Categories of the Industrial Culture

This chapter systematically classifies industrial culture by examining its creators, carriers, types, and systems to clarify its complex composition and structural logic. It identifies core creators as participants in industrial activities (e.g., managers, R&D staff, operators), who form distinct cultural groups. Enterprises are highlighted as fundamental units where these group cultures interact and fuse to form corporate culture, which subsequently contributes to broader industrial culture. The chapter distinguishes between material carriers (e.g., products, production systems, heritage sites) and nonmaterial carriers (e.g., technical languages, literary, and artistic works). It classifies industrial culture through multiple lenses: by social development stage, by nature (material, institutional, spiritual), and by level (macro, meso, micro). A three-layered structure (surface material, middle institutional, core spiritual) and a vertical-horizontal system framework are constructed to illustrate its complexity. The findings indicate that industrial culture is an organic system of interconnected subsystems, and the proposed classification framework offers a comprehensive tool for its analysis.