Through intellectual contact, communication and observation, people can move to level two, a state of being aware of the differences. This is an attitude of ‘other people have different ways of doing things from us’.

From awareness comes level three, tolerance. This is the attitude of ‘they are different from us’, but without attaching any judgment of better or best.

When individuals are transplanted into a new culture for whatever reason, they are likely to experience a culture shock, which can be an extremely disappointing situation. The individual is faced with three basic choices: tolerating and adapting to the new culture, remaining, but with a negative attitude towards the host culture or returning to the home culture.

From tolerances of differences, the final level – four – is possible. This is a state of using our differences positively to achieve team work and the attitude is one of ‘let us work together in an integrated manner’.

Roots of cultural differences. Cultural differences evolve because given groups of people develop different values and basic concepts for understanding the worlds around them and for guiding their action. These differences can become barriers between cultures because of four human factors.

First, the psychological processes and defense mechanisms or the individual can result in suspicion and distrust.

Second, barriers are often reinforced by group dynamics, that is, the predisposition of groups to close ranks against other groups and to stereotype them.

Third, barriers may be built up as a result of the competitive nature of business. All parties are not going to get everything they want, so they must fight, compete or find collaborative forms of working together.

National cultures can also be broken down into different subcultures, such as regional, class, generational, and professional.

The increasing internationalization of business over last decades has brought about such themes as globalization and transnational companies.

We are often led to believe that the world is gradually becoming a smaller global village where some universal principals of being an effective manager apply.

However, within this global village, there still appear as many different approaches to business as there are national cultures. For example, ‘management by objectives (MBO)’ is regarded as a sound management practice in many cultures, but is seen as ‘losing face’ in others.

For a business to succeed in a multinational or international environment, it has to be able to identify and quantify the values, beliefs, expectations and ways of doing business of everybody involved. Responding to the complexity, diversity and ambiguity of cultures becomes a crucial task of management and training alike.

Text 2. Cross-cultural management.

Managing a truly global multinational company would obviously be much simpler if it required only one set of corporate objectives, goals, policies, practices, products and services. But local differences often make this impossible. The conflict between globalization and localization has led to the invention of the word ‘glocalization’. Companies that want to be successful in foreign markets have to be aware of the local cultural characteristics that affect the way business is done.

A fairly obvious cultural divide is the one between, on the one hand, the countries of North America and north-west Europe, where management is largely based on analysis, rationality, logic and systems, and, on the other hand,  the Latin cultures of southern Europe and South America, where personal relations, intuition, emotion and sensitivity are of much greater importance.

The largely Protestant countries on both sides of North Atlantic (Canada, the USA, Britain, the Netherlands, Germany, Scandinavia) are essentially individualist. In such cultures, status has to be achieved. You don’t automatically respect people just because they’ve been in a company for 30 years. A young dynamic, aggressive manager with an MBA (a Master in Business Administration degree) can quickly rise in the hierarchy.

In most Latin and Asian cultures, on the contrary, status is automatically accorded to the boss, who is more likely to be in his fifties or sixties than in the thirties. This particularly true in Japan, where companies traditionally have a policy of promotion by seniority. A Japanese would also want to take the time to get to know the person with whom he was negotiating, and would not appreciate an assertive American who wanted to sign a deal immediately and take the next plane home.

In northern cultures, the principle of pay-for-performance often successfully motivates people. The more you sell, the more you get paid. But the principle might well be resisted in more collectivist cultures, and in countries where rewards and promotion are expected to come with age and experience.

Singaporean and Indonesian manager objected that pay-for-performance caused salesmen to pressure customers into buying products they didn’t really need, which was not only bad for long term business relation, but quite simply unfair and ethically wrong.

Another example of an American idea that doesn’t work well in Latin countries is matrix management. The task-oriented logic of matrix management conflicts with the principle of loyalty to the all-important line superior, the functional boss. You can’t have two bosses any more than you can have two fathers. For example, French managers would rather see an organization die than tolerate a system in which a few subordinates have to report to two bosses.

Speaking about people’s relationships with their boss and their colleagues and friends, we can distinguish between ‘universalists’ and ‘particularists’. The former believe that rules are extremely important; the latter believe that personal relationships and friendships should take precedence. Consequently, each group thinks that the other is corrupt. Universalists say that particularists ‘cannot be trusted because they will always help their friends’, while the second group says of the first ‘you cannot trust the; they would not even help a friend’. There are many more particularists in Latin and Asian countries than in Australia, the USA, Canada, or north-west Europe.

Text 3. Culture clashes.

In Asian countries most of decision-making takes place behind the scenes. In China it may be necessary to have government involved in any decisions taken. And in India people are sometimes late for a scheduled appointment.

Greetings, gestures and terms of address are all potential hazards when meeting people of other cultures.. While we are familiar with short firm handshake in this part of the world, in the Middle East the hand is held in a loose grip for a longer time. In Islamic cultures, showing the soles of your feet is a sign of disrespect and crossing your leg is seen as offensive.

