empirical studies have shown that leaders being perceived as ethical models is likely to affect followers’ ethical intentions and behaviors in positive ways (e.g., Brown and Treviño, 2006 ; Tanner et al., 2010 ; Ruiz et al., 2011 ; Ruiz-Palomino and Linuesa-Langreo, 2018 ). Some authors treat role modeling of top management and role modeling of supervisors as two distinct categories that affect employees’ responses in distinct ways ( Kaptein, 2008a ; Ruiz et al., 2011 ). Both, however, are expected to be negatively related to unethical behavior.

Furthermore, three dimensions are proposed to hinder the effectiveness of integrity-based strategies. (8) Pressure to compromise is the extent to which people experience role/value conflicts and pressure from the organization to counter their own sense of right and wrong. The sources of such pressures may be job or role demands, authority figures or working teams that push the employee in behavioral directions that are inconsistent with ethical standards. Previous organizational, business or behavioral ethics research suggests that employees who feel pressure to behave counter to their conscience are likely to suffer from stress and burnout (e.g., Örtqvist and Wincent, 2006 ; Eatough et al., 2011 ; Kammeyer-Mueller et al., 2012 ). A meta-analytic study by Örtqvist and Wincent (2006) indicated that among the most prominent consequences of role conflict were job dissatisfaction, loss of organizational commitment and emotional exhaustion. Another meta-analysis by Eatough et al. (2011) found a negative relationship between role conflict and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB).

It seems therefore plausible to assume that organizational members’ believing that they are expected to compromise their own values is likely to discourage intrinsic motivation to identify with organizational values and to render unethical behavior more likely. Consistent with this point, empirical studies have shown that a mismatch between the expectations of the employees and the organization is likely to not only lower job satisfaction but also increase cheating ( Burks and Krupka, 2012 ) or other forms of unethical behavior ( Suar and Khuntia, 2010 ).

(9) Obedience refers to the extent to which people believe that they are expected to be subordinate, keeping authorities and tasks unquestioned ( Treviño et al., 1999 ). Such expectations are likely to enforce a culture of fear and silence rather than a culture of voice ( Morrison and Milliken, 2000 ; Kish-Gephart et al., 2009 ). While research has suggested multiple factors that can affect the choice to remain silent or to speak up (for an overview, see Morrison, 2014 ), one common explanation for why people hesitate to speak up is related to fear. Kish-Gephart et al. (2009) found across several studies that a substantial number of respondents reported remaining silent out of fear of experiencing negative personal, social or material consequences. If organization members feel uncomfortable to speak up, such people hardly feel encouraged to practice self-regulation and moral responsibility. In contrast, in such an environment, people may feel not committed and willing to adhere to corporate rules and standards. They may also be likely to withhold input about questionable practices ( Snell, 1999 ; Miceli et al., 2008 ; Detert et al., 2010 ). Consistent with this reasoning, Kaptein (2011) , for example, found that the opportunity for employees to raise concerns and discuss ethical issues is associated with less-unethical behavior. Additionally, Treviño et al. (1999) found that employees perceiving a structure that expects obedience from them were less willing to report ethical or legal violations or to forward bad news to management.

(10) Ill-conceived goals are the extent to which the organization is seen as mainly relying on competitive and economic goals ( Bazerman and Tenbrunsel, 2011 ). Thus far, prior ethical culture models have not addressed this issue. A growing body of research in the field of behavioral ethics, however, has shown that despite the beneficial role of goals in increasing achievement motivation and productivity, goals can also lead to undesirable side effects by encouraging unethical behavior. Indeed, empirical research has demonstrated that people facing competitive or too challenging (also stretch) goals ( Barsky, 2008 ) are more likely to exhibit cheating (e.g., Schweitzer et al., 2004 ; Schwieren and Weichselbaumer, 2010 ; Welsh and Ordóñez, 2014 ) and lower intrinsic work motivation ( Ordóñez et al., 2009 ). Similarly, Van Yperen et al. (2011) have shown that interpersonal achievement goals (that emphasize competition among colleagues) are more likely than are intrapersonal goals (that emphasize mastering a task) to increase cheating. Thus, the argument here is that too challenging, competitive goals hardly support the development of moral responsibility, thereby making unethical behavior more likely.

Furthermore, the effectiveness of integrity-oriented programs may also be undermined by an organization focusing only on economic or self-interested goals in the workplace while not questioning its compatibility with ethical aspirations. For example, an organization may attempt to build on integrity and ethical values, but employees may nevertheless perceive their organizational environment as emphasizing only economic and egoistic goals. Consistent with this point, Kish-Gephart et al. (2010) found meta-analytic evidence for a positive relationship between an egoistic ethical climate and unethical behavior.

Thus, acknowledging the importance of the role of goal-setting, this dimension was also included in our instrument. However, as with the dimension accountability, we distinguish between various facets of ill-conceived goals. Acknowledging this literature, we distinguish between goal-setting with regard to its focus on “competition” and with regard to its focus on “economic” goals. An ethical culture mainly focusing on competition and economic goals is expected to be less likely to promote responsibility and adherence to ethical standards and behavior.

Overview of Samples and Studies

The primary objective of the following studies was to develop and assess the validity of the GECS. For the following studies, data from three independent and heterogeneous samples of employees and managers in Switzerland and Germany were used. To test the questionnaire, it was important to us to have a broad sample of employees and managers from various economic sectors and from various hierarchical levels. Participants were therefore recruited from panels of participants of market research agencies. All data were collected through online surveys. Samples A and B were used to develop the instrument and to perform an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs) to provide first evidence for the construct validity of the measure. Sample B was also used to assess the criterion related and incremental validity by testing its relation to (observed) deviant workplace behaviors, based on regression analyses. Finally, Sample C was used to take first steps to provide evidence of the convergent validity of the GECS. The studies were conducted in accordance with the ethical standards of the Zeppelin University and the Swiss Psychological Society. The samples are briefly described below. Table 1 reports further work-related characteristics.

Further work-related descriptive statistics of Samples A, B, and C.

Sample A: This sample consisted of 300 (German-speaking) Swiss employees and managers working in divers economic sectors. Of these respondents, 36.3% were female, and mean age was 42.6 years ( SD = 12.6, range: 16–72 years).

Sample B: This sample consisted of 990 German employees and managers, after 17 participants had to be excluded from the analysis because of a lack of variation in their answering pattern. Of these respondents, 46.6% were female, and mean age was 44.6 years ( SD = 11.23, range: 21–74 years).

Sample C: This sample consisted of 493 German and 498 Swiss participants (total N = 991), after exclusion of nine participants due to a lack of variation in their answering pattern. Of this sample, 46.1% were female, and mean age was 44.4 years ( SD = 12.81, age range: 16–75 years).

In the following, we present the development of the GECS, its factorial structure and psychometric properties (Study 1a, 1b). We then present results on the criterion-related and incremental validity (Study 2) and tests on construct validity with external constructs (Study 3).

Study 1a – Initial Development of Instrument

In a first preliminary step, an initial pool of items was generated based on the definition of the dimensions proposed to be related to compliance and integrity, as explained in the previous section. We first created items to assess the following constructs: controlling, sanctioning, rule clarity, rule defectiveness, and rule viability (proposed to represent compliance factors) and accountability, role modeling of top management, role modeling of supervisors, pressure to compromise, obedience, and ill-conceived goals (proposed to represent integrity factors).

Our aim was to develop simple items that avoid, as often as possible, terms such as “ethical” or “moral.” Examination of previous instruments revealed that they often include items that may be somewhat precarious, since they utilize the word “ethical” in the wording. Such items, however, may be problematic since they require from the respondents an understanding of what characterizes ethical or responsible conduct, which is often not self-evident. We tried to avoid this shortcoming whenever possible for this reason and also as an attempt to minimize socially desirable responses.

Furthermore, our intention was ultimately to have a relatively short but sound inventory. Of course, the generally accepted argument is that longer instruments tend to have better psychometric properties than shorter ones do ( Gosling et al., 2003 ). However, researchers are often faced with the problem that time is limited and employees or managers are simply not willing to fill out lengthy questionnaires. In such cases (as is true in our research domain), practicable and efficient measures are necessary. We therefore sought to have a minimum of three items for each subscale. For accountability and ill-conceived goals, since they contain nuanced facets, we wished to have a minimum of six items (accountability with its facets task, outcome and procedural accountability) and four items (ill-conceived goals with its facets competition and economic goals).

To this end, 34 items were developed by us, and 27 items were adapted from prior instruments (e.g., Treviño et al., 1998 ; Brown et al., 2005 ; Kaptein, 2008a ). The items were then discussed with three doctoral candidates experienced with the field. Based on their inputs, items were reworded. An initial pool of 61 items was then subjected to a first EFA (principle axis factor analysis, promax rotation) with data collected from Sample A ( N = 300). Participants rated each item using a 5-point Likert-style format 1 ( strongly disagree ) to 5 ( strongly agree ), including the response option no answer is applicable .

Based on this EFA, we removed 23 items with loadings lower than 0.45 on one factor and cross-loadings higher than loadings of 0.30. Rerunning the EFA with the remaining 38 items resulted in nine factors (eigenvalues > 1). However, recognizing that several subscales were insufficiently represented, we repeated the item-generation and item-selection process in Study 1B.

Study 1b – Instrument Refinement and Factor Analyses

We conducted a second iteration of instrument development. Using EFA, we examined the scale’s factorial structure and psychometric properties with data collected from Sample B ( N = 990). The goal of Study 1B was also to assess the robustness of the proposed factor structure by conducting CFAs across Sample B and Sample C ( N = 991).

In addition to the remaining items from Study 1a (38 items), new items were created in this second iteration. We added more items to those constructs, which were suggested to have nuanced facets (accountability, ill-conceived goals) (plus 15 items), and we also created some new items in the remaining scales (4 items) just to be on the safe side when subjecting the items to new analyses. In this stage, we also discussed content and comprehensiveness of the items with three business ethics scholars and three specialists with significant practical expertise in ethics management. Especially from the practitioners, we learned about rule viability and rule defectiveness as representing two essential challenges in the managerial practice of compliance management, which we consequently also included in our item pool (plus 10 items). Based on the input of those external experts, items were adapted, resulting in a final pool of 67 items.

The items describe concepts related to compliance (controlling, sanctioning, rule clarity, rule defectiveness, and rule viability) and integrity (accountability, role modeling of top management, role modeling of direct supervisor, pressure to compromise, obedience, and ill-conceived goals). Again, participants rated each item on a 5-point scale (1 = strongly disagree , 5 = strongly agree ), including the response option no answer is applicable . The items of the final instrument (37 items) – the original German items and the English translation (based on Brislin, 1976 ) – can be found in the Supplementary Table 1 . Sample items include the following (English translation): “In my work environment, measures are carried out to detect rule violations and misconduct” (controlling); “In my work environment, people who engage in dishonest behavior are disciplined” (sanction); “My organization makes it sufficiently clear to me which behaviors are right or wrong” (rule clarity); “Some of the organization’s rules are intentionally not or vaguely defined” (rule defectiveness); “The organization’s code of conduct makes everything complicated” (rule viability); “In my workplace, how goals are achieved also plays a role” (accountability); “My direct supervisor is a good model of integrity” (role modeling of direct supervisor); “In my work environment, I am sometimes asked to do things that are in conflict with my conscience” (pressure to compromise); “I am expected to do what I am told” (obedience); and “In my workplace, I can only make a career by outperforming others” (ill-conceived goals).

Building on the data from Sample B, the initial item analyses revealed no peculiarities. The pool of 67 items was then again subjected to an EFA (principal component analysis, promax rotation).

We removed items with factor loadings less than 0.45 on one factor and cross-loadings higher than loadings of 0.30. These changes ultimately resulted in an instrument of 37 items (see Supplementary Table 1 ). Rerunning the EFA on this instrument reduced the 37-item measures to 10 distinct factors (eigenvalues > 1.0) corresponding to controlling (three items), sanctioning (three items), rule clarity (three items), rule defectiveness (three items), rule viability (three items), accountability (six items), pressure to compromise (four items), obedience (three items), and ill-conceived goals (four items). Role modeling of top management and role modeling of direct supervisors were not revealed as two separate factors. They were therefore combined into one leader’s role modeling factor (five items). All factors accounted for 72.07% of the variance. The factor loadings are reported in Table 2 .

EFA factor loadings and CFA standardized factor loadings (Study 1b).

Table 3 reports the means, standard deviations, internal consistencies (Cronbach’s alphas), and intercorrelations among the subscales. The subscales in this table were calculated by averaging the corresponding item scores. As shown, each scale showed good internal consistency (αs between 0.72 and 0.91).

Correlation matrix of the GECS factors, means, standard deviations, and Cronbach’s alphas (Sample B, Study 1b).

The GECS with the final item set (37 items) was then sent online to Sample C. We next tested robustness of the proposed model by conducting a series of CFAs across Samples B and C. CFAs were performed using AMOS 22 maximum likelihood estimation of covariance. The answer no answer is applicable was coded as missing values; hence, we were allowed to estimate means and intercepts.

Five models were estimated and compared: Model A with one factor, Model B with two factors (compliance and integrity) and Model C with the proposed 10 factors. With Models D and E, we also examined whether the 10 factors can be summarized into higher-order factors. In the theory section, we proposed that compliance and integrity would converge at two higher-order constructs (controlling, sanctioning, clarity, defectiveness and viability of rules should load onto a compliance factor; accountability, leader’s role modeling, pressure to compromise, obedience, ill-conceived goals should load onto an integrity factor, Model E). We compared this Model E with the alternative Model D (10 factors loading on one higher-order construct).

To assess the model fit, the chi-square ( χ2/df ), comparative fit index (CFI), Tucker-Lewis-Index (TLI) and root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) were used. According to previous studies, it is suggested that χ2/df should be equal to or less than 3 or at least less than 5. For CFI and TLI, values above 0.90 are regarded as acceptable, and values close to or greater than 0.95 are regarded as good fit. For RMSEA, values equal to or less than 0.07 indicate a good fit. To compare the models, we used the Akaike Information Criterion (AIC), with smaller values indicating a better-fitting model (see, e.g., Wheaton et al., 1977 ; Hooper et al., 2008 ).

An examination of modification indices revealed high error covariance between the two top management role-modeling items in Models C, D, and E. When the two error terms were free to correlate, the fit was clearly improved. Importantly, this modification also makes theoretical sense because prior research suggested that role modeling of top management and role modeling of supervisors are two distinct constructs ( Kaptein, 2008a ; Ruiz et al., 2011 ).

Table 4 displays the fit statistics of the models. The results repeatedly revealed across all samples that the ten-factor solution (Model C) fit the data better than did the one- or two-factor solution (Models A and B), which was also confirmed by χ 2-difference tests between the three nested first-order models. Based on the criteria, all fit indices indicated a good or acceptable fit for the 10-factor model. The same applies to the two second-order models (D and E), with the exception of CFI and TLI, which were marginally below the recommended criteria. Comparing the two second-order factor models, χ 2-difference tests pointed to Model E (with two second-order factors: Integrity and Compliance) fitting the data better than did Model D (with one second-order factor: Ethical Culture). Testing the robustness of our Models C, D, and E separately for the Swiss and German respondents of Sample C also yielded very similar results for both countries. Overall, the results largely supported the 10-factor solution but also deemed second-order factors acceptable. CFA standardized factor loadings of the 10-factor model (Model C) are reported in Table 2 .

Goodness-of-Fit Indices of CFA models (Study 1b).

We examined convergent validity of the 10 factors by assessing average variance extracted (AVE) in the CFAs ( Fornell and Larcker, 1981 ; Hair et al., 2014 ). The results are reported in Table 5 . With regard to AVE, the analyses revealed that most constructs were greater than 0.50, as recommended ( Fornell and Larcker, 1981 ). Just for accountability (AVE = 0.45) and ill-conceived goals (AVE = 0.46), but only in Sample B, the criterion was not met. We assume that the reason the AVE of those factors is below the recommended threshold is that accountability and ill-conceived goals may be more heterogeneous in content. However, with data from Sample C, the criterion of 0.5 was met for all constructs.

Convergent and discriminant validity of the 10-Factor Model (Model C) (Study 1b).

We also examined divergent validity by AVE. Adequate divergent validity is given when the square root of the variance extracted from each of the factors is greater than the correlations between each pair of factors ( Fornell and Larcker, 1981 ). As shown in Table 5 , all factors satisfy this condition with data from both Samples B and C.

Study 2 – Criterion-Related and Incremental Validity

To establish criterion-related validity, the association between the GECS and deviant workplace behavior was considered with data from Sample B. To minimize potential social desirability bias, we administered observed and not self-reported deviant workplace behavior (which is assumed to be more susceptible to socially desirable responding and impression management), and we used different response formats to assess the predictor and criterion variables. Specifically, we expected controlling, sanctioning, rule clarity, accountability, and leader’s role modeling to be associated with less observed deviant workplace behavior. We expected rule defectiveness, rule viability, pressure to compromise, obedience, and ill-conceived goals to be associated with more observed misconduct.

Several authors have argued that to align employee’s behavior with ethical standards, it is important to move beyond compliance-oriented strategies, since control and punishment may prevent wrongdoing, but they do not necessarily change convictions (e.g., Paine, 1994 ; Tyler and Blader, 2005 ). Integrity-based strategies, on the other hand, encourage personal commitment to ethical aspirations, thereby being more successful in affecting behavior (e.g., Weaver and Treviño, 1999 ). If so, we should be able to find that integrity factors will account for variance increments over and above the compliance factors.

Observed deviant workplace behavior

Beyond the GECS, participants were also asked to report observed misconduct in the workplace. Drawing on a German version of Kaptein’s (2008b) scale of observer-reports of unethical behavior ( Kaptein, 2011 ; Zuber and Kaptein, 2014 ), participants were asked how often in the past 12 months they had observed or had first-hand knowledge of intra- or extra-organizational deviant behaviors in their work environment (e.g., discriminating against others due to age, gender, or sexual orientation; violating contracts or lawful rules; misleading others; or stealing; 19 items). Consistent with Kaptein (2008b , 2011) and Zuber and Kaptein (2014) , responses were given on a 5-point frequency scale ( never , rarely, sometimes, often, almost always) , including the response option no answer is applicable .

