A Home for Culture Vultures

Being aware of cultural differences is crucial if you work in international business.

Anyone who believes that “everyone does business the same” will soon get a shock once they start to work with other cultures.

Does Cultural Awareness training work?

Will investing in such training really offer any sort of ROI and help your staff?

Being able to communicate and collaborate across cultures is crucial for many of today’s professions; engineers included.

However, a Japanese-led research team suggests that the intercultural communication skills being taught to today’s engineers are not fit for purpose.

In this article, we look at how a lack of cultural awareness can have big cost implications for a business.

Western businesses that believe their approach to business is 'the only way', are losing out on contracts and productivity when it comes to interfacing with foreign companies.

We love to look at different takes on cultural differences.

Understanding culture, and how it impacts your business, isnt just about dos and dont's.

Global Real Estate advisor Jones Lang LaSalle have carried out some research into the difficulties that can be encountered by western companies when they enter the Indian market.

The result? Cultural differences are a major obstacle.

According to a new global study about workplace bullying, bullying bosses are more accepted in Anglo countries such as the U.S. or the U.K than they are in many other countries.

The study was recently published in the Journal or Business Research and is co-authored by Nikos Bozionelos, who is a Professor at the Audencia Nantes School of Management.

All week, in Ghana, we have reached out to a broad spectrum of successful  Ghanaian businessmen to help determine how they have managed to attain success. 

Our meetings focused on hearing their experiences, their challenges, as well as their formula for breaking out of the crowd.

Based on my experiences of organising business meetings in Ghana, I am going to elaborate on business etiquette in general, with the hope to give a few more insights, explanations and tips for doing business in Ghana.

I have to specify that the insights which will be given below were collected from Ghanaians currently living and working in Ghana, as opposed to Ghanaians from the diaspora who have recently come back to open up businesses back home.

“There’s no food for lazy man” is a common saying displayed all over Accra, and one I happened to hear today on my first day in Ghana.

Many of these proverbs beautifully illustrate the values of Ghanain people. 

'Active listening' is a communication skill crucial to doing cross-cultural business.

As a skill, it requires the listener to become attuned with the speaker in order to confirm what they have heard and moreover, to confirm the understanding of both parties.

Different perspectives = different priorities.

This is true of anything in life and especially in global business.

Have you ever thought about the link between culture and retail?

One of the first things I like to do when I go into a different country is go check out the local supermarket.

Exporting food?

Beware of cultural differences and always carry out research on consumer, retail and shopping habits say the experts.

A report undertaken by Ipsos called "Culture at Work" throws some interesting light on intercultural skills in the international workplace.

The intercultural skills most commonly reported by these business included: 

Doing business internationally can be exciting and fulfilling.

It can also present opportunities to learn new approaches to the workplace. 

As a training consultant, one of the best aspects of my work is seeing how different industries approach employee training.

I'm lucky, I get to meet HR, L&D and Training Managers from across industries and businesses and to them about their work. In my last visit to Paris, I was blown over by the proactivity and dedication to training by a natural resources company.