The difference between understanding a culture and ignoring its conventions can be the measure of success or failure abroad. In Western cultures we believe in empowering people and rewarding them for using initiative, but other cultures operate on the basis of obeying direct orders.

You can easily talk yourself into trouble at a business meeting in Japan. For them the most senior person at the meeting will say very little, and the person doing most of the talking is not very important.  In a country like Japan, the notion of personal space which we value so much simply has no meaning. With a population of 125 million condensed into a narrow strip of land private space for the Japanese is virtually non-existent.

‘Do and Don’t’ while you are on a business abroad

Do: - show an interest in, and at least an elementary knowledge of the country you are visiting.

- Learn a few words of the language – it will be seen as a compliment.

- Be sensitive to countries who have bigger and better-known neighbours, and try not to confuse Canadians with Americans, New Zealanders with Australians, Belgians with French.

- Familiarize yourself with the basic of business and social etiquette. As a starting point, learning how to greet people is very important.

Don’t:

- Assume you won’t meet any communication problems because you speak English. You may think you are paying somebody a compliment by telling them their business is going a bomb. Americans will conclude you think it is failing.

- Appear too reserved. As Americans are generally more full cheerful than their European colleagues, they may equate reserve with lack of enthusiasm.

Text 4. Cross- Cultural Management that Makes a Difference

Cross-cultural management, as defined concept, is no more than twenty years old. It came into being because in the past decade international companies have become truly international. They are not just exporting; they are opening offices in other countries or buying into joint ventures. As a result, they employ lots of foreign employees, many of them local hires, and have their own employees living and working in other cultures.

Cross-cultural management training teaches, explains, consults and conveys modes of communication to people so they can better understand a culture foreign to them.

We all understand, intellectually, that things are done differently abroad, yet many people tend to forget this in the heat of daily business. Not all conflict is caused by cultural differences – some people just can’t get along – but often it is. Employees must be taught how to manage and be managed across cultures.

Culture is like the air you breathe but only when you put your head under water do you realize that you’ve been breathing air and now you are deprived of it. The same is true for culture: when we are in our home countries, we are swimming in culture without seeing or sensing it since it’s how we were brought up. Only when you leave your country, or start working with foreigners in your home country, do you become aware of your own culture.

When a foreign company opens an office in Russia, for example, it imports its culture here. Not only do the expatriates working here experience culture shock, but so do the Russians working in the company. Naturally the experience of working and interacting differs depending on whether you work for a German, French, or Japanese company.

One always carries his/her culture and it is always done on the subconscious level. When you come into a new culture, you are shocked because it confronts your own. If you try to push your culture onto the people and environment around you, people will find you difficult. The key to understanding any culture is information- you must look around and ask questions, even if you think they are stupid questions.

If no one explains you how another culture functions, you will not know how to interpret the way its people interact with you; you may seem like they just don’t like you. There are lots of avenues to describe culture: history, traditions, nature, and even ways of society. Knowing even some of them helps reduce conflict because people start to understand more about the culture, and, more importantly, become more open minded. They may still not like their colleague as a person, but at least it isn’t because he is American, French, or Chinese.

Cross-cultural management doesn’t claim to solve all communication issues and get rid of all workplace conflicts. But it does one thing for sure: it brings to light the cultural issues many of us keep hidden. It teaches people to accept the fact that differences do exist.

When you are going to work in an international company, first of all, you should anticipate that you are probably not going to understand what is going on. It is natural for people who do not understand to start blaming somebody else.  To combat this, you need lots and lots of solid communication.

How should a company coming to a new culture cope with cultural issues?

First, the company leader need send pioneers – people with international knowledge and experience working abroad. Many foreigners put the blame for their bad experience on the country they are going to, when it is really the fault of living and working abroad for the first time. Living abroad is not easy.

Whether you settle on a joint venture or take on a local partner, sit down and discuss your cross-cultural issues, and come up with a strategy. When you hire locally, first choose those who have experience in an international environment. It is much more difficult to open an office directly, rather than taking on a partner or creating a joint venture, due to the laws and regulations. Foreigners encounter difficulties in any country. Don’t jump to conclusions and blame your host country for your problems. First consider how foreigners are treated in YOUR country.

Text 5. Cross-cultural management in Russia.

In northern European cultures it’s considered professional to keep business and family separate, but not in Russia. Here, people expect to be able to discuss personal problems at work and think it’s fine if their boss calls late at night or on the weekend to talk about business. In other countries, at half past six workers are in private time.

This means what you, a foreign manager, might consider good business management, is actually not. Family and work are more mixed in Russia – it’s what you call a diffused culture – and this may create conflict.

In Russia if you want to succeed in business as a manager, you must show interest in your employee’s life. You must ask your employees how their granny feels and whether their children did well in their exams. And this goes both ways; employees also expect to take an interest in your personal life.

If you manage your staff in this way, should you ask an employee to come in Monday at 8 AM instead of 9 AM to settle important issues, the employee will agree gladly because he or she is grateful to help and feels connected to you personally.