Formal factors of ethics programs

Participants were also asked about the availability of formal codes or other forms of internal formal ethics programs in their organization, such as the existence of a code of ethics, ethical training, a telephone hotline, availability of ethics officers, formal ethics controls or an ethics report (adapted from Kaptein, 2014 ). Possible answers were yes , no , and not applicable .

To assess criterion-related and incremental validity, correlation and regression analyses were conducted to examine the relation between the GECS dimensions and the dependent variable (observed deviant workplace behavior). As mentioned above, the observer-based reports on deviant workplace behaviors were assessed using a 5-point frequency scale. Though such scales are widely used in social sciences, we decided to dichotomize the response scale, partly because of its skewness and kurtosis but mainly because we can hardly expect participants to have a common understanding of “rarely, sometimes, and often.” The linguistic meaning of those frequency expressions is too vague. Consistent with this reasoning is Bocklisch et al. (2012) , who showed that the positions and shape of participant response patterns varied considerably and that frequency expressions such as “rarely, sometimes, often” were hardly equidistantly distributed. Dichotomizing reduces this linguistic vagueness. We first dichotomized each item (0 indicates that the corresponding behavior was never observed; 1 indicates that this behavior was observed at least rarely; see also Zuber and Kaptein, 2014 ). Calculating the sum across all items then yielded the number of situations across which misconduct was observed (ranging from 0 to 19). This variable served as a criterion variable in the regression analyses.

The results of the bivariate correlations and hierarchical regression analyses are depicted in Table 6 . The bivariate correlations between the ten dimensions composing the GECS and the deviant workplace behavior scale were all significant ( ps < 0.01) and in expected directions (see Table 6 , last column). Using regression analyses, we then tested how strongly sociodemographic variables (step 1), formal factors of ethics programs (step 2), compliance factors (step 3) and integrity factors (step 4) contribute to the variance in the outcome variable deviant workplace behavior. As scores for the GECS dimensions, we entered the factor scores of the PCA. As shown in Table 6 , entering the formal factors (step 2) following the sociodemographic variables (step 1) increased the accounting for predicted variance from 3 to 6%. Entering the compliance factors of the GECS further increased the explained variance from 6 to 33%. However, entering the integrity factors again increased the explained variance from 33 to 48%. Thus, the results provide evidence for the incremental validity of the GECS over and above formal factors, but they also support the view that the integrity factors contribute to predicting observed misconduct even above the compliance factors.

Results on hierarchical regressions and correlations with deviant workplace behavior (Sample B, Study 2).

Though not shown in the table, we also conducted an analysis using only the integrity factors (after entering the sociodemographic variables and ethics programs factors) to better compare the overall utility of the compliance versus integrity factors in predicting the criterion variable. This model explained 46% of the variance in deviant workplace behavior, while the model with the compliance factors, as mentioned above, explained 33% of the variance. These results further confirm that the utility of the compliance approach is relevant but somewhat weaker than that of an integrity- or value-oriented approach.

Overall, the final analysis revealed that 6 of 10 dimensions of the GECS were significant predictors of the extent of observed misconduct ( p s < 0.05). The significant positive relations indicated that, as expected, participants reporting higher levels of rule defectiveness, rule viability, pressure to compromise, or ill-conceived goals were likely to observe more misconduct. The significant negative relations indicated that participants reporting higher levels of controlling or of accountability were likely to report less misconduct at work.

Study 3 – Construct Validity

Data from Sample C ( N = 991) were used to provide further evidence of the measure’s construct validity by comparing the GECS with other established measures of related constructs. We examined convergent validity by examining the relations between the composite measures of compliance and integrity factors and theoretically related constructs. As previous authors suggested that an integrity-based culture is more focused on enabling self-governance and personal commitment (e.g., Paine, 1994 ; Verhezen, 2010 ; Wieland et al., 2014 ), we expected integrity-based factors to correlate positively with autonomous motivation and negatively with controlled motivation . In contrast, given that a compliance-based culture is proposed to be more focused on controlling people, we hypothesized that compliance-based factors of the GECS would correlate positively with controlled but negatively with autonomous motivation. To assess those relations, we included a well-known work motivation measure ( Gagné and Deci, 2005 ).

Furthermore, we included a measure of duty orientation reflecting people’s volitional obligation to perform organizational tasks, groups and missions ( Hannah et al., 2014 ). This scale was originally developed in the context of active army soldiers but later also employed with government and corporate employees. This scale is interesting for us to examine construct validity, since it distinguishes between adherence to normative codes and rules ( duty to code ), the willingness to support and serve one’s group and its members ( duty to members ), and the willingness to support the purpose of the group and to make personal sacrifices ( duty to mission ). We expected both integrity and compliance-oriented factors of organizations to be positively related to duty orientation, since the purpose of both GECS components is ultimately to ensure employees’ consistency with organizational codes and standards. However, since compliance-oriented programs are more focused on compliance with rules, we also expected compliance factors to reveal somewhat higher positive correlations with duty to codes than would integrity factors. In contrast, as integrity-oriented programs are more focused on encouraging intrinsic, motivated commitment to standards, we expected integrity factors to reveal higher positive correlations with duty to members and mission than would compliance factors.

Work motivation

Beyond the GECS, a German version of the Multidimensional Work Motivation scale ( Gagné et al., 2015 ) was administered. This measure assesses five distinct types of motivation along a continuum from extrinsic to intrinsic motivation. These types are combined into one category representing controlled motivation (11 items, e.g., “I am involved in my job, because others put pressure on me,” α = 0.85) and another one representing autonomous motivation (6 items, e.g., “I am involved in my job, because what I do in this job has a lot of personal meaning to me.”, α = 0.92). Items were rated on a 7-point scale from 1 ( strongly disagree ) to 7 ( strongly agree ).

Duty orientation

Duty orientation was assessed with the 12-item Duty Orientation scale ( Hannah et al., 2014 ). Items were translated into German using the backtranslation method. Hannah and colleagues suggested that duty orientation is a higher-order factor that reflects three subordinate concepts, such as duty to codes, duty to members, and duty to mission. We therefore used the overall scale across all items (α = 0.86) and the subscales (duty to codes, α = 0.78; duty to members, α = 0.78; and duty to mission, α = 0.77). Sample items include “I do what is right always,” “I put the interest of my team ahead of my personal interest,” and “I do whatever it takes to not let the mission of my organization fail.” Items were rated on a 5-point scale (1 = strongly disagree; 5 = strongly agree ).

To examine convergent validity, we assessed the correlations between work motivation, duty orientation and the single and composite measures of compliance and integrity ( Table 7 ). As shown, among the five integrity-based factors, leader’s role modeling, accountability and pressure to compromise mostly show a convergence with autonomous work motivation ( rs > 0.24, ps < 0.001), while obedience and ill-conceived goals coincided with more-controlled motivation ( rs > 0.21, ps < 0.001). Among the five compliance-oriented factors, we mainly found that rule clarity correlated positively with autonomous motivation ( r = 0.25, p < 0.001) and that controlling ( r = 0.22, p < 0.001) with correlated controlled motivation.

Relation between GECS, work motivation and duty orientation (Sample C, Study 3).

Note that for calculating the correlations between the composite measures of compliance, integrity and work motivation, the composite measures were constructed after reverse coding the negative items. Overall, supporting our expectation, the composite integrity factor correlated positively with autonomous work motivation ( r = 0.37, p < 0.001) and negatively with controlled motivation ( r = −0.11, p < 0.001). At least partially also supporting our hypothesis, the composite compliance factor correlated positively with controlled motivation ( r = 0.13, p < 0.001) but also positively with autonomous motivation ( r = 0.27) (even though to a lesser extent than with the composite integrity factor).

Furthermore, consistent with our expectations, both the composite integrity and compliance factor correlated positively with duty orientation ( rs > 0.22, ps < 0.001), with leader’s role modeling and accountability revealing the largest correlations ( rs > 0.30, ps < 0.001). Consistent with our more specific expectations, the compliance factors correlated somewhat more positively with duty to codes than did integrity factors, while integrity factors revealed higher correlations with duty to members than did compliance factors. Surprisingly, duty to mission revealed correlations only around zero.

Overall, the patterns of correlations in this study provided acceptable support for the convergent validity of the GECS. However, Table 7 also shows that the specific dimensions composing the compliance or integrity factor do correlate, though most of them in the expected direction, to various degrees with work motivation and duty orientation measures, suggesting that the compliance or integrity factors are not homogeneous factors but rather overlap somewhat.

General Discussion

This research has taken first steps toward developing, refining and testing a German ethical culture measure. In doing so, we intended to advance the nomological network of corporate ethical culture by integrating the notion of compliance- and integrity-based ethics programs (with its focus on how to steer organizations) with the notion of ethical culture (with its focus on what factors inhibit or foster ethical behavior). In several studies involving more than 2000 participants, we presented first evidence for the factorial structure, reliability and validity of the instrument. Concerning the factor structure, fit indices based on data from various (sub)samples suggested the 10-factor solution as the best-fitting model among those tested. Considering the model with two overarching second-order factors (integrity and compliance) revealed acceptable or nearly acceptable fit indices. Item reliabilities of all subscales were good, ranging between 0.72 and 0.91. We found supporting convergent and divergent validity of the scale derived from CFA in most cases across the two samples.

Further supporting convergent validity of the scale, we found that compliance and integrity factors were in most cases predictably related to different forms of work motivation and duty orientation. The correlations were mostly modest but still significant. Composite compliance and integrity factors were mostly related in expected directions with controlled and autonomous work motivation and with variants of duty orientation (duty to codes and duty to members). The composite integrity factor was positively related to autonomous motivation but negatively to controlled motivation. The composite compliance factor, on the other hand, correlated positively with controlled motivation. However, somewhat unexpected was that the composite scale of compliance factors also correlated with perceived autonomous motivation (although to a lesser extent than did the composite integrity factor). This correlation may suggest that compliance factors can also be advantageous to autonomous motivation. As will be discussed later, this finding may provide an interesting avenue for future research.

Furthermore, the GECS revealed good predictive validity. Our studies showed that both compliance and integrity factors predicted significantly deviant workplace behavior beyond the formal factors of ethics programs. At the same time, the analyses of incremental validity stressed the added value of integrity factors in predicting deviant workplace behavior over and above compliance-base factors. Specifically, the integrity-based factors accounted for a 15% additional amount of variance beyond compliance factors. Consistent with previous studies ( Treviño et al., 1999 ; Tyler and Blader, 2005 ), these results support the view that organizational strategies and factors relying on the monitoring of rule adherence may not be the only means of shaping people’s deviant behavior. Moreover, in the research reported here, the utility of a command and control approach overall appears to be weaker than that of an integrity- or value-oriented approach that attempts to influence ethical behavior by encouraging employee’s self-responsibility and moral motivation. Controlling for sociodemographic characteristics and ethics programs factors, the model including the compliance factors explained 33% of the variance of deviant workplace behavior, but the model including the integrity factors explained 46% of the variance.

Clearly, it would be useful to study the GECS together with other ethical culture approaches to examine the criteria and incremental validity of the GECS compared to those of other models. In our current research, we refrained from including other ethical culture questionnaires in our surveys simply to avoid too much burden from too lengthy questionnaires (e.g., the ethical culture questionnaire, the CEV, by Kaptein, 2008a , contains 58 items). Measurement economy must always be accounted for and carefully balanced out when running such studies. Nevertheless, a first rough comparison between the GECS and the CEV may be given building on Kaptein’s study ( Kaptein, 2011 ), which included the nearly identical observed work deviant behavior scale as in our study. (The only differences were that Kaptein’s study included a list of 37 items of observed deviant workplace behavior and a general score calculated by averaging the scores across all items. Our study included a list of 19 behavioral items, and we calculated a general score by summing across all dichotomized items.) Conducting regression analyses, the author found that a model entering sociodemographic variables, formal factors of ethics programs and ethical climate ( Victor and Cullen, 1987 , 1988 ) accounted for 14% of the variance in observed unethical behavior. Upon entering the CEV, the exploratory power of the complete model increased to 31%. In our study, the analyses revealed that entering sociodemographic and formal factors of ethics programs accounted for 6% of the variance in observed unethical behavior. Upon entering the GECS with the 10 factors, the exploratory power of the complete model increased to 48%. This result is promising and indicates that, at least in this case, our measure appears to be superior in predicting observed unethical behavior.

This measure has several strengths. As a novelty, this measure integrates the notion of compliance- and integrity-based ethics program (with its focus on how to steer organizations) with the notion of ethical culture (with its focus on what factors inhibit or foster ethical behavior). To our knowledge, prior research on climate or culture has never considered this association, despite the prominence of the compliance and integrity distinction in theory and practice. At the same time, studies on compliance- and integrity-based ethics management have rarely conducted rigorous empirical research. We took the challenge to develop a measure to address the gap. Data gathered to test the scale were obtained across large samples, in two countries (Germany and Switzerland), and across a wide variety of organizations and jobs. This data collection is not taken for granted since many studies in this domain gather data within single organizations. Hence, the heterogeneity of our data allows some confidence to claim that the GECS is applicable across varying organizational contexts. Offering researchers a German scale will allow them to conduct stringent research in German-speaking countries on antecedents and consequences of compliance and integrity-oriented organizational cultures. In addition, such a measure allows organizations, risk managers and compliance officers to reflect the current state of corporate ethical culture within their own organizations, to design targeted interventions and to monitor organizational progress.

The present measure also represents an advancement to existing instruments in terms of including less-problematic item wording (to minimize social desirability, we avoided terms such as “moral”) and including current theoretical concepts. Drawing on important insights from behavioral ethics social psychology and organizational research, our measure incorporated dimensions such as ill-conceived goals, pressure to compromise and accountability. Furthermore, building on insights from practitioners, we incorporated dimensions such as rule defectiveness and rule viability. These concepts have thus far not been addressed in prior measures. In fact, it is interesting that nearly all of these factors were the most relevant predictors of deviant workplace behavior. Of course, we do not claim that our measure contains all relevant dimensions, but the findings indicate that our measure contains at least some important dimensions over and above previous measures.

Though the current measure is in German, we do not believe that the content is only applicable and relevant for the German-speaking world. In fact, compliance and integrity-based ethics programs are the leading approaches to ethics in today’s business world (e.g., OECD, 2009 ). Therefore, the application of the instrument in other countries would be not only very meaningful but also needed. Clearly, this process would also require testing and validation of the instrument in other languages and countries.

This research also has interesting implications for practice and future research. As mentioned above, the GECS offers practitioners a framework and measure to examine their state and progress within their own organization. In addition, our finding that integrity-based factors account for an additional amount of variance beyond compliance factors is relevant for practice, since most companies currently appear to focus primarily on improving control and command strategies in combating unethical behavior. Our results, however, strongly suggest that more attention should be focused on procedures that promote self-regulation and responsibility.

The GECS is also a basis for addressing empirical questions about the antecedents and consequences of compliance- and integrity-oriented cultures. Integrating the compliance and integrity distinction offers a unique opportunity to steer research in new directions. One fruitful direction for future research is certainly related to studying the various implicit or explicit assumptions about how compliance- and integrity-based cultures may be associated with employee motivation, attitudes and behavior ( Paine, 1994 ; Verhezen, 2010 ). However, many of those assumptions still await empirical examination. In a recent theoretical paper, Stimmler and Tanner (2019) proposed that the potential implications of a compliance- or integrity-oriented culture may be better understood when considered in combination with perceptual, motivational, affective and behavioral processes at the individual level. For example, the regulatory focus theory ( Higgins, 1997 , 1998 ) can provide us with an interesting heuristic to deepen our understanding of what the psychological implications for the individual might be when an organization counts more on a compliance or integrity culture. With a regulatory focus, people can regulate their behavior via a prevention or promotion focus. Numerous empirical studies have shown that these different foci evoke different psychological processes ( Higgins, 1997 , 1998 , 2001 ). We hypothesize that a compliance-oriented culture may be more likely to evoke a prevention focus, while an integrity-oriented culture may be more likely to support a promotion focus among employees. This avenue may be interesting for future research to examine these relations more thoroughly.

One specific direction for future research also relates to the, as mentioned above, somewhat unexpected finding that the composite compliance factor also correlated with autonomous work motivation. This finding could point to positive implications associated with compliance-oriented culture worth examining in more detail. Interestingly, empirical research in this domain is nearly absent, even though, for instance, the question about the possible implications of monitoring employees has been highly debated for many years ( Frey, 1993 ; Ferrin et al., 2007 ). This literature primarily expect negative effects on employee work effort and intrinsic motivation. However, we speculate that, besides the potentially negative implications of a control- and command approach, such an approach may also be likely to provide employees with a comfortable feeling of certainty about the processes in the firm. An integrity-based culture, on the other hand, with its focus on encouraging self-governance, may create more uncertainty and uneasiness since it lacks explicit guidelines. It seems obvious that both compliance and integrity-oriented strategies are necessary for an effective ethical business culture. Nonetheless, our knowledge about the negative and positive implications associated with a compliance and an integrity-oriented culture and what combination or interplay may be most effective is severely limited.

Also interesting is the finding that leader’s role modeling did not emerge as a significant predictor of deviant workplace behavior, though past studies strongly emphasized the relevance of the “tone of the top” and leaders being role models to encourage similar behaviors among employees (e.g., Treviño et al., 1999 ; Kaptein, 2011 ). Leader’s role modeling, however, correlated highly positively with autonomous work motivation. This result suggests that role modeling is possibly more relevant for motivation than for behavior implications. Another possibility may be that leader’s role modeling is more likely to moderate the relationship between some other cultural dimensions and unethical behavior. It remains open for research to examine this issue in further detail.

