This document discusses key aspects of social and cultural environments. It defines culture as ways of living passed down through generations. Culture is expressed through social institutions and includes both conscious and unconscious values, ideas, attitudes and symbols. Religions are an important source of a society's beliefs. Languages also reflect cultural diversity. High and low context cultures communicate differently. Hofstede identified cultural dimensions like power distance and uncertainty avoidance. Rogers' diffusion of innovations theory explains how new ideas spread through cultures over time via communication channels. The innovation adoption process moves from awareness to adoption through interested evaluation and trial. Factors affecting adoption rates include relative advantage, compatibility and complexity. Innovators adopt earliest while laggards adopt latest.