04.

THE CULTURAL
ENVIRONMENT
FACING
INTERNATIONAL
BUSINESS
 CULTURE
 IS LEARNED, SHARED,COMPELLING
AND INTERRELATED
 Approach to culture
 Maslow approach
 Self reliance Criterion (SRC)
 Diffusion theory-Innovators, early
adopters, late majority and laggards
 High and low end culture-
documentation/word
 I - INTRODUCTION

When doing business abroad, a company first should

determine whether a usual business practice in a
foreign country differs from its home-country
experience.

Understanding the cultures of groups of people is useful

because business employs, sells to, buys from, is
regulated by, and is owned by people.
 II - THE CONCEPT OF CULTURE

Culture: consists of specific learned norms based on

attitudes, values, and beliefs, all of which exist in every
society.

Culture cannot easily be isolated from such factors as

economic and political conditions.

Isolation tends to stabilize a culture, whereas contact

tends to create cultural borrowing

Change by Imposition: Cultural Imperialism.

 III - BEHAVIORAL PRACTICES
AFFECTING BUSINESS
A – Group Affiliation: a person’s affiliations reflecting
class or status.

B – Role of Competence: rewarded highly in some

societies. Seniority in Japan

C – Gender Based Groups: there are strong country-

specific differences in attitudes towards males and
females.

D – Age-Based Groups: many cultures assume that age

and wisdom are correlated

E – Family-Based Groups:
F – Importance of Work: protestant ethic, belief in
success and reward; work as a habit, high-need
achiever.

G – Need Hierarchy: people try to fulfill lower-order

needs sufficiently before moving on to higher ones. The
hierarchy of needs theory is helpful for differentiating
the reward preferences of employees.

H – Importance of Occupation: The importance of

business as a profession

I – Self-Reliance: uncertainty avoidance, trust, fatalism,

individual versus group

J – Preference for Autocratic versus Consultative

Management
 IV - LANGUAGE

Language: all languages are complex and reflective of

Environment
Translating one language into another.

Silent Languages: color associations, sense of

appropriate distance, time, body language.

Low-Context cultures, High-context cultures

 V - RECONCILIATION OF
INTERNATIONAL DIFFERENCES

Stereotypes

Cultural Shock

Polycentrism

Ethnocentrism

Geocentrism
 Cultural variables
 Power distance
 Individualism
 Masculinity
 Uncertainty avoidance
 Long tem orientation
 Confucian dynamism
 Integration
 Human heartedness
 Moral discipline
 Look at these...
 Cultural imperatives-recognize and
accommodate
 Cultural adiaphora-optional adaptation
 Cultural exclusives-No outsider to participate
 Cross cultural humor
 Presenting a business card
 P time and M time
 Yes means no , may be or I don't know.