Of course, this research also has limitations. The first one is associated with the fact that our analyses (CFA) revealed only moderate statistical support for dividing the single factors into composite compliance and integrity components. Although the GECS provides a first essential step in assessing compliance or integrity-based cultures, an important endeavor for further work is to further ameliorate the items and foci. In fact, whereas there is a fair consensus in the literature about what the governance strategies of a compliance-based program (such as control, monitoring, and sanctioning) are, there are still divers opinions about exactly what procedures constitute an integrity-based program. Thus far, we suggested accountability and leader’s role modeling as crucial building blocks of an integrity culture. Future discussions and work will probably reveal further strategies that may then be incorporated into the GECS.

Another limitation refers to the fact that some expectations about the relations between compliance and integrity factors were not confirmed. For example, in contrast to our expectations, integrity factors did not correlate with duty to mission (neither did the compliance factors). This finding might be caused by the fact that the duty orientation scale was originally developed in the context of army soldiers ( Hannah et al., 2014 ). According to Hannah et al. (2014) and taking a closer look at the duty to mission items, this subconcept is about individual’s willingness to make personal sacrifices and accept personal risks to achieve the goals of the group. We suppose that in the context of “normal” organizational life, such expectations of employees are too unrealistic and therefore likely to result in correlations around zero.

Finally, a limitation of this research may be the possibility of a common method bias. Recall that in study 2, the same respondents answered the GECS and deviant workplace behavior questions. One strength of our studies is that data were collected from heterogeneous samples, including employees and managers across various organizations. This variety has allowed us to examine the robustness of the proposed structure across heterogeneous organizational contexts. Although we administered observed rather than self-reported misconduct and used different response formats to assess the predictor and criterion variables to reduce this problem, we cannot completely exclude the possibility that the associations between the predictor and criterion measures may be biased. Thus, future research should attempt to collaborate with single organizations and to assess the predictor and criterion variable for different employees from the same working groups within an organization.

Overall, we believe that the GECS provides a first measure to build upon to advance research in German-speaking countries, to provide a basis for empirically examining antecedents and the short- and long-term consequences of compliance- and integrity-based cultures, and to improve our understanding of the influences that may hinder or facilitate the effectiveness of such procedures. In this vein, we strongly believe that the GECS can fuel future research and make contributions to the field of organizational ethics.

Data Availability

Ethics statement.

The studies were carried out in accordance with the ethical guidelines of the Zeppelin University. The online studies were approved by the Ethics Committee of the Zeppelin University and the Department of Psychology at the University of Zurich. The studies were carried out in accordance with the APA ethical guidelines, guidelines of the Swiss Psychological Society, and the European Commission (Horizon 2020). All participants indicated affirmative consent by clicking the button, “I have read the information and I agree with them.”

Author Contributions

CT and KG designed the studies and collected the data. NW and KG did the analyses. All authors contributed to the writing and agreed to be accountable for all aspects of the work.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments

We gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Lukas Alig in conducting Study 1a.

Funding. The present research was funded by the Karl Schlecht Stiftung and a research grant of the University of Zurich to CT.

Supplementary Material

The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01667/full#supplementary-material

• Anand V., Ashforth B. E., Joshi M. (2004). Business as usual: the acceptance and perpetuation of corruption in organizations. Acad. Manage. Exec. 18 39–53. 10.5465/ame.2004.13837437 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Bageac D., Furrer O., Reynaud E. (2011). Management students’ attitudes toward business ethics: a comparison between france and romania. J. Bus. Ethics 98 391–406. 10.1007/s10551-010-0555-5 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Bandura A. (1986). Social Foundations of Thought and Action: A Social Cognitive Theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. [ Google Scholar ]
• Bandura A. (1990). Selective activation and disengagement of moral control. J. Soc. Issues 46 27–46. 10.1111/j.1540-4560.1990.tb00270.x [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Bandura A. (1999). Moral disengagement in the perpetration of inhumanities. Pers. Soc. Psychol. Rev. 3 193–209. 10.4324/9781315799292-3 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Barsky A. (2008). Understanding the ethical cost of organizational goal-setting: a review and theory development. J. Bus. Ethics 81 63–81. 10.1007/s10551-007-9481-6 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Bazerman M. H., Tenbrunsel A. (2011). Ethical breakdowns. Good people often let bad things happen. Why? Harv. Bus. Rev. 89 58–65. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Bocklisch F., Bocklisch S. F., Krems J. F. (2012). Sometimes, often, and always: exploring the vague meanings of frequency expressions. Behav. Res. Methods 44 144–157. 10.3758/s13428-011-0130-8 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Brislin R. W. (1976). Comparative research methodology: cross-cultural studies. Int. J. Psychol. 11 215–229. 10.1080/00207597608247359 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Brown E. B., Treviño L. K. (2006). Ethical leadership: a review and future directions. Leadersh. Q. 17 595–616. 10.1016/j.leaqua.2006.10.004 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Brown M. E., Treviño L. K., Harrison D. A. (2005). Ethical leadership: a social learning perspective for construct development and testing. Organ. Behav. Hum. Decis. Process. 97 117–134. 10.1016/j.obhdp.2005.03.002 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Burks S. V., Krupka E. L. (2012). A multimethod approach to identifying norms and normative expectations within a corporate hierarchy: evidence from the financial services industry. Manag. Sci. 58 203–217. 10.1287/mnsc.1110.1478 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Detert J. R., Burris E. R., Harrison D. A. (2010). Debunking four myths about employee silence. Harv. Bus. Rev. 88 26–26. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Eatough E. M., Chang C.-H., Miloslavic S. A., Johnson R. E. (2011). Relationships of role stressors with organizational citizenship behavior: a meta-analysis. J. Appl. Psychol. 96 619–632. 10.1037/a0021887 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Ferrin D. L., Bligh M. C., Kohles J. C. (2007). Can I trust you to trust me? A theory of trust, monitoring, and cooperation in interpersonal and intergroup relationships. Group Organ. Manag. 32 465–499. 10.1177/1059601106293960 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Fornell C., Larcker D. F. (1981). Evaluating structural equation models with unobservable variables and measurement error. J. Mark. Res. 18 39–50. 10.1177/002224378101800104 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Frey B. S. (1993). Does monitoring increase work effort? The rivalry with trust and loyalty. Econ. Inq. 31 663–670. 10.1111/j.1465-7295.1993.tb00897.x [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Gagné M., Deci E. L. (2005). Self-determination theory and work motivation. J. Organ. Behav. 26 331–362. 10.1002/job.322 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Gagné M., Forest J., Vansteenkiste M., Crevier-Braud L., Van den Broeck A., Aspeli A. K., et al. (2015). The multidimensional work motivation scale: validation evidence in seven languages and nine countries. Eur. J. Work Organ. Psychol. 24 178–196. 10.1080/1359432x.2013.877892 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Gosling S. D., Rentfrow P. J., Swann W. B., Jr. (2003). A very brief measure of the big-five personality domains. J. Res. Pers. 37 504–528. 10.1177/1359105317720819 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Hair J. F., Black W. C., Babin B. J., Anderson R. E. (2014). Multivariate Data Analysis: Pearson New International Edition. Essex: Pearson Education Limited. [ Google Scholar ]
• Hannah S. T., Jennings P. L., Bluhm D., Peng A. C., Schaubroeck J. M. (2014). Duty orientation: theoretical development and preliminary construct testing. Organ. Behav. Hum. Decis. Process. 123 220–238. 10.1016/j.obhdp.2013.10.007 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Higgins E. T. (1997). Beyond pleasure and pain. Am. Psychol. 52 1280–1300. 10.1037//0003-066x.52.12.1280 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Higgins E. T. (1998). “ Promotion and prevention: regulatory focus as a motivational principle ,” in Advances in Experimental Social Psychology , Vol. 30 ed. Zanna M. P. (New York, NY: Academic Press; ), 1–46. 10.1016/s0065-2601(08)60381-0 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Higgins E. T. (2001). “ Promotion and prevention experiences: relating emotions to non-emotional motivational states ,” in Handbook of Emotions , ed. Forgas J. P. (London: Blackwell; ), 186–211. [ Google Scholar ]
• Hooper D., Coughlan J., Mullen M. (2008). Structural equation modelling: guidelines for determining model fit. Electron. J. Bus. Res. Methods 6 53–60. 10.1016/j.acap.2015.07.001 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Jackson T. (2000). Management ethics and corporate policy: a cross-cultural comparison. J. Manag. Stud. 37 349–369. 10.1111/1467-6486.00184 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kammeyer-Mueller J. D., Simon L. S., Rich B. L. (2012). The psychic cost of doing wrong: ethical conflict, divestiture socialization, and emotional exhaustion. J. Manag. 38 784–808. 10.1177/0149206310381133 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kaptein M. (2008a). Developing and testing a measure for the ethical culture of organizations: the corporate ethical virtues model. J. Organ. Behav. 29 923–947. 10.1002/job.520 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kaptein M. (2008b). Developing a measure of unethical behavior in the workplace: a stakeholder perspective. J. Manage. 3 4, 978–1008. [ Google Scholar ]
• Kaptein M. (2011). Understanding unethical behavior by unraveling ethical culture. Hum. Relat. 64 843–869. 10.1177/0018726710390536 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kaptein M. (2014). The effectiveness of ethics programs: the role of scope, composition, and sequence. J. Bus. Ethics 132 415–431. 10.1007/s10551-014-2296-3 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kish-Gephart J. J., Detert J. R., Treviño L. K., Edmondson A. C. (2009). Silenced by fear: the nature, sources, and consequences of fear at work. Res. Organ. Behav. 29 163–193. 10.1016/j.riob.2009.07.002 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kish-Gephart J. J., Harrison D. A., Treviño L. K. (2010). Bad apples, bad cases, and bad barrels: meta-analytic evidence about sources of unethical decisions at work. J. Appl. Psychol. 95 1–31. 10.1037/a0017103 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Lerner J. S., Tetlock P. E. (1999). Accounting for the effects of accountability. Psychol. Bull. 125 255–275. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Martin K. D., Cullen J. B. (2006). Continuities and extensions of ethical climate theory: a meta-analytic review. J. Bus. Ethics 69 175–194. 10.1007/s10551-006-9084-7 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Mayer D. M. (2014). “ A review of the literature on ethical climate and culture ,” in The Oxford Handbook of Organizational Climate and Culture , eds Schneider B., Karen M. B. (New York, NY: Oxford University Press; ), 415–440. [ Google Scholar ]
• Miceli M. P., Near J. P., Dworkin T. M. (2008). Whistleblowing in Organizations. New York, NY: Routledge. [ Google Scholar ]
• Morrison E. W. (2014). Employee voice and silence. Annu. Rev. Organ. Psychol. Organ. Behav. 1 173–197. [ Google Scholar ]
• Morrison E. W., Milliken F. J. (2000). Organizational silence: a barrier to change and development in a pluralistic world. Acad. Manage. Rev. 25 706–725. 10.5465/amr.2000.3707697 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• OECD (2009). Towards a Sound Integrity Framework: Instruments, Processes, Structures and Conditions for Implementation. Paris: OECD Publications. [ Google Scholar ]
• Ordóñez L. D., Schweitzer M. E., Galinsky A. D., Bazerman M. H. (2009). Goals gone wild: the systematic side effects of overprescribing goal setting. Acad. Manage. Perspect. 23 6–16. 10.5465/amp.2009.37007999 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Örtqvist D., Wincent J. (2006). Prominent consequences of role stress: a meta-analytic review. Int. J. Stress Manag. 13 399–422. 10.1016/j.pnpbp.2018.11.003 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Paine L. S. (1994). Managing for organizational integrity. Harv. Bus. Rev. 72 106–117. [ Google Scholar ]
• Pitesa M., Thau S. (2013). Masters of the universe: how power and accountability influence self-serving decisions under moral hazard. J. Appl. Psychol. 98 550–558. 10.1037/a0031697 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Ruiz P., Ruiz C., Martínez R. (2011). Improving the “leader–follower” relationship: top manager or supervisor? The ethical leadership trickle-down effect on follower job response. J. Bus. Ethics 99 587–608. 10.1007/s10551-010-0670-3 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Ruiz-Palomino P., Linuesa-Langreo J. (2018). Implications of person–situation interactions for machiavellians’ unethical tendencies: the buffering role of managerial ethical leadership. Eur. Manag. J. 36 243–253. 10.1016/j.emj.2018.01.004 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Ruiz-Palomino P., Martínez-Cañas R. (2014). Ethical culture, ethical intent, and organizational citizenship behavior: the moderating and mediating role of person–organization fit. J. Bus. Ethics 120 95–108. 10.1007/s10551-013-1650-1 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Schwartz M. S. (2001). The nature of the relationship between corporate codes of ethics and behavior. J. Bus. Ethics 32 247–262. [ Google Scholar ]
• Schwartz M. S. (2004). Effective corporate codes of ethics: perceptions of code users. J. Bus. Ethics 55 321–341. 10.1007/s10551-004-2169-2 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Schweitzer M. E., Ordóñez L., Douma B. (2004). Goal setting as a motivator of unethical behavior. Acad. Manage. J. 47 422–432. 10.2307/20159591 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Schwieren C., Weichselbaumer D. (2010). Does competition enhance performance or cheating? A laboratory experiment. J. Econ. Psychol. 31 241–253. 10.1016/j.joep.2009.02.005 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Snell R. S. (1999). Obedience to authority and ethical dilemmas in Hong Kong companies. Bus. Ethics Q. 9 507–526. 10.5840/10.2307/3857514 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Stevens B. (2008). Corporate ethical codes: effective instruments for influencing behavior. J. Bus. Ethics 78 601–609. 10.1007/s10551-007-9370-z [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Stimmler D., Tanner C. (2019). “ Preventing wrongdoing and promoting ethical conduct: a regulatory focus approach to corporate ethical culture ,” in A Research Agenda for Economic Psychology , eds Gangl K., Kirchler E. (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing; ), 15–25. [ Google Scholar ]
• Suar D., Khuntia R. (2010). Influence of personal values and value congruence on unethical practices and work behavior. J. Bus. Ethics 97 443–460. 10.1007/s10551-010-0517-y [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Sutherland E. H. (1983). White Collar Crime: The Uncut Version. New Haven: Yale University Press. [ Google Scholar ]
• Tanner C., Brügger A., van Schie S., Lebherz C. (2010). Actions speak louder than words: benefits of ethical behaviors of leaders. J. Psychol. 218 225–233. 10.1027/0044-3409/a000032 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Treviño L. K., Butterfield K. D., McCabe D. L. (1998). The ethical context in organizations: influences on employee attitudes and behaviors. Bus. Ethics Q. 8 447–476. 10.5840/10.2307/3857431 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Treviño L. K., Weaver G. R., Gibson D. G., Toffler B. L. (1999). Managing ethics and legal compliance: what works and what hurts. Calif. Manage. Rev. 41 131–151. 10.2307/41165990 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Tyler T. R., Blader S. L. (2005). Can business effectively regulate employee conduct? The antecedents of rule following in work settings. Acad. Manage. J. 48 1143–1158. 10.5465/amj.2005.19573114 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Van Yperen N. W., Hamstra M. R. W., van der Klauw M. (2011). To win, or not to lose, at any cost: the impact of achievement goals on cheating. Br. J. Manag. 22 5–15. [ Google Scholar ]
• Verhezen P. (2010). Giving voice in a culture of silence. From a culture of compliance to a culture of integrity. J. Bus. Ethics 96 187–206. 10.1177/0141076818815509 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Victor B., Cullen J. B. (1987). A theory and measure of ethical climate in organizations. Res. Corporate Soc. Perform. Policy. 9 51–71. [ Google Scholar ]
• Victor B., Cullen J. B. (1988). The organizational bases of ethical work climates. Adm. Sci. Q. 33 101–125. [ Google Scholar ]
• Weaver G. R., Treviño L. K. (1999). Compliance and values oriented ethics programs: influences on employees’ attitudes and behavior. Bus. Ethics Q. 9 315–335. 10.5840/10.2307/3857477 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Weaver G. R., Trevino L. K., Cochran P. L. (1999). Corporate ethics programs as control systems: influences of executive commitment and environmental factors. Acad. Manage. J. 42 41–57. 10.5465/256873 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Webb W. N. (2012). Ethical culture and the value-based approach to integrity management: a case study of the department of correctional services. Public Admin. Dev. 32 96–108. 10.1002/pad.1602 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Welsh D. T., Ordóñez L. D. (2014). The dark side of consecutive high performance goals: linking goal setting, depletion, and unethical behavior. Organ. Behav. Hum. Decis. Process. 123 79–89. 10.1016/j.obhdp.2013.07.006 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Wheaton B., Muthen B., Alwin D. F., Summers G. F. (1977). Assessing reliability and stability in panel models. Sociol. Methodol. 8 84–136. [ Google Scholar ]
• Wieland J., Steinemeyer R., Grüninger S. (2014). Handbuch Compliance-Management. Konzeptionelle Grundlagen, praktische Erfolgsfaktoren, globale Herausforderungen. [Handbook Compliance Management. Conceptual Basics, Practical Success Factors, Global Challenges.]. Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag. [ Google Scholar ]
• Zuber F., Kaptein M. (2014). Painting with the same brush? Surveying unethical behavior in the workplace using self-reports and observer-reports. J. Bus. Ethics 125 401–432. 10.1007/s10551-013-1920-y [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]

• Plan Your Studies
• Study Programs
• Universities
• Requirements
• Living in Germany
• Accommodation
• Statistics & News

German Culture: Facts, Customs and Traditions

Known as Deutschland to the locals, Germany is more than just a country – it’s a place of poets, thinkers, and plenty of Gemütlichkeit (‘coziness, friendliness, and good cheer’)! Its cultural heritage is a blend of influences that have evolved over centuries, from its days as a significant part of the Holy Roman Empire to its current status as one of the world’s economic powerhouses.

With a population of 84.6 million, Germany is a melting pot of cultures, where Germans and minorities of other nationalities coexist harmoniously, sharing common values and enjoying lively festivities and cherished traditions.

Below, we will share more about German culture, which dates back to the beginning of the first millennium. Over time, the culture has evolved, influenced by historical events that have shaped not only Germany but the entire European continent.

