The Blog for Culture Vultures

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.

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.

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.

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!

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!

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.

Are you planning on doing business in the Nordic region? Maybe you already do? Want to learn more about the business culture? Then this blog is for you!

When working in a foreign culture its essential to understand a bit about the people and how they like to do business.

Working in the ASEAN region? Looking for some quick tips on how to do business? Need to know some of the main cultural differences you may come across?

Then this blog is for you!

Doing business with the Chinese? If so, then it’s more than likely that food will be involved at some point!

Food, dining out and business banquets are all integral to relationship building and getting business done.

Did you know that the USA is one of our most in-demand countries in terms of cross-cultural training?

We support a diverse spectrum of business professionals from across the globe who work with Americans by helping them understand the culture, and specifically the business culture.

We are delighted to announce the release of our latest online cultural awareness training course - on China.

The new addition to our catalogue of online courses offers lots of fantastic insights into Chinese culture, the people and of course, Chinese business practices.

If you are travelling to Thailand for work, then you really need to understand a little about Thai culture first.

Despite its reputation as the Land of Smiles, Thai culture is relatively formal and, if you behave in the wrong manner, the people can judge you negatively for failing to show the right decorum.

We are delighted to announce the release of an online cultural awareness training course on British culture.

Did you know that in The UK they celebrate a 'pancake day'? Yes! And it involves a pancake race too!

Visiting Thailand? Then make sure your travels coincide with the three-day Thai new year celebration, known as ‘Songkran’.

Having travelled extensively across South East Asia, Songkran, was by far, the most beautiful festival that I had the fortune to take part in.