Over the past 15 years a continuous theme, which has never ceased to amaze us, has been the way in which businesses significantly underestimate the impact of cultural differences.
It typically takes something to go wrong before stakeholders take notice.
Imagine that you’re presented with an unfamiliar board game and told to play it.
Unfortunately, you don’t understand the rules and irritate the other players by making mistakes and getting things wrong.
Overall, British society tends to be quite relaxed about most things.
However, with a certain way of doing things and an emphasis on manners, Brits can become quite irritated with people who fall short of expectations.
Imagine you’ve been asked to play an unfamiliar board game and that you’re instructed to play it without any understanding of the rules.
You soon begin to irritate other players by making mistakes and getting things wrong and, after a while, the game becomes a stressful and confusing experience.
Are you new to doing business with the Middle East? Understanding the local culture is critical if you want to succeed.
In order to truly understand the locals, then you need to understand Islam and its influence on, not only the culture, but how business gets done.
If you’re off to Japan for business or working with the Japanese, then it’s important to understand the business culture as this will help you put your best foot forward!
In this blog we'll be taking a glimpse into the unique Japanese business environment and explore some tips for foreigners doing business with the Japanese.
Wherever you travel in the world, getting someone’s name wrong can be the difference between making a good impression or a bad impression.
If you’re travelling to China on business, it’s important that you take the time to understand the naming structures.
If you’re travelling to the UK for a business meeting, then be sure to make a good impression by understanding British meeting culture!
A little bit of cultural awareness can go a long way in improving communication and professional relationship building.
Are you travelling to the Arab world for business or working with Arab clients/colleagues?
Need to know what to call people and how to address them? Then this blog is exactly what you’ve been searching for!
Whether for business or pleasure, if you’re travelling to Japan, it’s important you know how to address people.
Etiquette is an important part of Japanese culture and getting things wrong could result in you being perceived as rude or ignorant – not a good footing in which to start your trip to Japan.
Unless you’re well acquainted with Japanese culture, then it’s unlikely you have come across the word freeter before.
However, if you want to understand Japanese culture, this word can give you some great insights into the people's values and attitudes.
Culturally speaking, how easy would you say it is to do business with the UK?
Well the Business Culture Complexity Index ™ (BCCI), which assesses the potential complexity of a country's business culture, has just the answer!
Since the introduction of its outward looking economic ‘Doi Moi’ policies in 1986, Vietnam has evolved into one of Asia’s strongest exporting countries.
This expansion has generated a myriad of opportunities for expats relocating to Vietnam, which are likely to continue to increase in the long term due to trade wars and increased production costs in China.
Evey company working on the international stage needs to prepare their staff with the skills and knowledge to work across cultures.
Where online cultural training is not an option, then it’s essential to provide staff with easily accessible, bitesize, digestible materials.
Indonesia is a growing market in a part of the world full of economic promise. As a result, more and more international companies and organisations are investing in the country and sending personnel to work with Indonesians.
In this blog we we’ll cover some important tips around Indonesian business culture to help visitors to the country make the best impression possible.
If you want to know how easy it is to do business with China, then look no further than the Business Culture Complexity Index ™ (BCCI), a tool which provides some great insights for expanding businesses.
The BCCI uses a number of data comparisons to produce a single ‘ease of doing business’ score for the world’s largest 50 economies, culturally speaking that is.
Danes have every reason to celebrate! The Business Culture Complexity Index™ has ranked Denmark as having the easiest business culture among the top 50 economies of the world.
Let’s discover how this tiny western European country, famous for Lego, butter, bacon and Carlsberg beer, has created a culture, that according to the data, is open, trusting, transparent and open for business!
When it comes to cultural sensitivity training, it’s a little misleading to think of Middle Eastern culture as something homogenous.
Why? Because the Middle East is a melting pot of ethnicities, languages and religions. These elements all fuse together to give us a rich cultural tapestry.
Despite a history of limiting the visibility of women, the application of harsh gender laws have instead made them the most visible part of the Saudi identity.
As such, when many Westerners think of Saudi Arabia, niqab clad women without any rights, are one of the first images that come to mind.
We hear a lot in the news about cultural differences with Western companies going East, but rarely about Eastern companies coming to the West.
A great little article in the South China Morning Post by Mark Magnier suggests that when it comes to navigating different business cultures, Chinese companies are finding very similar challenges when working on the global stage, especially in the USA.