But before we do so, here are some quick facts about Germany:

Quick Facts

• Known as Deutschland in German, Germany has a population of approximately 84.6 million people.
• Germany is a federal parliamentary republic and comprises 16 federal states, each with its own distinct culture, traditions, and governance.
• The main language is German, and the dominant religion is Christianity.
• Germany’s capital is Berlin, but Hamburg, Munich, and Cologne are also among the biggest cities in Germany.

Some common stereotypes about Germans include their love for beer (which is true), their reputation for being hardworking and punctual (also true), and their affinity for cars (Audi, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen, Porsche, to name a few, are manufactured here so that’s kind of a given, no?) 😊

In Germany, German is the primary language spoken by about 95% of the population. Additionally, many people in the country speak German as their second language.

Study at GISMA University of Applied Sciences

Be one step ahead with a globally recognised college in Germany!

While there are regional dialects like Bavarian and Saxon, the German state officially recognizes four minority languages:

• Upper and Lower Sorbian
• North and Saterland Frisian

Due to a significant immigrant population, you can also hear various other languages, such as Turkish, Kurdish, Ukrainian, Russian, Arabic, Romanian, Albanian, etc., spoken by different communities. This linguistic diversity reflects Germany’s multicultural society.

According to the 2024 IPSOS survey, religion in Germany is diverse. Christianity is the predominant faith, embraced by 47% of the population, while Islam represents 4%.

About 5% adhere to other religions, and 9% prefer not to disclose their affiliation. Notably, 35% identify as having no religion or describe themselves as agnostic.

Despite the decline in traditional religious affiliation, Germany’s cultural landscape remains steeped in religious traditions and practices, observed through holidays like Christmas and Easter.

Cuisine & Food

German food culture is all about hearty and comforting ingredients, with succulent meats like pork and sausages often starring in dishes such as Bratwurst or Schweinshaxe. These are often paired with German side dishes such as potatoes, Sauerkraut (fermented cabbage), or Spaetzle (soft egg noodles).

Cabbage, dairy products, and an array of spices and herbs add depth to flavors, while rich gravies and sauces elevate the dishes. Beer often plays a role in cooking, enhancing the taste of dishes like beer-marinated Sauerbraten.

Let’s not forget of Germany’s love affair with bread and pretzels, with nearly 10,000 master bakeries sprinkled across the country. Just follow the delicious scent of freshly baked rye bread (Roggenbrot), whole wheat rye bread (Vollkornbrot), rolls (Brötchen), or small pastries (Kleingebäck) to find them.

For dessert, Germany offers sweet delights such as the famous Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte (Black Forest cake), Apfelstrudel (apple strudel), Lebkuchen (gingerbread-like cookies), and Stollen (Christmas fruit-bread).

German Drinking Culture

In Germany, beer is the undisputed king of beverages, with countless varieties ranging from pilsners to wheat beers. To put it in perspective, a staggering 6.5 million liters were consumed in just 18 days during the Oktoberfest beer festival from September 16 to October 3, 2023.

Germany also boasts a rich tradition of wine production, particularly in regions like the Mosel Valley, known for its Rieslings. If you’re into spirits, you’ve likely heard of Jägermeister, a well-known herbal liqueur.

For those seeking something non-alcoholic, don’t miss the refreshing Apfelschorle, a mix of apple juice and sparkling water, or Germany’s quality coffee culture.

History and Heritage

Germany’s rich history is marked by pivotal moments and events that shaped it. It all begins with the Holy Roman Empire, a medieval powerhouse that laid the foundation for modern Germany. The 16th century witnessed Martin Luther’s Protestant Reformation, reshaping religious beliefs across Europe.

The devastating Thirty Years’ War was a destructive period for the nation, while the Enlightenment period fostered intellectual growth, led by luminaries like Immanuel Kant. The 1848 Revolution set the stage for a united Germany. However, World War II cast a dark shadow, leading to division and immense suffering, commemorated today at the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin.

The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 symbolized reunification and the end of the Cold War, an event celebrated at iconic sites like the Checkpoint Charlie Museum and the East Side Gallery.

With over 64,000 new book titles published in 2022 in Germany, reading is a cherished pastime for many Germans. The country is also home to the Frankfurt Book Fair—the world’s largest trade fair for books, attracting publishers and literary enthusiasts from around the globe.

Plus, did you know the first-ever magazine was printed in German? It was called the Erbauliche Monaths-Unterredungen and was issued from 1663 to 1668.

German authors have given us timeless classics like Goethe’s “Faust” and “The Sorrows of Young Werther,” Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis” and “The Trial,” and Mann’s “The Magic Mountain” and “Death in Venice.” Hermann Hesse’s “Siddhartha” and “Steppenwolf” are also celebrated classics.

Germany is a hub for philosophical discourse and exploration, boasting influential thinkers such as Immanuel Kant, who emphasized reason during the Enlightenment.

The country played a vital role in German Idealism with figures like Hegel. Existentialism found expression through Martin Heidegger, while Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels developed Marxism, revolutionizing political philosophy.

The Frankfurt School’s critical theory explored culture and society, while phenomenology, led by Edmund Husserl, examined consciousness.

Music and Dance

Traditional music and dance are deeply rooted in German culture. Lively folk tunes and energetic dances like the Schuhplattler and Ländler have been passed down through generations. The sounds of accordions, clarinets, and tubas fill the air at festivals and gatherings, where locals come together to celebrate their heritage through music and movement.

Classical music and opera have long been esteemed art forms in Germany, with legendary composers like Ludwig van Beethoven, Johann Sebastian Bach, and Richard Wagner calling the country home. Concert halls and opera houses such as the Berlin Philharmonic and the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg provide a stage for these timeless masterpieces.

In Germany, modern music spans various genres, from electronic beats and catchy pop tunes to gritty rock anthems. Berlin, in particular, is known for its techno scene.

Germany has been home to renowned artists throughout history, such as Albrecht Dürer, Caspar David Friedrich, and Gerhard Richter. Some of Dürer’s famous works include “The Knight, Death, and the Devil” and “Self-Portrait at 28.” Friedrich’s iconic painting, “Wanderer above the Sea of Fog,” captured the Romantic movement. Richter, a contemporary artist, is known for his versatility and works like “1024 Colours”.

Germany has also birthed influential art movements like the Bauhaus, Expressionism, and Dadaism, which revolutionized design and challenged artistic norms. These contributions have left a lasting impact on the global art scene.

Architecture

Germany’s diverse architecture reflects its rich history, with landmarks like palaces, castles, and cathedrals serving as reminders of its past. From ancient Roman structures to pre-Romanesque churches like the Abbey Church of Saint Michael, each building tells a story of its era.

During the Romanesque period, impressive cathedrals, including the iconic Cologne Cathedral, were constructed across the country. The Renaissance brought forth majestic castles and palaces like Heidelberg Castle, while the Baroque era left behind remarkable buildings such as the Wurzburg Residence.

Notable landmarks like the Semper Opera in Dresden and the Ulm Cathedral showcase the diversity of architectural styles in Germany. In the modern era, landmarks like the Einstein Tower and Berlin Modernism Housing Estates highlight the country’s architectural advancements.

Fashion and Clothing

Germans generally opt for casual and comfortable attire in their daily lives, favoring jeans, t-shirts, and sneakers. However, they tend to dress more formally on special occasions, leaning towards classic and conservative styles.

Each region in Germany has its unique traditional costumes, such as Bavaria’s Lederhosen for men (leather trousers ending just above the knee) and the Dirndl dress for women (featuring a bodice, blouse, full skirt, and an apron). These traditional outfits are commonly worn during carnivals and festivals.

In cities like Berlin, known for its thriving fashion industry, you’ll discover a vibrant mix of high-end boutiques and trendy street fashion, with Berlin’s fashion scene renowned for its avant-garde and edgy style.

Holidays and Traditions

Holidays in Germany combine religious, cultural, and national observances. There are nine public holidays celebrated nationwide , each with its own significance and traditions:

• New Year’s Day (Neujahrstag). January 1st marks the beginning of the new year, celebrated with fireworks, parties, and family gatherings.
• Good Friday (Karfreitag). Observed on the Friday before Easter Sunday, it commemorates the crucifixion of Jesus Christ with church services and quiet reflection.
• Easter Monday (Ostermontag). The day after Easter Sunday, known for family gatherings, Easter egg hunts, and festive meals.
• Labour Day (Tag der Arbeit). Celebrated on May 1st, it honors workers’ rights with demonstrations, rallies, and public events.
• Ascension Day (Christi Himmelfahrt). 40 days after Easter Sunday, it marks Jesus Christ’s ascension into heaven, observed with church services and family gatherings.
• Whit Monday (Pfingstmontag). The day after Pentecost, known for picnics, outdoor activities, and spending time with family and friends.
• Day of German Unity (Tag der Deutschen Einheit). On October 3rd each year, Germans celebrate the reunification of East and West Germany in 1990. It’s marked with patriotic events nationwide, including a three-day festival in Berlin around Platz der Republik and the Brandenburg Gate.
• Christmas Day (Weihnachtstag). December 25th is a religious holiday celebrated with family gatherings, gift-giving, and festive meals.
• Boxing Day (Zweiter Weihnachtstag). December 26th is a day for relaxation and spending time with loved ones, often marked by leisure activities and outings.

Additionally, there are regional holidays celebrated only in specific states or regions, such as Epiphany (Heilige Drei Könige), Corpus Christi (Fronleichnam), Reformation Day (Reformationstag), and All Saints’ Day (Allerheiligen).

Sports and Leisure

Germany’s sports scene is incredibly diverse, catering to a wide range of interests and passions. Undoubtedly, football (soccer) reigns supreme as the nation’s favorite sport, with the Bundesliga drawing massive crowds and fervent support. However, basketball, handball, volleyball, tennis, ice hockey, and athletics also enjoy significant popularity.

In 2017, Germany had approximately 90,000 sports clubs and 27.4 million club memberships, with 33.2% of the population actively participating in these organizations, according to a DOSB survey .

Beyond organized sports, outdoor activities such as hiking, cycling, and skiing are widely enjoyed, thanks to the country’s beautiful landscapes and well-developed infrastructure. Transportation-wise, as well, Germans are known to appreciate the simple pleasure of walking.

Festivals and Celebrations

Whether it’s a traditional folk festival or a modern cultural event, Germans love to come together to celebrate with music, food, and fun activities. Festivals often feature live music performances, delicious traditional cuisine, colorful parades, and lively street markets.

Here are some of the most popular festivals and events in Germany:

• Beethovenfest – Bonn. An annual celebration of classical music, Beethovenfest in Bonn honors Ludwig van Beethoven’s legacy with around 80 diverse events.
• Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale) – Berlin. Berlinale is a major global film festival in Berlin, showcasing international films and attracting industry professionals and film enthusiasts worldwide.
• Cannstatter Volksfest (Stuttgart Beer Festival) – Stuttgart. This traditional beer festival in Stuttgart is one of Germany’s largest, featuring beer tents, rides, and live music, akin to a mini Oktoberfest.
• Carnivals (Karneval/Fasching) – nationwide. Carnivals across Germany offer colorful parades, costumes, and festivities, each region with its unique traditions and celebrations. The largest and most famous carnival takes place in Cologne .
• Christmas Markets (Weihnachtsmärkte) – nationwide. Germany’s Christmas Markets are renowned for their festive ambiance, offering handicrafts, seasonal treats, and mulled wine. Among the most famous are those in Nuremberg, Dresden, and Munich.
• Easter Markets (Ostermärkte) – nationwide. Leading up to Easter, these markets feature handmade crafts and Easter-themed goods, providing a festive atmosphere for visitors. Berlin’s Easter Market at Alexanderplatz and Stuttgart’s Easter Market at Schlossplatz are popular destinations
• Oktoberfest – Munich. The world’s largest beer festival, Oktoberfest in Munich boasts large beer tents, Bavarian cuisine, and carnival rides, drawing millions of visitors annually.
• Reeperbahn Festival – Hamburg. One of Europe’s largest club festivals, the Reeperbahn Festival in Hamburg showcases diverse music acts alongside conferences and art exhibitions.
• Rhein in Flammen (Rhine in Flames) – multiple locations. This series of fireworks festivals along the Rhine River offers spectacular displays against historic backdrops, attracting crowds to various locations.
• Walpurgis Night (Walpurgisnacht) – Harz Mountains. Celebrated in the Harz Mountains, Walpurgis Night features bonfires and festivities to welcome spring, rooted in German folklore and tradition.

German Social Etiquette

From greetings to dining and gift-giving, it’s important to know the dos and don’ts when in Germany. Let’s explore the basics of how to be courteous in German society.

Greetings and Politeness

Whether you’re entering a shop, office, or someone’s home, offering a friendly “hello” or “Guten Tag” to acknowledge others is customary in Germany. However, initiating a conversation is not necessary in public spaces, as Germans are not big fans of small talk.

When it’s time to bid farewell, saying “Auf Wiedersehen” or “Tschüss” for goodbye is a courteous gesture.

Addressing people correctly is equally important in German social interactions. The language offers two forms of “you”: “du” and “Sie.” “Du” is informal, akin to addressing friends and family, while “Sie” is the formal option, used with strangers or to convey respect.

Using “bitte” (please) when making a request and “danke” (thank you) when expressing gratitude are not just polite; they are expected and appreciated in everyday exchanges.

German Work Culture

Work culture in Germany revolves around being on time, getting things done efficiently, and maintaining a professional demeanor. Quality and precision are highly regarded, especially in jobs where attention to detail matters

On average, people in Germany work around 40.5 hours per week, which is somewhere in the middle compared to other European countries. Germans treasure their personal time, making use of generous vacation days. All employees in Germany working a 5-day week are entitled to a minimum of 20 vacation days per year.

Gift-Giving

People in Germany exchange gifts on occasions like birthdays, Christmas, and special events. Wrapping and presentation matter, so a nicely wrapped gift is appreciated. However, when it comes to the actual gift, Germans would rather receive something modest and thoughtful rather than extravagant.

Flowers are a popular and well-received gift, especially when visiting someone’s home. In group settings, such as for birthdays, recipients often open gifts in front of others, so expressing gratitude is customary.

Dining Etiquette & Tipping

At home, dining in Germany is cozy and relaxed. The meal kicks off with a friendly “Guten Appetit” (enjoy your meal), and dishes are served family-style. It’s polite to wait for the host to start eating before you do. Afterward, a simple “Danke” (thank you) shows your appreciation.

As for dining out, you might wait to be seated in fancier places, but in casual spots, feel free to choose your table. When you’re ready to order, a raised hand or “Entschuldigung” (excuse me) gets the server’s attention. Payment? Both cash and cards work, but cash is more widely accepted. Tipping is appreciated but not mandatory; rounding up or leaving an extra 5-10% is common for good service.

If you’re invited to a German wedding, be sure to RSVP promptly when you get the invite – it’s a big help for the couple’s planning.  When it comes to dressing up, Germans lean towards formal attire. Ladies often go for dresses (just not in white), and men typically wear suits. If you’ve been to U.S. weddings, the style is quite similar.

It’s common to bring a thoughtful gift, often in the form of cash, to support the newlyweds as they start their lives together. During the festivities, embrace the lively atmosphere by raising your glass with a cheerful “Prost!” for toasts. And don’t be shy to hit the dance floor – Germans love to dance at weddings. When the festivities wind down, take a moment to personally thank the couple for inviting you.

Funerals are solemn (and highly regulated) rituals in Germany. Depending on the deceased’s and their family’s beliefs, the funeral can follow Christian or secular traditions. Christian funerals include a church service, often with an open casket, followed by burial or cremation. Secular funerals are more or less similar but without the religious elements.

Germans typically dress in dark and conservative clothing for funerals, so it’s advisable to do the same. If you want to offer condolences to the grieving family, a simple “Mein Beileid” (My condolences) is appropriate. Flowers are a common way to express sympathy; you can bring a wreath or bouquet to the funeral. During the service, maintain a quiet and respectful demeanor, ensuring your phone is on silent mode.

Public Behavior

Here are some points to consider when you’re out in public in Germany:

• Strong sense of community. Germans have a strong sense of community and look out for one another. If you spot lost items hanging from trees in Germany, it’s a thoughtful gesture by someone who found them, making it easier for the owner to retrieve them.
• Public transportation. When using public transportation , make sure to queue up and let people exit before boarding. Always buy a ticket and validate it before boarding trams, buses, or trains. Priority seats are reserved for those in need, so be ready to offer your seat.
• In public spaces and queues, Germans value order and quiet. Whether you’re waiting for a train or in a library, keep noise levels down and respect personal space. Noise levels are especially important in residential areas. Germans have specific quiet hours to ensure peaceful living, so keep the volume down, especially during evenings.
• Environmental consciousness is a way of life. Recycling is taken seriously in Germany, with specific bins for paper, plastic, glass, and more. Always recycle responsibly.
• Supermarket checkouts. Navigating supermarket checkouts in Germany is like a mini workout for your packing skills. Unlike some countries, there’s no dedicated bagger, so you’ll need to pack your items quickly into your own bags or reusable totes after they’re scanned. Don’t forget to have your own bags ready or purchase them at the store. Payment options include cash and cards.

Join 262,114 students interested in studying in Germany

Download The Guide

Quick Links

8 Steps to Study in Germany How To Apply To Study in Germany German Education System Requirements Universities in Germany International Programmes Financing Your Studies German Student Visa German Health Insurance Germany Blocked Account Learn German Guide German Cities Cost of Living

Latest News and Statistics

New study reveals high level of satisfaction among students at german universities, germany scholarships up by 3% in 2023 – 31,400 students benefited, indians overcome chinese as top source of international students in germany, over 3,800 university students in germany were under 18 in 2022, higher education in germany: key trends & statistics.

• Privacy Policy
• Cookie Policy

Top 200+ Engaging Culture Research Topics: Ideas to Explore

Culture is all about the beliefs, traditions, art, and ways of living that make up different groups of people worldwide. Cultural studies open up interesting paths for learning. Researchers can explore how people express themselves, their identity, and their interactions. 

