I'd guess that when most people think of Irish culture they think of Irish music, literature and language, the realm of the arts. They wouldn't necessarily think of how people react to their shopping being packed by a helper at the check-out. They mightn't think of what the difference between their salary and that of the boss is.

They wouldn't immediately say culture is a key competitive advantage in business.

The cultural critics know Irish culture is as much about choices and actions of Irish people as it is about the work of Irish artists. That's why arts criticism and cultural criticism, commenting on every aspect of life and living, seem to blend effortlessly together.

Still, it tends to miss some important points. Leaving aside the arts, it is useful to be clear and self-aware about how our culture and work relate to each other.

The example of packing the shopping comes courtesy of a piece in the Daily Telegraph last week where the disastrous experience of Wal-Mart in Germany was recounted.

The Wal-Mart way, promising customer service with a smile and packing bags at the checkout, just didn't take in Germany. German shoppers, who put up with what we would call cold, begrudging customer service, didn't want what they perceived as inefficient, phoney service, such as bag-packing. As a German market researcher said, they were suspicious as to why anyone would want to touch or handle their goods. Our culture says the opposite.

The German social attitude also came up in a book discussed on Rodney Rice's After Dark programme this week. Book author Prof Gerry Cohen had pointed out that the differential between German bosses' pay and most workers was much narrower than that in the United States. This was more a matter of ethos and culture than law and institutions, but was clearly part of the German idea of social justice, he wrote.

Culture matters. Every senior management knows this in relation to their company. What about the national level?

Most of the cultural critics in the media approach the question not from the point of view of how effective our culture allows us to be in our work, but how work in a competitive market is thought to get in the way of human decency in culture or ethos. This gets things skew-ways, because culture and work are not in conflict, but are integral to each other.

Is Irish culture conducive to effective working? Foreign direct investors in Ireland usually say we are good workers. Not good slaves or efficient robots, but people who want to get the job done well, who bring some commitment and creativity to the job.

There is a caveat to this, in that we shouldn't expect international investors and their managers to speak ill of us while they are guests here, so to speak.

They might find us less bareknuckled competitive vis-a-vis business rivals than they'd be used to if they come from the United States. They might find us a bit too interested in the social life associated with work if they come from Japan.

I speculate. I don't know for sure what negatives foreigners in our midst ascribe to Irish culture in working life. It would be interesting and useful to know, but I wouldn't hold my breath for IDA Ireland to broadcast the results.

I think the best aspects of applied working skills and attitudes that foreign managers find in Irish culture arose because most of us who are now at work grew up in a time of scarcity. We were hungry for work. We valued whatever chance we could get.

There was nothing about Irish culture that was holding people back, it was Irish economics, Irish tax and Irish rewards that were the problems. In Germany, there has been an attitude problem with the "inheritance generation", while the US needs to replenish its hunger with constant waves of immigration. How hungry will we be?

From the perspective of culture and working life, we would want to watch out that positive attitudes born of scarcity might be replaced by laxity, complacency, entitlement and sluggishness. It would be good to try to keep a hungry culture or, more positively, one that keeps striving for an ambition. This would not be a consumerist culture. When cultural critics write about preserving the best of Irish culture through the economic boom, they should expand their analysis beyond good stuff like social solidarity, voluntary work, spending time together and so on. They should also include an attitude to work as a scarce opportunity, an attitude that was, and remains, as necessary as low taxation to make this a good place to do business.

To be capable of working effectively in an internationally competitive market is a cultural strength, not a threat to valued, traditional culture.

In last week's column, the figures mentioned should have been denominated in pounds, not euros.

Oliver O'Connor is contributing editor at Finance and Finance Dublin. E-mail: ooconnor@indigo.ie