Interpretation of Industrial Culture

This chapter systematically interprets the connotation, forms, status, and essence of industrial culture, beginning by distinguishing culture from civilization. It defines culture broadly as the sum total of material and spiritual wealth created by humans and narrowly as spiritual wealth such as religion, beliefs, and ethics. Civilization is presented as a higher form of culture, emerging with writing, urbanization, and social division of labor. The chapter synthesizes multidisciplinary academic perspectives (e.g., engineering, history, sociology) on industrial culture, highlighting its nature as an integration of management, industrial engineering, and economics. It defines industrial culture broadly as the culture of industrial society and narrowly as the culture generated from industrial activities (e.g., corporate culture, industrial design). Three typical forms are identified: industrial material culture (tangible entities, the foundation), industrial institutional culture (rules and systems, the guarantee), and industrial spiritual culture (values and ways of thinking, the soul). The chapter concludes that industrial culture is the mainstream culture of industrial society, whose essence is rooted in industrial activities and whose core lies in industrial values.