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orate culture is a unique aspect of an organisation, even though it is difficult to manage.

According to Schein an organisation's culture develops to help cope with its environment. He characterizes culture as consisting of three levels:

? Artefacts which are the most observable level of culture yet are hard to understand.

? Espoused Values; which underlie and to a large extent determine behaviour, but they are not directly observable as behaviours. There may be a variation involving known and functioning values.

? Basic assumptions and Values: the essence of culture is characterized by the fundamental assumptions and ideals, which are not easy to differentiate since they are present at mainly unconscious point. Nevertheless they offer the input to appreciate why things turn out the way they do.

2.5.1 National culture

National culture milieu influences the outlook of an organisation's stakeholders. Hofstede proved this with work on IMB employees in 43 countries and how attitude to work and behaviour of employees towards authority differ from one location to the other. In his study he identified five dimensions of culture and demonstrated that there are national and regional cultural groupings that affect the behaviour and activities of organisations.

The first dimension is power distance and refers to the degree to which people accept inequality amongst institutions and organisations. The second dimension, uncertainty avoidance measures the degree to which people are willing to accept change and work in uncertain circumstances. Therefore the higher the degree of uncertainty avoidance the more structured people likes things to be (Steers et al, 1993). Individualism which is the third dimension refers to the degree to which people see themselves as being part of a group or as individuals.

His fourth culture dimension, masculinity versus femininity refers to the conventional values placed on male such as assertivenessness, ambition etc and females such as care, quality of life.Although Hofstede's work has been challenged by Gooderham and Nordhang of Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration, evidence from Ghana which was not part of the study shows that it may indicate some level of truth. Indeed attitude of the typical Ghanaian based on studies conducted by the Institute of Economic Affairs (2001) and the Ghana labour Commission (1998) hinges on which sector or who the employee is working for. While diligence, punctuality and hard work can be ascribed to the private sector employee, the same cannot be said of his or her counterpart in the public sector.

2.5.2 Regional culture

Regional culture can be described as a subset of national culture. Regional ties can be so strong that sometimes can compete with national culture and this can have serious implications where individuals are influenced by their respected regional culture. The northern part of Ghana is a typical example where the culture of the natives is so entwined with whatever they do no matter where they find themselves. This can have various meanings in terms of individual behaviour and motivation.

2.5.3 Corporate Culture

According to Schein (2004), corporate culture also known as organisational culture is the unconscious beliefs, value and basic assumptions that exist in an organisation.