For your benefit, we are offering our library of interesting articles on international business strategies and cross-cultural interactions. This section will be expanded regularly, so please stop by again in the future to check what's new.
To read any of the articles, simply click on its title (requires Adobe Reader).
At long last, here is a structured approach to conducting business in a foreign country and culture. For each required step, the article explains how to approach it and what you will gain from taking it. Frequent international examples illustrate the key concepts.
Companies have lost huge amounts of money because they engaged in international business without proper preparation. This article analyzes some examples and investigates root causes of poor cost effectiveness in foreign engagements.
There is hardly a better opportunity to foster your success when conducting business on a global scale than to thoroughly prepare for cross-cultural negotiations. Even experienced negotiators struggle if they are unfamiliar with country and culture. This article discusses principal differences and approaches, and makes suggestions how to prepare well for your upcoming international negotiation.
Most business leaders believe that if managed right, the culture of their company or organization will be so powerful that influences of national culture become secondary. Not so. This article shows the real picture.
International project work, especially in a co-development environment where teams across different countries collaborate and at least to some degree also compete with each other, requires skilled leadership. This article discusses the six leadership behaviors successful international project leaders commonly share.
This article explains how people in some cultures, for example the United States, are generally tolerant of uncertainty and may even enjoy taking great risks, while others may be avoiding uncertainty to a large degree. Using Japan as an example, a culture where uncertainty is strongly avoided, this article discusses how this characteristic affects projects and how it can foster a strong quality orientation.
How people establish authority and what earns them the respect of others depends significantly on the cultural context. Identical behavior may stimulate a reputation of being a great leader in one country and being a jerk in another. This article takes a closer look at attitudes in status-oriented cultures, for instance in Latin America, Southern Europe, and Asia.
France is what anthropologist Edward T. Hall calls a "high-context culture". A complaint that is frequently heard from foreigners doing business in the country is that the French “just won’t tell you what is going on”. Indeed, people in the country have a different view of how to communicate information. This article discusses what is different and how one can effectively communicate with people in France.
Reviewing China's phenomenal economic progress, this article analyzes some of the driving forces that are founded within its culture. It finds that influences such as its business focus and long-term orientation combined with a group centeredness and strong work ethics of its people had a significant impact on the country's progress.