Cultural research gives a view into our diverse world, whether studying traditions over time, how cultures mix, or the impacts of globalization. This blog lists the top 200+ engaging cultural research topics from varied topics and perspectives to excite researchers, students, and anyone interested in exploring questions that highlight human cultural diversity.

Studying culture covers art, stories, social rules, beliefs, and how communities shape their environments. By exploring cultural research, we gain insights into shared experiences, histories, and worldviews that unite people and cultural uniqueness. 

Researchers untangle complex threads weaving a culture’s identity and meaning through expressions like religion, language, food, and art.

As our world interconnects, understanding cultural differences grows important. Digging into these areas builds cross-cultural understanding, appreciates diverse views, and works towards inclusive societies. 

This blog explores potential research paths, encouraging scholars and students to take learning journeys highlighting the rich tapestry of human cultures.

How Does Culture Impact Various Aspects Of Society?

Table of Contents

Culture deeply affects nearly every part of society. It influences how we interact, build communities, govern, teach, create art, approach healthcare, and make economic choices. Understanding the role of culture is key to analyzing social issues and dynamics.

• Social Rules and Beliefs

Culture lays the foundation for the shared beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors that define what is considered okay or not okay within a society. It shapes gender roles, communication styles, concepts of privacy, rules of politeness, and moral principles.

• Family and Relatives

Cultural traditions largely decide family structures, parenting styles, marriage practices, and generational relationships. Rituals surrounding birth, becoming an adult, marriage, and death are deeply rooted in culture.

• Education Systems

Cultural contexts and education philosophies heavily influence the subjects taught, teaching methods, classroom setup, grading approaches, and even the idea of learning itself.

• Religious and Spiritual Beliefs

Culture and religion are closely linked, with faith and spiritual practices playing a profound role in an individual’s identity, worldview, ethics, and community connections.

• Art and Stories

Creative expression through art, music, dance, folklore, and literature reflects a culture’s collective identity, history, and artistic values passed down over generations.

• Food and Eating 

Food is intimately tied to culture, with food traditions, ingredients, cooking methods, and dining customs reflecting agricultural practices, values, and social hierarchies.

• Health and Medicine 

Cultural backgrounds shape attitudes towards physical and mental health, preferred treatment methods, views on the human body, and institutional structures around healthcare delivery.

By understanding how culture underpins so many areas of society, we gain critical insights into resolving conflicts, bridging gaps between communities, and creating policies and initiatives that resonate across all groups of people.

Topical Diversity in Culture Research

Cultural research covers various fascinating topics and angles that give us insight into human societies worldwide. Researchers explore everything from the arts and traditions to belief systems, languages, social structures, etc.

Exploring Various Sides of Culture

• Art and Creative Expression (music, dance, stories, visual arts, theater, etc.)
• Traditions and Customs (holidays, rituals, milestone celebrations, folk practices)
• Food and Eating Ways (ingredients, cooking methods, dining customs)
• Language and Communication Styles
• Clothing and Decorative Styles
• Social Rules and Value Systems
• Gender Roles and Family Structures
• Spiritual and Religious Beliefs
• Cultural Identity and Sense of Belonging

Different Ways to Study Culture

• On-the-Ground Research: Observing and documenting cultural practices and perspectives firsthand by living in the community
• Historical and Archaeological Study: Examining artifacts, records, and evidence to understand cultural evolution
• Comparing Cultures: Identifying similarities and differences across cultures.
• Sociological and Anthropological Views: Studying cultures through theoretical frameworks
• Mixed Methods: Combining insights from fields like psychology, linguistics, economics, and more
• Personal Stories and Oral Histories: Exploring culture through first-hand accounts and stories
• Digital Research: Researching cultures and communities online and in digital spaces

By considering the diverse topics and varied approaches, cultural researchers gain a multi-angle understanding of the rich tapestry of human experience worldwide.

Recommended Readings: “ Top 201+ Narrative Project Ideas To Spark Your Creativity! “.

Top 200+ Culture Research Topics For Students

Here is the list of the top 200+ culture research topics, provided in different categories; let’s look. 

Arts and Literature

• Evolution of modern art movements.
• Impact of digital technology on literature.
• Representation of gender in classical literature.
• Role of art in social change movements.
• Cultural significance of traditional folk music.
• Influence of literature on societal norms.
• The intersection of art and politics.
• Comparative analysis of different art forms.
• Cultural implications of street art.
• Depiction of war in literature and art.

Media and Communication

• Effects of social media on cultural identity.
• The portrayal of race and ethnicity in mainstream media.
• The role of memes in contemporary culture.
• Influence of advertising on consumer behavior.
• Evolution of journalism in the digital age.
• Cultural impact of reality TV shows.
• Representation of the LGBTQ+ community in media.
• Cultural appropriation in fashion and media.
• Role of censorship in shaping cultural narratives.
• The rise of streaming services and cultural consumption.

Language and Linguistics

• Evolution of slang and its impact on language.
• Language revitalization efforts and their effectiveness.
• Influence of colonialism on indigenous languages.
• Sociolinguistic variations in different cultures.
• Language acquisition in multicultural societies.
• Impact of globalization on language diversity.
• Language and identity formation.
• Cultural implications of bilingualism.
• Role of language in preserving cultural heritage.
• Linguistic relativity and cultural cognition.

Religion and Belief Systems

• Rituals and ceremonies in different religions.
• The role of religion in shaping moral values.
• Impact of globalization on religious practices.
• Interfaith dialogue and cultural understanding.
• Evolution of religious art and architecture.
• Influence of religion on political ideologies.
• Religious syncretism and cultural fusion.
• Sacred texts and their interpretation across cultures.
• Secularization and its effects on cultural norms.
• Religion and cultural conflicts throughout history.

History and Heritage

• Cultural impact of colonialism and imperialism.
• Oral history and its role in preserving culture.
• Cultural significance of historical monuments.
• Impact of migration on cultural identity.
• Evolution of family structures over time.
• Cultural exchange along ancient trade routes.
• Archaeological discoveries and cultural insights.
• Cultural legacy of ancient civilizations.
• Historical trauma and its effects on culture.
• Preservation of intangible cultural heritage.

Sociology and Anthropology

• Cultural differences in concepts of beauty.
• Social hierarchies and cultural stratification.
• Cultural perceptions of mental health.
• Gender roles and expectations in different cultures.
• Cultural aspects of food and culinary traditions.
• Rituals surrounding birth, marriage, and death.
• Cultural expressions of love and intimacy.
• Impact of globalization on cultural homogenization.
• Cultural practices related to education.
• Cross-cultural communication and misunderstandings.

Politics and Governance

• Cultural factors influencing voting behavior.
• Nationalism and its impact on cultural identity.
• Cultural diplomacy and soft power.
• Role of culture in international relations.
• Cultural policies and government funding.
• Indigenous rights and cultural preservation.
• Cultural dimensions of conflict resolution.
• Impact of authoritarian regimes on culture.
• Cultural movements and political activism.
• Cultural implications of refugee crises.

Technology and Innovation

• Cultural attitudes towards emerging technologies.
• Digital divides and cultural disparities.
• Cultural appropriation in technology design.
• Impact of AI on cultural production.
• Virtual reality and cultural experiences.
• Ethical considerations in technological advancements.
• Technological innovations in cultural preservation.
• Cultural resistance to technological change.
• Cultural implications of genetic engineering.
• Technological determinism and cultural evolution.

Education and Learning

• Culturally relevant pedagogy in education.
• Indigenous knowledge systems in education.
• Role of cultural competence in teaching.
• Cultural factors influencing learning styles.
• Education and cultural reproduction.
• Multicultural education and curriculum development.
• Cultural barriers to access education.
• Language diversity in educational settings.
• Cultural perspectives on childhood and adolescence.
• Impact of globalization on educational systems.

Identity and Diversity

• Intersectionality and cultural identity.
• Cultural assimilation versus cultural preservation.
• Cultural hybridity and identity negotiation.
• Cultural stereotypes and their impact.
• Cultural identity and belonging in diaspora communities.
• Cultural representations of disability.
• LGBTQ+ rights and cultural acceptance.
• Cultural dimensions of age and aging.
• Cultural perceptions of beauty standards.
• Ethnocentrism and cultural relativism.

Environment and Sustainability

• Indigenous perspectives on environmental stewardship.
• Cultural attitudes towards climate change.
• Impact of consumer culture on the environment.
• Traditional ecological knowledge and conservation.
• Cultural practices promoting sustainability.
• Environmental justice and cultural disparities.
• Cultural dimensions of food security.
• Indigenous land rights and cultural survival.
• Cultural influences on consumption patterns.
• Eco-tourism and cultural exchange.

Health and Wellness

• Cultural variations in healthcare practices.
• Traditional medicine and cultural beliefs.
• The stigma surrounding mental health in different cultures.
• Cultural factors influencing diet and nutrition.
• Cultural representations of illness and disability.
• Cultural rituals related to healing and well-being.
• Access to healthcare in diverse cultural contexts.
• Cultural attitudes towards body image and health.
• End-of-life care and cultural practices.
• Cultural barriers to health education and promotion.

Migration and Transnationalism

• Cultural adaptation and acculturation processes.
• Transnational communities and cultural exchange.
• Impact of remittances on cultural dynamics.
• Diaspora identities and cultural preservation.
• Cultural challenges faced by immigrants.
• Cultural hybridization in multicultural societies.
• Cultural dimensions of refugee resettlement.
• Transnational media and its cultural effects.
• Cultural nostalgia and longing in migrant communities.
• Cultural integration policies and their effectiveness.

Economics and Globalization

• Cultural dimensions of economic development.
• Globalization and cultural homogenization.
• Cultural branding and marketing strategies.
• Cultural industries and creative economies.
• Cultural value chains and commodification.
• Cultural entrepreneurship and innovation.
• Cultural tourism and economic impact.
• Intellectual property rights and cultural heritage.
• Global supply chains and cultural production.
• Cultural implications of income inequality.

Leisure and Recreation

• Cultural significance of sports and games.
• Festivals and celebrations across cultures.
• Cultural norms surrounding leisure activities.
• Tourism and cultural authenticity.
• Cultural representations in entertainment media.
• Indigenous forms of entertainment and recreation.
• Cultural rituals of relaxation and rejuvenation.
• Impact of technology on leisure habits.
• Cultural perspectives on outdoor recreation.
• The role of leisure in community building.

Family and Kinship

• Cultural variations in family structures.
• Cultural expectations of parenthood.
• Intergenerational transmission of cultural values.
• Cultural rituals surrounding marriage and partnership.
• Cultural attitudes towards child-rearing.
• Kinship systems and cultural identity.
• Cultural perceptions of caregiving.
• Family dynamics in multicultural households.
• Cultural practices related to eldercare.
• Cultural representations of family in media.

Urbanization and Urban Culture

• Cultural diversity in urban environments.
• Urbanization and the erosion of traditional culture.
• Cultural gentrification and displacement.
• Street art and graffiti as cultural expressions.
• Cultural communities within urban spaces.
• Urban legends and folklore.
• Cultural aspects of urban planning.
• Impact of migration on urban culture.
• Cultural revitalization projects in cities.
• Subcultures and countercultures in urban settings.

Governance and Policy

• Cultural rights and human rights discourse.
• Multiculturalism policies and their effectiveness.
• Cultural diplomacy in international relations.
• Cultural heritage preservation laws.
• Indigenous land rights and sovereignty.
• Cultural dimensions of public policy.
• Cultural sensitivity training in government.
• Cultural impact assessments in policy-making.
• Cultural representation in political institutions.
• Cultural heritage protection in conflict zones.

Memory and Commemoration

• Cultural memory and collective trauma.
• Commemorative practices and cultural identity.
• Museums and cultural representation.
• Oral history projects and cultural preservation.
• Memorialization of historical events.
• Cultural heritage sites and tourism.
• Digital archives and cultural heritage.
• Cultural monuments and their meanings.
• Cultural responses to historical revisionism.
• Rituals of remembrance in different cultures.

Cultural Capital and Social Mobility

• Cultural capital and its role in social stratification.
• Cultural barriers to upward mobility.
• Cultural capital and educational attainment.
• Cultural capital and access to resources.
• Cultural capital and employment opportunities.
• Cultural dimensions of social capital.
• Cultural capital and political participation.
• Cultural mobility and globalization.
• Intergenerational transmission of cultural capital.
• Cultural capital and urban development.
• Cultural capital and well-being outcomes.

These topics cover various cultural aspects and can be a starting point for further research and exploration.

Tips For Choosing the Right Culture Research Topic

Picking a good topic is super important when researching culture. The topic you choose decides what your whole project will be about. If you pick the wrong topic, you might get bored or not learn anything useful. 

But if you pick a cultural topic that interests you, your research will be more fun and valuable. With so many fascinating cultural issues, choosing just one to study can feel overwhelming. But by considering a few key points, you can find the perfect research topic that fits your interests, goals, and resources as a cultural researcher.

• Pick a topic you’re genuinely interested in and passionate about. Your enthusiasm will make the research process much more engaging.
• Consider cultural issues or phenomena that puzzle you, or you’ve personally experienced and want to understand better.
• Look for gaps in existing research on cultural topics. Identifying an understudied area can make your work more novel and valuable.
• Think about the practical applications of your research. Work that provides insights into reducing cultural misunderstandings or conflicts can greatly impact.
• Choose a topic that is narrow enough to explore in-depth within the scope of your project yet still broadly relevant.
• For a cross-cultural study, select cultures that provide an interesting contrast to compare and analyze.
• Ensure you have access to the necessary data sources, whether archival materials, interview subjects, survey populations, etc.
• Consider the ethical implications of your research, especially if studying vulnerable populations. Prioritize, not harm.

The right topic sparks your curiosity, fills a need, and is feasible to execute thoroughly and responsibly with your resources.

Trends To Come in Culture Research

Researchers are looking at lots of new and interesting cultural topics these days. Here are some of the latest areas scholars are studying when it comes to culture:

Culture and Technology Research Topics

• How social media is changing cultural values and norms
• Comparing how different cultures use and adopt new technologies
• Whether technology helps preserve cultural traditions or makes them disappear
• The rise of global digital cultures and subcultures online
• Cultural impacts of artificial intelligence and automation

Environmental Culture Research Topics

• What indigenous cultures know about living sustainably in the environment
• How climate change is affecting cultural practices and traditions
• Where environmental justice and cultural identity overlap
• The role culture plays in environmental-friendly (or unfriendly) behaviors
• Different cultural views on humanity’s relationship with nature

Contemporary Cultural Issues Research Topics

• Cultural experiences of immigrants, migrants, and refugees
• How popular culture (movies, TV, music, etc.) shapes cultural attitudes
• The cultural side of social movements like #MeToo, Black Lives Matter, LGBTQ+ rights
• Impacts of globalization on mixing and blending cultures
• How culture factors into political conflicts and clashing worldviews

These new and emerging cultural topics give researchers a chance to learn things that are very relevant to today’s world.

How can I choose the right culture research topic?

Consider your interests, societal relevance, and the availability of resources. Choose a topic that resonates with you and contributes to existing discourse.

Are there any ethical considerations in cultural research?

Researchers must respect cultural sensitivities, obtain informed consent, and avoid misrepresenting or exploiting cultural practices.

Can I conduct cross-cultural research as an undergraduate student?

Absolutely! Cross-cultural research offers valuable insights and can be conducted at various academic levels with proper guidance and supervision.

Similar Articles

How To Do Homework Fast – 11 Tips To Do Homework Fast

Homework is one of the most important parts that have to be done by students. It has been around for…

How to Write an Assignment Introduction – 6 Best Tips

In essence, the writing tasks in academic tenure students are an integral part of any curriculum. Whether in high school,…

German Essay Topics for Everyone Interested in the Language

Octoberfest, shiny cars…There are dozens of stuff we love about Germany! Here are some literary topics for German Essay writing that you may find interesting:

• Poetics and Polemics of Heine’s Bader von Lucca: The Heine Platen Conflict
• The Term and Concept of Symbolism in Literary History of German
• Rilke’s “Blaue Hortensie”: Cycling into the Eternal
• “They Wonder to Which Sex I Belong”: The Historical Roots of the Modern Lesbian Identity
• Realism in Language and Music: Kurt Weill’s Street Scene
• Brahms’ German Requiem: Conceptions of the Mass
• Causes and Consequences of Hitler Becoming Fuhrer
• Controversy, Complaint, and Criticism: Thomas Mann and the Proponents of Inner Emigration
• Conference Proposal: a Summer’s Tale, a Winter’s Dream
• Caspar David Friedrich and the Subject of Landscape by Joseph Leo Koerner
• Imagery and Allegory in Dante’s Inferno: A Virgilian Perspective
• Classification of Modern Germanic Languages and their Distribution
• The Development of the German Verb Classes
• Dramatic Irony and Meta-Drama as a Vehicle for Social Criticism in Aristophanes, Plautus, and Goethe
• Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact
• Why Was Adolf Hitler So Popular among the Germans?
• German Culture in the Past and Present: Are They Similar?
• Metafiction and the Modern German Novel
• Expression and Character in the Movements of Cesare from Wiene’s Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

If you were assigned a German essay, don’t fall into panic. Our editors know everything about thesis statement, opening paragraph, conclusion, and proving your point. Thus, it will be much easier for you to compose a well-written German essay if you ask us for editing assistance. And even though essays in a number of foreign languages are built differently than English essay, our experts know that German writing actually resembles English equivalents. Now you can breathe out freely.

Good news is that a German essay is not necessarily supposed to be written in German. If you’re assigned to write an essay about Germany and its culture, our editors know that it is structured similarly to the essays you have accomplished before. If you’re not sure you’ll be able to organize paragraphs properly and state your point of view, our specialists will check your essay and ensure your German essay contains all those features. While writing a German essay drives you crazy, they’ll ensure you included an opening paragraph with an argument, three following paragraphs with the supportive statements and relevant examples, and a conclusion that furthers and supports your argument.