Of course in Russia there is a style of management, called management by walking around, that builds on this more personal work environment. In this model, employees expect the boss to know everything; the boss is like a teacher. Overseas, your typical teacher may take time to think about a student’s question, but in Russia if you ask the teacher a question he is expected to answer at once, even if he doesn’t have the right answer. That what your worker will expect of you.

Relationships between manager and employees in Russia versus   the West.

Work in Russia is very hierarchical. The boss always remains your boss, and you know and feel your status. In the West, business-unit like organization is popular. People work cooperatively on projects, adopting different roles at different times

This has a huge impact on performance assessments. In a business-unit-type organizations people are eager to praise their colleagues’ performance because they hope their colleagues will do the same for them in the future. In Russia one must be more careful and assessments may be muted – everyone looks average.

As some theorists assume there are inner-oriented and outer oriented cultures. Americans tend to be internally oriented, they manage by setting objectives targets: you do the job on time and you get a bonus, in other words: you control your destiny. Russians tend to operate with a more external orientation.

Problems arise as the foreign managers, looking critically at how each group operates, decide to assign cultural blame. Foreigners think Russians are lazy, Russians claim foreigners can’t understand their country. In the end everyone gives up, saying, “this is just how thing are in Russia”, which is the worst conclusion to draw.

The only way to handle such a situation is anticipate it; you know you are tasked with creating one effort across culture, so get ready to deal with it. At start, work out a flexible strategy for handling the cultural differences, coming up with several scenarios just in case one doesn’t work out. This is a great tool to use in all countries where people feel they are being controlled by nature, like in Russia.

Text 6. Some Results of Poor Cross Cultural Awareness

Having a poor understanding of the influence of cross cultural differences in areas such as management, PR, advertising and negotiation scan eventually lead to blunders that can have damaging consequences.

It is crucial for today’s business personnel to understand the impact of cross cultural differences on business, trade and internal company organization. The success or failure of a company, venture, merger or acquisition is essentially in the hands of people. If these people are not cross culturally aware then misunderstandings, offence and a breakdown in communication can occur.

The need for greater cross cultural awareness is heightened in our global economies. Cross cultural differences in matters such as language, etiquette, non-verbal communication, norms and values can, do and will lead to cross cultural blunders.

To illustrate this we have provided a few examples of cross cultural blunders that could have been avoided with appropriate cross cultural awareness training:

- An American oil rig supervisor in Indonesia shouted at an employee to take a boat to shore. Since it is no-one berates an Indonesian in public, a mob of outraged workers chased the supervisor with axes.

- Pepsodent tried to sell its toothpaste in Southeast Asia by emphasizing that it “whitens your teeth.” They found out that the local natives chew betel nuts to blacken their teeth which they find attractive.

- A company advertised eyeglasses in Thailand by featuring a variety of cute animals wearing glasses. The ad was a poor choice since animals are considered to be a form of low life and no self respecting Thai wouldn’t wear anything worn by animals.

The soft drink Fresca was being promoted by a saleswoman in Mexico. She was surprised that her sales pitch was greeted with laughter, and later embarrassed when she learned that Fresca is slang for “lesbian.”

- When President George Bush went to Japan with Lee Iacocca and other American business magnates, and directly made explicit and direct demands on Japanese leaders, they violated Japanese etiquette. To the Japanese (who use high context language) it is considered rude and a sign of ignorance or desperation to lower oneself to make direct demands. Some analysts believe it severely damaged the negotiations and confirmed to the Japanese that Americans are barbarians.

- A soft drink was introduced into Arab countries with an attractive label that had stars on it—six-pointed stars. The Arabs interpreted this as pro-Israeli and refused to buy it. Another label was printed in ten languages, one of which was Hebrew—again the Arabs did not buy it.

- U.S. and British negotiators found themselves at a standstill when the American company proposed that they “table” particular key points. In the U.S. “Tabling a motion” means to not discuss it, while the same phrase in Great Britain means to “bring it to the table for discussion.”

In addition to interpersonal cross cultural gaffes, the translation of documents, brochures, advertisements and signs also offers us some comical cross cultural blunders:

-  Kellogg had to rename its Bran Buds cereal in Sweden when it discovered that the name roughly translated to “burned farmer.”

- When PepsiCo advertised Pepsi in Taiwan with the ad “Come Alive With Pepsi” they had no idea that it would be translated into Chinese as “Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the dead.”

- American medical containers were distributed in Great Britain and caused quite a stir. The instructions to “Take off top and push in bottom,” innocuous to Americans, had very strong sexual connotations to the British.

- In Italy, a campaign for Schweppes Tonic Water translated the name into “Schweppes Toilet Water.”

- In a Yugoslavian hotel: The flattening of underwear with pleasure is the job of the chambermaid.

- In a Bangkok dry cleaner’s: Drop your trousers here for best results.

- In an East African newspaper: A new swimming pool is rapidly taking shape since the contractors have thrown in the bulk of their workers.

- At a Budapest zoo: Please do not feed the animals. If you have any suitable food, give it to the guard on duty.