AcademicHelp.net to Help You Craft an Essay to the Point

Even though the essays about Germany and typical English essays are similar in structure, German writing – just like German people – is prone to be more specific and blunt. That’s why students are not sure if their pieces are up to the existing standards. Our editors are there to find out if you say things to the point in your essay. They will help you get the things together.

Have you completed your assignment already? Our experts are available twenty-four hours a day, which means you can place your order anytime you need and get a prompt reply. We will listen to your requirements, understand what your tutor is expecting to receive from you, and find the most suitable solutions to your issue. We will check the piece from A to Z and make it up to the academic standards.

Check out the examples of the titles in German literature, politics, and art that may come handy to you. If you need help with choosing the title or writing a German essay, address our online service that works seven days a week without breaks. If you are a school graduate, college student or doing MBA, refer all your academic writing assignments to us. We will do solid research for you, provide you with a plan to follow so that you could craft a top-notch piece on your own. It is easy to be a happy student and succeed in education with our good services. Our skilled UK and US writers will share their knowledge and do it with a high level of proficiency. If you need a term paper or creative writing piece to be edited, feel free to check out a sample of work from the chosen writer or ask him/her to proofread your paper. We are sure you will be satisfied with our performance.

Remember Me

What is your profession ? Student Teacher Writer Other

Forgotten Password?

Username or Email

Sociology of Culture Research Paper Topics

The sociology of  culture  and, the related, cultural sociology concerns the systematic analysis of culture, usually understood as the ensemble of symbolic codes used by a members of a society, as it is manifested in the society. Culture in the sociological field is analyzed as the ways of thinking and describing, the ways of acting, and the  material  objects that together shape a people’s way of life. Contemporary sociologists’ approach to culture is often divided between a “sociology of culture” and “cultural sociology”—the terms are similar, though not interchangeable. The sociology of culture is an older concept, and considers some topics and objects as more-or-less “cultural” than others.

70 Sociology of Culture Research Paper Topics

• Acculturation
• Art and society
• Author/Auteur
• Body and cultural sociology
• Celebrity culture
• Censorship and the regulation of expression
• Civilizing process
• Consumption of music
• Consumption rituals
• Consumption, mass consumption, and consumer culture
• Cultural capital
• Cultural critique
• Cultural imperialism
• Cultural relativism
• Cultural reproduction
• Cultural resistance
• Cultural studies
• Cultural studies in Britain
• Cultural tourism
• Culture and economy
• Culture and the state
• Culture industries
• Culture jamming
• Culture: conceptual clarifications
• Cyberculture
• Disneyization
• Elite culture
• Emotion: cultural aspects
• Fans and fan culture
• Fantasy city
• Gender and culture
• Highbrow/lowbrow
• Ideological hegemony
• Idioculture
• Information society
• Marginal art
• Mass culture and mass society
• Material culture
• Multiculturalism
• Mythogenesis
• Nature and culture
• Organizations and culture
• Popular culture
• Popular culture and leisure
• Popular culture forms
• Popular culture icons
• Postmodern culture
• Production of culture
• Science across cultures
• Simulacra and simulation
• Simulation and virtuality
• Sociocultural relativism
• Sociology of taste
• Symbolic classification
• Video Games
• What is culture?
• Youth culture and consumption

Definition of Culture

To produce a definition of culture, one can examine the concept in the abstract, that is, explore the concept theoretically from a variety of standpoints and then justify the definition that emerges through deductive logic. Or one can explore how the concept is used in practice, that is, describe how sociologists, both individually and collectively, define culture in the research process and analyze how they inductively construct a shared definition. This essay takes the latter collective-inductive approach to defining culture. Such an approach is inherently sociological and does not presume to produce an independent definition for the field, rather it seeks to document how successful participants in the field have been in producing a shared definition for themselves. To produce such a ”working” definition of culture, one starts by examining the social science roots that have helped determine the current status of the sociology of culture.

Academic Writing, Editing, Proofreading, And Problem Solving Services

Get 10% off with 24start discount code.

The focus on culture in sociology has flourished over the past twenty years, as evidenced by the fact that the Culture Section in the American Sociological Association has become one of the largest and is still one of the fastest-growing sections in the discipline. The growth of interest in culture is also nicely documented by the number of survey review articles and books written during this period (e.g., Denzin 1996; Crane 1994, 1992; Hall and Neitz 1993; Munch and Smelser 1992; Peterson 1990, 1989, 1979; Alexander and Seidman 1990; Wuthnow and Witten 1988; Blau 1988; Mukerji and Schudson 1986). As is clear from the reviews, interest in cultural analysis has grown significantly. The focus on culture in all spheres of research has increased tremendously; and culture is now readily accepted as a level of explanation in its own right. Even in traditionally materialist-oriented research arenas, such as stratification and Marxist studies, cultural activities and interests are not treated as subordinate to economic explanations in current research (e.g., Halle 1994; Nelson and Grossberg 1988; Bourdieu 1984; Williams 1981, 1977). Cultural studies and analysis have become one of the most fertile areas in sociology.

The rapid growth in the focus on culture and cultural explanation has produced some definitional boundary problems. The term culture has beenused in contemporary sociological research to describe everything from elite artistic activities (Becker 1982) to the values, styles, and ideology of day-today conduct (Swidler 1986). Along with art and everyday conduct, included among the ”mixed bag” of research that takes place under the auspices of the sociology of culture is work in science (Latour 1987; Star 1989), religion (Neitz 1987), law (Katz 1988), media (Schudson 1978; Gitlin 1985; Tuchman 1978), popular culture (Peterson 1997; Weinstein 1991; Chambers 1986), and work organization (Fine 1996; Lincoln and Kalleberg 1990).

With such an extensive variety in the empirical focus of research in culture, the question for many participants in the field is how to translate this eclecticism into a coherent research field. This goal has not yet been reached, but while a coherent concept of culture is still evolving and the boundaries of the current field of sociology of culture are still fluid and expanding, it is possible to explore how different types of researchers in the social sciences, both currently and historically, have approached the concept of culture. In this inventory process, a better understanding of the concept of culture will emerge, that is, what different researchers believe the concept of culture includes, what the concept excludes, and how the distinction between categories has been made. This essay will provide a historical overview of the two major debates on the appropriate focus and limitations of the definition of culture, and then turn to the contemporary social context in an effort to clarify the issues underlying the current concept of culture.

The Culture-Social Structure Debate

From the turn of the century until the 1950s, the definition of culture was embroiled in a dialogue that sought to distinguish the concepts of culture and social structure. This distinction was a major bone of contention among social scientists, most noticeably among anthropologists divided between the cultural and social traditions of anthropology. Researchers in the cultural or ethnological tradition, such as Franz Boas (1896/1940), Bronislaw Malinowski (1927, 1931), Margaret Mead (1928, 1935), Alfred Kroeber (1923/1948, 1952), and Ruth Benedict (1934) believed culture was the central concept in social science. ”Culturalists”maintained that culture is primary in guiding all patterns of behavior, including who interacts with whom, and should therefore be given priority in theories about the organization of society. This position was countered by researchers in the structural tradition, such as A.R. Radcliffe-Brown ([1952] 1961) and E. E. Evans-Pritchard (1937, 1940) from the British school of social anthropology, and Claude Levi-Strauss ([1953] 1963) in French structuralism. ”Structuralists” contended that social structure was the primary focus of social science and should be given priority in theories about society because social structure (e.g., kinship) determines patterns of social interaction and thought. Both schools had influential and large numbers of adherents.

The culturalists took a holistic approach to the concept of culture. Stemming from Edward Tylor’s classic definition, culture was ”. . . that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society” ([1871] 1924, p.1). This definition leaves little out, but the orientation of the late nineteenth century intended the concept of culture to be as inclusive as possible. Culture is what distinguishes man as a species from other species. Therefore, culture consists of all that is produced by human collectivities, that is, all of social life. The focus here stems from the ”nature” vs. ”nurture” disputes common during this period. Anything that differentiates man’s accomplishments from biological and evolutionary origins was relevant to the concept of culture. That includes religion as well as kinship structures, language as well as nation-states.

Following Boas, the study of culture was used to examine different types of society. All societies have cultures, and variations in cultural patterns helped further the argument that culture, not nature, played the most significant role in governing human behavior. In addition, the cultural variances observed in different societies helped break down the nineteenth-century anthropological notion of ”the psychic unity of mankind, the unity of human history, and the unity of culture” (Singer 1968, p. 527). The pluralistic and relativistic approaches to culture that followed emphasized a more limited, localized conception. Culture was what produced a distinctive identity for a society, socializing members for greater internal homogeneity and identifying outsiders. Culture is thus treated as differentiating concept, providing recognition factors for internal cohesion and external discrimination.

Although this tradition of ethnographic research on culture tended to be internal and localized, what is termed an ”emic” approach in cognitive anthropology (Goodenough 1956), by the 1940s there emerged a strong desire among many anthropologists to develop a comparative ”etic” approach to culture, that is, construct a generalized theory of cultural patterns. In the comparison of hundreds of ethnographies written in this period, A.L. Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn sought to build such a general definition of culture. They wrote, Culture consists of patterns, explicit and implicit, of and for behavior acquired and transmitted by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievement of human groups, including their embodiments in artifacts; the essential core of culture consists of traditional (i.e., historically derived and selected) ideas and especially their attached values; culture systems may, on the one hand, be considered as products of action, on the other as conditioning elements of further action ([1952] 1963, p. 181).

Milton Singer (1968) characterized this ”pattern theory” definition as a condensation of what most American anthropologists in the 1940s and 1950s called culture. It includes behavior, cultural objects, and cognitive predispositions as part of the concept, thus emphasizing that culture is both a product of social action and a process that guides future action. The pattern theory stated simply that behavior follows a relatively stable routine, from the simplest levels of custom in dress and diet to more complex levels of organization in political, economic, and religious life. The persistence of specific patterns is variable in different arenas and different societies, but larger configurations tend to be more stable, changing incrementally unless redirected by external forces. In addition, the theory emphasized that the culture from any given society can be formally described, that is, it can be placed in formal categories representing different spheres of social life to facilitate comparison between societies. As such, universal patterns of culture can be constructed.

In comparison, anthropological structuralists in this period conceive of culture less comprehensively. The structuralists’ concept of culture is made distinct through emphasis on a new concept of social structure. Largely through the efforts of Radcliffe-Brown, a theory emerged that argues social structure is more appropriately represented by a network or system of social relations than a set of norms. The structuralist argument is intended to clarify how actors in a society actively produce and are socially produced by their cultural context. By distinguishing the actors and interaction in a social system from the behavioral norms, structuralists seek to establish a referent for social structure that is analytically independent of the culture and artifacts produced in that system. The production of culture is thus grounded clearly in an international framework. Norms of interaction are also produced by interacting participants, but the question of causal primacy between culture and social structure can be considered separately. The initial effort here is simply not to reify the origins of culture.

The exact relationship of culture and social structure, however, becomes the central issue of the structuralist/culturalist debate. For example, how to identify the boundaries of a society one is researching is problematic when the society is not an isolate. Structuralists tend to give social relations, that is, the extent of a network, priority in identifying boundaries, while culturalists focus on the extent of particular types of cultural knowledge or practices. Since both elements are obviously operating interdependently, the efforts to disentangle these concepts make little headway. The arguments to establish causal priority for one concept vis-a-vis the other settle into a fairly predictable exchange. Structuralists base their priority claims on the fact that the interaction of actors in a society is empirically preliminary to the development and application of cultural elements. Culturalists respond that interaction itself is at least partially cultural phenomenon, and that in most complex societies cultural patterns have been well established prior to ongoing social relationships.

By the late 1950s, the concept of culture was becoming increasingly important to sociologists. To help resolve the now tired debate over cultural and structural foci and precedence, A.L. Kroeber and Talcott Parsons published a report in the American Sociological Review titled ”The Concepts of Culture and Social System” (1958), which seeks to establish some ground rules for differentiating the two concepts. At least for sociologists, many of whom identify explicitly with the structural-functional theories of the anthropological structuralists, acknowledgement of a separate social system component that delimits the scope of culture is not difficult. More difficult is ascertaining where the appropriate limits for the concept of culture lie within this domain. Kroeber and Parsons suggest restricting the usage of culture to, ”transmitted and created content and patterns of values, ideas, and other symbolic-meaningful systems as factors in the shaping of human behavior and the artifacts produced behavior” (1958, p. 583). This definition emphasized the predispositional aspect of a cultural referent, limiting the scope of culture to a cognitive perspective, and concentrates on a carefully worded description of ”symbolic-meaningful systems” as the appropriate referent for culture. While no longer the omnibus conception of a traditional, Tylor-derived approach, this type of cultural analysis is still potentially applicable to any realm of social activity.

The High-Mass Culture Debate

In the 1950s and early 1960s, the concept of culture became enmeshed in a new debate that like the previously documented dialogue has both influential and significant numbers of participants on each side of the dispute. Sociologists, however, are more central to the discussion, pitting those who support a broadly conceived, anthropological interpretation of culture that places both commonplace and elite activities in the same category, against a humanities oriented conception of culture that equates the identification of cultural activity with a value statement. This debate attempts to do two things: to classify different types of cultural activity, and to distinguish a purely descriptive approach to the concept of culture from an axiological approach that defines culture through an evaluative process.

That an axiological approach to culture can be considered legitimate by a ”scientific” enterprise is perhaps surprising to contemporary sociologists entrenched in the positivistic interpretation of science, yet a central issue for many sociologists in this period was how and whether to approach questions of moral values. For example, the critical theorist Leo Lowenthal (1950) characterized this period of social science as ”applied ascetism” and stated that the moral or aesthetic evaluation of cultural products and activities is not only sociologically possible, but also should be a useful tool in the sociological analysis of cultural differentiation.

These evaluative questions certainly play a part in the analysis of ”mass culture,” a term that the critic Dwight McDonald explains is used to identify articles of culture that are produced for mass consumption, ”like chewing gum” (McDonald 1953, p. 59). A number of commentators, including both sociologists and humanists, observe the growth of mass culture production in the post-World War II United Stated with a mixture of distaste and alarm. The concern of McDonald and critics like him is the decline of intrinsic value in cultural artifacts, a decline in quality that stems from, or is at least attributed to, a combination of economic and social factors associated with the growth of capitalism. For example, mass culture critics argue that the unchecked growth of capitalism in the production and distribution phases of culture industries leads to a ”massification” of consumption patterns. Formerly localized, highly differentiated, and competitive markets become dominated by a single corporate actor who merges different sectors of the consumer landscape and monopolizes production resources and distribution outlets. Within these giant culture industry organizations the demand for greater efficiency and the vertical integration of production lead to a bureaucratically focused standardization of output. Both processes function to stamp out cultural differences and create greater homogeneity in moral and aesthetic values, all at the lowest common denominator.

Regardless of the causes of the mass culture phenomena, the critics of mass culture believe it to be a potentially revolutionary force that will transform the values of society. One critic states that ”mass culture is a dynamic, revolutionary force, breaking down the old barriers of class, tradition, taste, and dissolving all cultural distinctions. It mixes and scrambles everything together, producing what might be called homogenized culture. . . It thus destroys all values, since value judgements imply discrimination” (McDonald 1953, p. 62).

In launching this attack, mass culture opponents see themselves as the saviors of a ”true” or ”high” culture (e.g., McDonald, Greenberg, Berelson, and Howe; see Rosenberg and White 1957). They argue that the consumption of mass culture undermines the very existence of legitimate high culture, that is, the elite arts and folk cultures. Without the ability to differentiate between increasingly blurred lines of cultural production, the average consumer turns toward mass culture due to its immediate accessibility. Further, simply through its creation, mass culture devalues elite art and folk cultures by borrowing the themes and devices of different cultural traditions and converting them into mechanical, formulaic systems (Greenberg 1946). Thus critics of mass culture argue that it is critical for the health of society to discriminate between types of culture.

Defenders of mass culture, or at least those who feel the attack on mass culture is too extreme, respond that mass culture critics seek to limit the production and appreciation of culture to an elitist minority. They contend that the elitist criticism of culture is ethnocentric and that not only is mass, popular, or public culture more diverse than given credit for (e.g., Lang 1957; Kracuer 1949), but also the benefits of mass cultural participation far outweigh the limitations of a mass media distribution system (White 1956; Seldes 1957). Post-World War II America experienced an economic boom that sent its citizens searching for a variety of new cultural outlets. The increase in cultural participation certainly included what some critics might call ”vulgar” activities, but it also included a tremendous increase in audiences for the arts across the board. Essentially mass culture defenders assert that the argument over the legitimacy of mass culture comes down to a matter of ideology, one that positions the elitist minority against the growing democratization of culture.

To extricate themselves from this axiological conundrum, many sociologists of culture retreated from a morally evaluative stance to a normative one. As presented by Gertrude Jaeger and Philip Selznick (1964), the normative sociological approach to culture, while still evaluative, seeks to combine anthropological and humanist conceptions of culture through a diagnostic analysis of cultural experience. The emphasis here is on elaborating the nature of ”symbolically meaningful” experience, the same focus for culture that Kroeber and Parsons (1958) take in their differentiation of culture and social system. To do this, Jager and Selznick adopt a pragmatist perspective (Dewey 1958) that accords symbolic status to cultural objects or events through a social signification process. Interacting individuals create symbols through the communication of meaningful experience, using both denotative and connotative processes. By creating symbols, interacting individuals create culture. Thus the definition of culture becomes: ”Culture consists of everything that is produced by, and is capable of sustaining, shared symbolic experience” (Jaeger and Selznick 1964, p. 663). In establishing this sociological definition of culture emphasizing the shared symbolic experience, Jaeger and Selznick also seek to maintain a humanist-oriented capability to distinguish between high and mass culture without marginalizing the focus on high culture. Following Dewey, they argue that the experience of art takes place on a continuum of cultural experience that differs in intensity from ordinary symbolic activities, but has essentially the same basis for the appreciation of meaning. Art or high culture is simply a more ”effective” symbol, combining ”economy of statement with richness of expression” (Jaeger and Selznick 1964, p. 664). As such, art, like all culture, is identified through the normative evaluation of experience.

In sum, the high culture-mass culture debate shifted the focus on the concept of culture from a question of appropriate scope to a question of appropriate values. From a functionalist point of view, the health of a society’s culture is not simply an issue of what type of values are advocated, but of how culture serves a moral and integrative function. Yet the mass culture critique was often unable to distinguish the cultural values of elite intellectuals from the effect of these values on society. To escape from this ethnocentric quagmire, contemporary sociologists have generally turned away from an evaluative position toward culture.

The Contemporary Approach to Culture: Mapping the Terrain

As mentioned at the beginning of this essay, the contemporary approach to culture is quite eclectic. Despite the elaborate historical lineage of the concept, there is no current, widely accepted, composite resolution for the definition of culture.

Instead, culture is still currently defined through an extensive variety of perspectives, sanctioning a broad, historically validated range of options. While the omnibus definition from the cultural anthropology tradition has been generally relegated to introductory texts, and the elitist attack on mass culture has been largely replaced by an antiethnocentric, relativist position open to a wide spectrum of symbolic arenas and perspectives, many of the elements of these old debates still appear in new cultural analyses.

For example, as categorized by Richard Peterson introducing a review of new studies in cultural analysis at the beginning of the 1990s, culture tends to be used two ways in sociological research; as a ”code of conduct embedded in or constitutive of social life,” and as symbolic products of group activity” (Peterson 1990, p. 498). The first perspective is clearly indebted to the traditional cultural anthropology approach and indeed is used to analyze and characterize social units ranging from whole societies (e.g., Cerulo 1995; Bellah et al. 1985) to specific subcultures (e.g., Hebdige 1990, 1979; Willis 1977). Empirical applications using this perspective are also made to geographically dispersed social worlds that organize collective activities (e.g., Lofland 1993 on the peace movement; Fine 1987 on Little League baseball; Latour and Woolgar 1979 on scientific research in biology; Traweek 1988 on scientific research in physics). The second perspective takes the more concrete course of treating culture as specific socially constructed symbols and emphasizes the production and meaning of these specific forms of cultural expression. Most examples of this latter form of cultural research are conducted in substantive arenas collectively known as the ”production of culture” (Peterson 1979; Crane 1992), however, the range of empirical focus for this perspective is considerable and includes research in such areas as the moral discourse on the abortion issue (Luker 1984), the politics and aesthetics of artistic evaluation and reception (DeNora 1995; Lang and Lang 1990; Griswold 1986), and the motivational and ideological context of organizational, professional, and work cultures (e.g., Fine 1996; Martin 1992; Katz 1999; Fantasia 1988; Harper 1987; Burawoy 1979).

From the array of activities mentioned above, it is clear that the contemporary concept of culture in sociology does not exclude any particular empirical forms of activity, except perhaps through an emphasis on shared or collective practices, thus discounting purely individual foci. Since all collective social practices are potentially symbolic and therefore culturally expressive, any collective activity can be reasonably studied under the rubric of the sociology of culture. This ”open borders” philosophy has at times made it difficult for participants in the sociology of culture to establish any kind of nomothetic perspective for cultural theory. The vast differentiation and sheer complexity of the expression of culture in various forms of social life resists ready categorization. Instead, participants in the sociology of culture have usually opted for the preliminary step of surveying and mapping the terrain of research in the sociology of culture with the goal of helping to define emerging theoretical perspectives in the field. Two particularly informative efforts are the contributions of John Hall and Mary Jo Neitz (1993) and Diana Crane (1992, 1994).

In Culture: Sociological Perspectives (1993), Hall and Neitz provide an excellent overview of the substantive and theoretical directions in which research in the sociology of culture has proliferated. They identify five ”analytic frames” (p. 17) through which researchers can focus on particular aspects of culture and that emphasize associated processes of inquiry. The first frame is a focus on ”institutional structures”: that is, research on culture specifically linked with social institutions and such issues as the construction of social and personal identity and conventional or moral conduct (e.g., Bellah et al. 1985; Gilligan 1982; Warner 1988). In the second analytic frame, Hall and Neitz describe ”cultural history” and the influence of past cultural practices on the present. Research in this area includes a focus on the significance of rituals (e.g., Douglas 1973; Goffman 1968, 1971; Neitz 1987), the effects of rationalization on social processes and cultural consumption (e.g., Foucault 1965; Mukerji 1983; Born 1995), and the creation of mass culture (e.g., Ewen 1976; Schudson 1984). In the third analytic frame, Hall and Neitz focus on ”the production and distribution of culture” with a special emphasis on stratification and power issues. Research in this area includes work on the socioeconomic differentiation of cultural strata (e.g., Gans 1974; Bourdieu 1984; Lamont 1992), gender and ethnic cultural differentiation and their effect on inequality (e.g., Radway 1984; Lamont and Fournier 1992), and the production of culture (e.g., Becker 1982; Gilmore 1987; Hirsch 1972; Coser, Kadushin, and Powell 1982; Faulkner 1983; Crane 1987). The fourth analytic frame, ”audience effects,” looks at how cultural objects affect the people who consume them and the precise patterns of shared meaning and interpretive ideology that provide a compatible environment for the popular and critical success of particular cultural forms (e.g., Wuthnow 1987; Baxandall 1985; Long 1985). Finally the fifth analytic frame, ”meaning and social action,” refers to how actors in varied mainstream and subcultural settings use culture to guide behavior and establish social identity. In a range of ethnic, political, and ideological contexts, participants use visible expressive symbols and styles to assert cultural difference and communicate the social and personal significance of cultural objects (e.g., Rushing 1988; Ginsberg 1990; Schwartz 1991; Fine 1987).

These frames serve different purposes. For the nonsociologist or for sociologists from outside the field of culture, they provide a guide to current cultural research and a reasonably accurate descriptive picture of research segmentation within the field. For the sociologist of culture, however, these frames represent not only a ”division of labor in sociohistorical inquiry, in the sense that any particular frame seems to generate boundaries. . . ”(within in the field), as Hall and Neitz claim (1993, p. 19), but a strategy to bring analytic coherence to a field that has experienced remarkable growth and empirical diffusion over a relatively short period. As such, in the future these frames may emerge through collective activity as problem areas within the field of culture that will guide empirical and methodological tendencies within particular research communities and influence theoretical interaction, that is, co-citation among researchers. The precise impact in the field, however, still remains to be seen.

A somewhat different mapping, primarily in terms of theoretical emphasis, is offered by Diana Crane in her book The Production of Culture (1992) and through her efforts as editor of The Sociology of Culture: Emerging Theoretical Perspectives (1994). Like Hall and Neitz, Crane seeks to help codify research segmentation in the field of culture, but she does not try to accomplish this daunting task simply by producing a comprehensive survey of current research in the field. Instead, she attempts to give the reader a guide to theoretical issues in the sociology of culture, particularly the place of the concept of culture in the discipline of sociology as a whole, and how the centrality of culture as a variable in mainstream sociological models will determine the significance of future research in the field.

To start, Crane argues that culture has traditionally been regarded as ”peripheral” to mainstream concerns in American sociology because of its relationship to classical theory (i.e., Marx, Weber, Durkheim). In comparison to the emphasis by these theorists on social structure, organization, and market forces, cultural elements have been consistently treated as secondary in their impact on peoples’ behavior and attitudes, particularly surrounding significant life issues (e.g., economic considerations). One reason for this secondary status may be the difficulty classical and mainstream theorists have in conceptualizing and documenting everyday cultural practices. Crane states, ”To American and some British structuralists, culture as a concept lacks a suitably rigorous definition” (Crane 1994, p. 2). And from Archer (1988, p. 1), ”the notion of culture remains inordinately vague. . . In every way, ‘culture’ is the poor relation of ‘structure.”’ Thus culture, approached as the values, norms, beliefs, and attitudes of a population or subgroup, is treated as ”an implicit feature of social life. . .” (Wuthnow and Witten 1988, p. 50-51), difficult to put one’s finger on, and therefore difficult to document through specific empirical referents.

But Crane argues that culture in contemporary society is much more than implicit features. She states, ”Culture today is expressed and negotiated almost entirely through culture as explicit social constructions or products, in other words, through recorded culture, culture that is recorded either in print, film, artifacts or, most recently, electronic media” (Crane 1994, p. 2). Further, contemporary sociologists of culture have tended to focus on this ”recorded culture” as the principal empirical referent through which various types of contemporary culture are expressed and thus can easily be explored. Not surprisingly then, the primary direction through which the new sociology of culture has proliferated is in areas like art, science, popular culture, religion, media, technology, and other social worlds where recorded forms of culture are readily accessible. These culture subfields have become the central substantive foci through which the field as a whole has undertaken to build theoretical coherence.

At the same time outside the boundaries of the field of culture per se, it is also clear from recent research in the 1990s that the concept of culture has gained significant relevance in many mainstream areas of the discipline that have traditionally been dominated by macrostructuralist approaches. For example, in both Ewa Morawska and Willfried Spohn’s (1994), and Mabel Berezin’s (1994) contributions to Crane’s The Sociology of Culture: Emerging Theoretical Perspectives, the impact of cultural forces are discussed in a variety of macroinstitutional contexts. Morawska and Spohn’s focus on examples from the historical perspective includes research on the effect of ideology in the macrostructural analysis of revolution and social change (e.g., Sewell 1985; Skocpol 1985; Goldstone 1991), issues of working-class consciousness and capitalist development (e.g., Aminzade 1981; Cal-houn 1982), and the articulation of new forms of religious and ideological doctrines in a social-institutional context.Additional examples in organizational or economic contexts (e.g., Dobbin 1994; Granovetter 1985) only further emphasize the point, that the expanding application of cultural analysis to mainstream models means that for many sociologists, culture is more an explanatory perspective than a substantive area of study. As such, future limitations on the explanatory potential of cultural analysis in sociology will likely be conceptual, not empirical, and the above research suggests a broadly fertile spectrum of empirical possibilities.

Finally, a significant elaboration of the explanatory potential of cultural analysis has taken place in a field organized largely outside the discipline of sociology. ”Cultural studies,” identifying a loosely connected, interdisciplinary network of scholars from a wide spectrum of perspectives, including the humanities, the social sciences, the arts, and various status-specific programs (e.g., ethnic studies, feminist studies, gay and lesbian studies), has produced a tremendous number of new kinds of cultural analyses that have implications for the sociology of culture. The approach to cultural analysis, however, is often radically different, both empirically and theoretically, than that conventionally used by sociologists. Cultural studies approaches range from a cultural text-based analysis that interprets meaning and sources of social influence directly from cultural objects (e.g., Hooks 1994; Giroux 1992; see Fiske 1994), to complex interpretative decodings of narratives around issues such as identity politics (e.g., Trinh 1989; Hall 1992) and postcolonial repression and resistance (e.g., Appadurai 1990; Grossberg et al.1992). As a consequence, the history and emerging relationship of cultural studies to sociology is rather piecemeal. Indeed, Norman Denzin (1996) characterizes the potential association to be one of ”colonization”; that is, ”the attempt to locate and place cultural studies on the boundaries and margins of academic, cultural sociology” (Denzin 1996, p. XV). Others see the possibility of more reciprocal exchange with the possibility of a ”revitalization” for sociological cultural perspectives (Seidman 1996). Whichever way the relationship develops, it is clear that efforts to rethink the concept of culture, the impact of cultural values, and approaches to cultural analysis that take place outside of sociology and even outside of academia will have an invigorating effect on the sociological conceptualization of culture. These battles (i.e., ”culture wars”) already have had important consequences for policy and resource allocation in education (e.g., Nolan 1996; Hunter 1991). There is no reason to think that sociology will or should be immune to these external influences.

In sum, there is a new appreciation of the salience of culture as an explanatory perspective in contemporary sociological research. Whether it involves the convention-setting influence of art worlds, the moral authority of organizational cultures, or the facilitation of class privileges through habitus, the concept of culture is used to explain behavior and social structure from a distinct and powerful perspective. The future elaboration of this perspective in sociology looks very promising.

References:

• Alexander, Jeffrey C., and Steve Seidman (eds.) 1990 Culture and Society. Cambridge, Eng./New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Aminzade, Ronald 1981 Class, Politics and Early Industrial Capitalism. Albany: SUNY Press.
• Appadurai, A. 1990 ‘‘Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy.’’ Public Culture 2:1–24.
• Archer, Margaret 1988 Culture and Agency. New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Baxandall, Michael 1985 Patterns of Intention. New Haven: Yale University Press.
• Becker, Howard S. 1982 Art Worlds. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Bellah, Robert, Richard Madsen, William Sullivan, Ann Swidler, and Steven Tipton 1985 Habits of the Heart. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Benedict, Ruth 1934 Patterns of Culture. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
• Berezin, Mabel 1994 ‘‘Fissured Terrain: Methodological Approaches and Research Styles in Culture and Politics.’’ In Diana Crane, ed., The Sociology of Culture: Emerging Theoretical Perspectives. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
• Blau, Judith 1988 ‘‘Study of the Arts: A Reappraisal.’’ Annual Review of Sociology 14:269–292.
• Boas, Franz (1896) 1940 ‘‘The Limitations of the Comparative Method of Anthropology.’’ Reprinted in Boas, Race, Language, and Culture. New York: Macmillan.
• Born, Georgina 1995 Rationalizing Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Bourdieu, Pierre 1984 Distinction. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
• Burawoy, Michael 1979 Manufacturing Consent. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Calhoun, Craig 1982 The Question of Class Struggle. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Cerulo, Karen 1995 Identity Designs: The Sights and Sounds of a Nation. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press.
• Chambers, Iain 1986 Popular Culture. London: Methuen.
• Coser, Lewis, Charles Kadushin, and Walter Powell 1982. Books: The Culture and Commerce of Publishing. New York: Basic Books.
• Crane, Diana (ed.) 1994 The Sociology of Culture: Emerging Theoretical Perspective. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
• Crane, Diana (ed.) 1992 The Production of Culture. Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage.
• Crane, Diana (ed.) 1987 The Transformation of the Avant-Garde. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Denzin, Norman 1996 Cultural Studies: A Research Volume. Greenwich, Conn.: JAI Press.
• DeNora, Tia 1995 Beethoven and the Construction of Genius. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Dewey, John 1958 Art as Experience. New York: Capricorn Books.
• Dobbin, Frank 1994 Forging Industrial Policy: The United States, France, and Britain in the Railway Age. New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Douglas, Mary 1973 Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology. New York: Vintage Books.
• Dubin, Steve 1992 Arresting Images: Impolitic Art and Uncivil Action. New York: Routledge.
• Evans-Prichard, E. E. 1940 The Nuer. London: Oxford University Press.
• Evans-Prichard, E. E. 1937 Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azande. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Ewen, Stuart 1976 Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of the Consumer Culture. New York: McGraw Hill.
• Fantasia, Rick 1988 Cultures of Solidarity. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Faulkner, Robert 1983 Music on Demand. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.
• Fine, Gary Alan 1996 Kitchens. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Fine, Gary Alan 1987 With the Boys. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Fiske, John 1994 ‘‘Audiencing: Cultural Practices and Cultural Studies.’’ In Norman Denzin and Yvonne Lincoln, eds., Handbook of Qualitative Research. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage.
• Foucault, Michel 1965 Madness and Civilization. New York: Pantheon.
• Gans, Herbert J. 1974 Popular Culture and High Culture. New York: Basic Books.
• Gilligan, Carol 1982 In a Different Voice. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
• Gilmore, Samuel 1987 ‘‘Coordination and Convention: The Organization of the Concert Art World.’’ Symbolic Interaction 10:209–227.
• Ginsberg, Faye 1990 Contested Lives. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Giroux, Henry 1992 ‘‘Resisting Difference: Cultural Studies and the Discourse of Critical Pedagogy.’’ In Larry Grossberg et al., eds., Cultural Studies. New York: Routledge.
• Gitlin, Todd 1985 Inside Prime Time. New York: Pantheon.
• Goffman, Erving 1971 Relations in Public. New York: Harper and Row.
• Goffman, Erving 1968 Interaction Ritual. Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books.
• Goldstone, Jack 1991 Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Goodenough, Ward 1956 ‘‘Componential Analysis and the Study of Meaning.’’ Language 32:22–37.
• Granovetter, Mark 1985 ‘‘Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness.’’ American Journal of Sociology 91:481–510.
• Greenberg, Clement 1946 ‘‘Avant-Garde and Kitsch.’’ The Partisan Reader 378–389.
• Greenfeld, Liah 1992 Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
• Griswold, Wendy 1986 Renaissance Revivals. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Grossberg, Larry, et al. 1992. Cultural Studies. New York: Routledge.
• Hall, John, and Mary Jo Neitz 1993 Culture: Sociological Perspectives. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.
• Hall, Stuart 1992 ‘‘Cultural Studies and its Theoretical Legacies.’’ In Larry Grossberg, et al., eds., Cultural Studies. New York: Routledge.
• Halle, David 1994 Inside Culture: Class, Culture and Everyday Life in Modern America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Harper, Douglas 1987 Working Knowledge: Skill and Community in a Small Shop. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Hebdige, Dick 1990 Cut ‘N Mix: Culture, Identity, and Caribbean Music. London: Routledge.
• Hebdige, Dick 1979 Subculture: The Meaning of Style. London: Routledge.
• Hirsch, Paul 1972 ‘‘Processing Fads and Fashions: An Organization Set Analysis of the Cultural Industry System.’’ American Journal of Sociology 77:639–659.
• Hooks, Bell 1994 Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations. New York: Routledge.
• Hunter, James D. 1991 Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America. New York: Basic Books.
• Jaeger, Gertrude, and Philip Selznick 1964 ‘‘A Normative Theory of Culture.’’ American Sociological Review 29:653–669.
• Katz, Jack 1988 Seductions of Crime: Moral and Sensual Attractions of Doing Evil. New York: Basic Books.
• Katz, Pearl 1999 The Scalpel’s Edge. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
• Kracauer, Seigfried 1949 ‘‘National Types as Hollywood Presents Them.’’ Public Opinion Quarterly 13:53–72.
• Kroeber, Alfred 1952 The Nature of Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Kroeber, Alfred (1923) 1948 Anthropology. New York: Harcourt.
• Kroeber, Alfred, and Clyde Kluckhohn (1952) 1963 Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions. New York: Vintage Books.
• Kroeber, Alfred, and Talcott Parsons 1958 ‘‘The Concepts of Culture and Social System.’’ American Sociological Review 23:582–583.
• Lamont, Michele 1992 Money, Morals, and Manners. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Lamont, Michele, and Marcel Fournier (eds.) 1992 Cultivating Differences: Symbolic Boundaries and the Making of Inequality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Lang, Gladys Engel, and Kurt Lang 1990 Etched in Memory: The Building and Survival of Artistic Reputation. Chapel Hill/London: University of North Carolina Press.
• Lang, Kurt 1957 ‘‘Mass Appeal and Minority Tastes.’’ In Bernard Rosenberg and David Manning White, eds., Mass Culture. New York: Free Press.
• Latour, Bruno 1987 Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
• Latour, Bruno, and Steve Woolgar 1979 Laboratory Life. Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage.
• Levi-Strauss, Claude (1953) 1963 Structural Anthropology. New York: Basic Books.
• Lincoln, James, and Arne Kalleberg 1990 Culture, Control and Commitment: A Study of Work Organization and Work Attitudes in the United States and Japan. Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press.
• Lofland, John 1993 Polite Protesters: The American Peace Movement of the 1980s. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press.
• Long, Elizabeth 1985 The American Dream and the Popular Novel. Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
• Lowenthal, Leo 1950 ‘‘Historical Perspectives of Popular Culture.’’ American Journal of Sociology 55:323–332.
• Luker, Kristen 1984 Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Malinowski, Bronislaw 1931 ‘‘Culture.’’ Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences 4:621–646.
• Malinowski, Bronislaw 1927 Sex and Repression in Savage Society. London: Routledge.
• Martin, Joanne 1992 Cultures in Organizations: Three Perspectives. New York: Oxford University Press.
• McDonald, Dwight 1953 ‘‘A Theory of Mass Culture.’’ Diogenes 3:1–17.
• Mead, Margaret 1935 Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies. New York: Morrow.
• Mead, Margaret 1928 Coming of Age in Samoa. New York: Morrow.
• Mitchell, Timothy 1991 Colonizing Egypt. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Morawska, Ewa, and Willfried Spohn 1994 ‘‘’Cultural Pluralism’ in Historical Sociology: Recent Theoretical Directions.’’ In Diana Crane, ed., The Sociology of Culture: Emerging Theoretical Perspectives. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
• Mukerji, Chandra 1983 From Graven Images. New York: Columbia University Press.
• Mukerji, Chandra, and Michael Schudson 1986 ‘‘Popular Culture.’’ Annual Review of Sociology 12:47–66.
• Munch, Richard, and Neil J. Smelser (eds.) The Theory of Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Neitz, Mary Jo 1987 Charisma and Community: A Study of Religious Commitment Within the Charismatic Renewal. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books.
• Nelson, Cary, and Lawrence Grossberg (eds.) 1988 Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
• Nolan, James (ed.) 1996 The American Culture Wars: Current Contests and Future Prospects. Charlottesville: University of West Virginia Press.
• Peterson, Richard 1997 Creating Country Music: Fabricating Authenticity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Peterson, Richard 1990 ‘‘Symbols and Social Life: The Growth of Culture Studies.’’ Contemporary Sociology 19:498–500.
• Peterson, Richard 1989 ‘‘La Sociologique de l’Art et de la Culture aux Etats-Unis.’’ L’Annegrave;e sociologique 39:153–179.
• Peterson, Richard 1979 ‘‘Revitalizing the Culture Concept.’’ Annual Review of Sociology 5:137–166.
• Radcliffe-Brown, A. R. (1952) 1961 Structure and Function in Primitive Society: Essays and Addresses. New York: Free Press.
• Radway, Janice 1984 Reading the Romance. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
• Rosenberg, Bernard, and David Manning White (eds.)1957 Mass Culture. New York: Free Press.
• Rushing, Andrea Benton 1988 ‘‘Hair-Raising.’’ Feminist Studies 14:325–336.
• Schudson, Michael 1984 Advertising the Uneasy Persuasion. New York: Basic Books.
• Schudson, Michael 1978 Discovering the News: A Social History of American Newspapers. New York: Basic Books.
• Schwartz, Barry 1991 ‘‘Social Change and Collective Memory: The Democratization of George Washington.’’ American Sociological Review 56:221–236.
• Seidman, Steven 1996 ‘‘Revitalizing Sociology: The Challenge of Cultural Studies.’’ In Norman Denzin, ed., Cultural Studies. Greenwich, Conn.: JAI Press.
• Seldes, Gilbert 1957 ‘‘The Public Arts.’’ In Bernard Rosenberg and David Manning White, eds., Mass Culture. New York: Free Press.
• Sewell, William 1985 ‘‘Ideologies and Social Revolutions: Reflections on the French Case.’’ The Journal of Modern History 57:57–85.
• Singer, Milton 1968 ‘‘Culture: The Concept of Culture.’’ In David L. Sills, ed., International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. New York: Macmillan and Free Press.
• Skocpol, Theda 1985 ‘‘Cultural Idioms and Political Ideologies in the Revolutionary Reconstruction of State Power: A Rejoinder to Sewell.’’ The Journal of Modern History 57:86–96.
• Star, Susan Leigh 1989 Regions of the Mind: Brain Research and the Quest for Scientific Certainty. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.
• Swidler, Ann 1986 ‘‘Culture in Action.’’ American Sociological Review 51:273–286.

Browse other  Sociology Research Paper Topics .

ORDER HIGH QUALITY CUSTOM PAPER

Choose Your Test

Sat / act prep online guides and tips, 113 great research paper topics.

General Education

One of the hardest parts of writing a research paper can be just finding a good topic to write about. Fortunately we've done the hard work for you and have compiled a list of 113 interesting research paper topics. They've been organized into ten categories and cover a wide range of subjects so you can easily find the best topic for you.

In addition to the list of good research topics, we've included advice on what makes a good research paper topic and how you can use your topic to start writing a great paper.

What Makes a Good Research Paper Topic?

Not all research paper topics are created equal, and you want to make sure you choose a great topic before you start writing. Below are the three most important factors to consider to make sure you choose the best research paper topics.

#1: It's Something You're Interested In

A paper is always easier to write if you're interested in the topic, and you'll be more motivated to do in-depth research and write a paper that really covers the entire subject. Even if a certain research paper topic is getting a lot of buzz right now or other people seem interested in writing about it, don't feel tempted to make it your topic unless you genuinely have some sort of interest in it as well.

#2: There's Enough Information to Write a Paper

Even if you come up with the absolute best research paper topic and you're so excited to write about it, you won't be able to produce a good paper if there isn't enough research about the topic. This can happen for very specific or specialized topics, as well as topics that are too new to have enough research done on them at the moment. Easy research paper topics will always be topics with enough information to write a full-length paper.

Trying to write a research paper on a topic that doesn't have much research on it is incredibly hard, so before you decide on a topic, do a bit of preliminary searching and make sure you'll have all the information you need to write your paper.

#3: It Fits Your Teacher's Guidelines

Don't get so carried away looking at lists of research paper topics that you forget any requirements or restrictions your teacher may have put on research topic ideas. If you're writing a research paper on a health-related topic, deciding to write about the impact of rap on the music scene probably won't be allowed, but there may be some sort of leeway. For example, if you're really interested in current events but your teacher wants you to write a research paper on a history topic, you may be able to choose a topic that fits both categories, like exploring the relationship between the US and North Korea. No matter what, always get your research paper topic approved by your teacher first before you begin writing.

113 Good Research Paper Topics

Below are 113 good research topics to help you get you started on your paper. We've organized them into ten categories to make it easier to find the type of research paper topics you're looking for.

Arts/Culture

• Discuss the main differences in art from the Italian Renaissance and the Northern Renaissance .
• Analyze the impact a famous artist had on the world.
• How is sexism portrayed in different types of media (music, film, video games, etc.)? Has the amount/type of sexism changed over the years?
• How has the music of slaves brought over from Africa shaped modern American music?
• How has rap music evolved in the past decade?
• How has the portrayal of minorities in the media changed?

Current Events

• What have been the impacts of China's one child policy?
• How have the goals of feminists changed over the decades?
• How has the Trump presidency changed international relations?
• Analyze the history of the relationship between the United States and North Korea.
• What factors contributed to the current decline in the rate of unemployment?
• What have been the impacts of states which have increased their minimum wage?
• How do US immigration laws compare to immigration laws of other countries?
• How have the US's immigration laws changed in the past few years/decades?
• How has the Black Lives Matter movement affected discussions and view about racism in the US?
• What impact has the Affordable Care Act had on healthcare in the US?
• What factors contributed to the UK deciding to leave the EU (Brexit)?
• What factors contributed to China becoming an economic power?
• Discuss the history of Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies  (some of which tokenize the S&P 500 Index on the blockchain) .
• Do students in schools that eliminate grades do better in college and their careers?
• Do students from wealthier backgrounds score higher on standardized tests?
• Do students who receive free meals at school get higher grades compared to when they weren't receiving a free meal?
• Do students who attend charter schools score higher on standardized tests than students in public schools?
• Do students learn better in same-sex classrooms?
• How does giving each student access to an iPad or laptop affect their studies?
• What are the benefits and drawbacks of the Montessori Method ?
• Do children who attend preschool do better in school later on?
• What was the impact of the No Child Left Behind act?
• How does the US education system compare to education systems in other countries?
• What impact does mandatory physical education classes have on students' health?
• Which methods are most effective at reducing bullying in schools?
• Do homeschoolers who attend college do as well as students who attended traditional schools?
• Does offering tenure increase or decrease quality of teaching?
• How does college debt affect future life choices of students?
• Should graduate students be able to form unions?

• What are different ways to lower gun-related deaths in the US?
• How and why have divorce rates changed over time?
• Is affirmative action still necessary in education and/or the workplace?
• Should physician-assisted suicide be legal?
• How has stem cell research impacted the medical field?
• How can human trafficking be reduced in the United States/world?
• Should people be able to donate organs in exchange for money?
• Which types of juvenile punishment have proven most effective at preventing future crimes?
• Has the increase in US airport security made passengers safer?
• Analyze the immigration policies of certain countries and how they are similar and different from one another.
• Several states have legalized recreational marijuana. What positive and negative impacts have they experienced as a result?
• Do tariffs increase the number of domestic jobs?
• Which prison reforms have proven most effective?
• Should governments be able to censor certain information on the internet?
• Which methods/programs have been most effective at reducing teen pregnancy?
• What are the benefits and drawbacks of the Keto diet?
• How effective are different exercise regimes for losing weight and maintaining weight loss?
• How do the healthcare plans of various countries differ from each other?
• What are the most effective ways to treat depression ?
• What are the pros and cons of genetically modified foods?
• Which methods are most effective for improving memory?
• What can be done to lower healthcare costs in the US?
• What factors contributed to the current opioid crisis?
• Analyze the history and impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic .
• Are low-carbohydrate or low-fat diets more effective for weight loss?
• How much exercise should the average adult be getting each week?
• Which methods are most effective to get parents to vaccinate their children?
• What are the pros and cons of clean needle programs?
• How does stress affect the body?
• Discuss the history of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.
• What were the causes and effects of the Salem Witch Trials?
• Who was responsible for the Iran-Contra situation?
• How has New Orleans and the government's response to natural disasters changed since Hurricane Katrina?
• What events led to the fall of the Roman Empire?
• What were the impacts of British rule in India ?
• Was the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki necessary?
• What were the successes and failures of the women's suffrage movement in the United States?
• What were the causes of the Civil War?
• How did Abraham Lincoln's assassination impact the country and reconstruction after the Civil War?
• Which factors contributed to the colonies winning the American Revolution?
• What caused Hitler's rise to power?
• Discuss how a specific invention impacted history.
• What led to Cleopatra's fall as ruler of Egypt?
• How has Japan changed and evolved over the centuries?
• What were the causes of the Rwandan genocide ?

• Why did Martin Luther decide to split with the Catholic Church?
• Analyze the history and impact of a well-known cult (Jonestown, Manson family, etc.)
• How did the sexual abuse scandal impact how people view the Catholic Church?
• How has the Catholic church's power changed over the past decades/centuries?
• What are the causes behind the rise in atheism/ agnosticism in the United States?
• What were the influences in Siddhartha's life resulted in him becoming the Buddha?
• How has media portrayal of Islam/Muslims changed since September 11th?

Science/Environment

• How has the earth's climate changed in the past few decades?
• How has the use and elimination of DDT affected bird populations in the US?
• Analyze how the number and severity of natural disasters have increased in the past few decades.
• Analyze deforestation rates in a certain area or globally over a period of time.
• How have past oil spills changed regulations and cleanup methods?
• How has the Flint water crisis changed water regulation safety?
• What are the pros and cons of fracking?
• What impact has the Paris Climate Agreement had so far?
• What have NASA's biggest successes and failures been?
• How can we improve access to clean water around the world?
• Does ecotourism actually have a positive impact on the environment?
• Should the US rely on nuclear energy more?
• What can be done to save amphibian species currently at risk of extinction?
• What impact has climate change had on coral reefs?
• How are black holes created?
• Are teens who spend more time on social media more likely to suffer anxiety and/or depression?
• How will the loss of net neutrality affect internet users?
• Analyze the history and progress of self-driving vehicles.
• How has the use of drones changed surveillance and warfare methods?
• Has social media made people more or less connected?
• What progress has currently been made with artificial intelligence ?
• Do smartphones increase or decrease workplace productivity?
• What are the most effective ways to use technology in the classroom?
• How is Google search affecting our intelligence?
• When is the best age for a child to begin owning a smartphone?
• Has frequent texting reduced teen literacy rates?

How to Write a Great Research Paper

Even great research paper topics won't give you a great research paper if you don't hone your topic before and during the writing process. Follow these three tips to turn good research paper topics into great papers.

#1: Figure Out Your Thesis Early

Before you start writing a single word of your paper, you first need to know what your thesis will be. Your thesis is a statement that explains what you intend to prove/show in your paper. Every sentence in your research paper will relate back to your thesis, so you don't want to start writing without it!

As some examples, if you're writing a research paper on if students learn better in same-sex classrooms, your thesis might be "Research has shown that elementary-age students in same-sex classrooms score higher on standardized tests and report feeling more comfortable in the classroom."

If you're writing a paper on the causes of the Civil War, your thesis might be "While the dispute between the North and South over slavery is the most well-known cause of the Civil War, other key causes include differences in the economies of the North and South, states' rights, and territorial expansion."

#2: Back Every Statement Up With Research

Remember, this is a research paper you're writing, so you'll need to use lots of research to make your points. Every statement you give must be backed up with research, properly cited the way your teacher requested. You're allowed to include opinions of your own, but they must also be supported by the research you give.

#3: Do Your Research Before You Begin Writing

You don't want to start writing your research paper and then learn that there isn't enough research to back up the points you're making, or, even worse, that the research contradicts the points you're trying to make!

Get most of your research on your good research topics done before you begin writing. Then use the research you've collected to create a rough outline of what your paper will cover and the key points you're going to make. This will help keep your paper clear and organized, and it'll ensure you have enough research to produce a strong paper.

What's Next?

Are you also learning about dynamic equilibrium in your science class? We break this sometimes tricky concept down so it's easy to understand in our complete guide to dynamic equilibrium .

Thinking about becoming a nurse practitioner? Nurse practitioners have one of the fastest growing careers in the country, and we have all the information you need to know about what to expect from nurse practitioner school .

Want to know the fastest and easiest ways to convert between Fahrenheit and Celsius? We've got you covered! Check out our guide to the best ways to convert Celsius to Fahrenheit (or vice versa).

These recommendations are based solely on our knowledge and experience. If you purchase an item through one of our links, PrepScholar may receive a commission.

Christine graduated from Michigan State University with degrees in Environmental Biology and Geography and received her Master's from Duke University. In high school she scored in the 99th percentile on the SAT and was named a National Merit Finalist. She has taught English and biology in several countries.

Ask a Question Below

Have any questions about this article or other topics? Ask below and we'll reply!

Improve With Our Famous Guides

• For All Students

The 5 Strategies You Must Be Using to Improve 160+ SAT Points

How to Get a Perfect 1600, by a Perfect Scorer

Series: How to Get 800 on Each SAT Section:

Score 800 on SAT Math

Score 800 on SAT Reading

Score 800 on SAT Writing

Series: How to Get to 600 on Each SAT Section:

Score 600 on SAT Math

Score 600 on SAT Reading

Score 600 on SAT Writing

Free Complete Official SAT Practice Tests

What SAT Target Score Should You Be Aiming For?

15 Strategies to Improve Your SAT Essay

The 5 Strategies You Must Be Using to Improve 4+ ACT Points

How to Get a Perfect 36 ACT, by a Perfect Scorer

Series: How to Get 36 on Each ACT Section:

36 on ACT English

36 on ACT Math

36 on ACT Reading

36 on ACT Science

Series: How to Get to 24 on Each ACT Section:

24 on ACT English

24 on ACT Math

24 on ACT Reading

24 on ACT Science

What ACT target score should you be aiming for?

ACT Vocabulary You Must Know

ACT Writing: 15 Tips to Raise Your Essay Score

How to Get Into Harvard and the Ivy League

How to Get a Perfect 4.0 GPA

How to Write an Amazing College Essay

What Exactly Are Colleges Looking For?

Is the ACT easier than the SAT? A Comprehensive Guide

Should you retake your SAT or ACT?

When should you take the SAT or ACT?

Stay Informed

Get the latest articles and test prep tips!

Looking for Graduate School Test Prep?

Check out our top-rated graduate blogs here:

GRE Online Prep Blog

GMAT Online Prep Blog

TOEFL Online Prep Blog

Holly R. "I am absolutely overjoyed and cannot thank you enough for helping me!”