Business vs. cultures

After being on a very interesting conference given by Nick B Meyer in Universidad EAFIT about cultural dimensions all over the world, I realized the importance of this topic when doing business with different cultures around the world, and the importance of studying the person with the one you are going to do the business, for example is not the same thing to do a business with a Colombian guy (which have my same culture) than with a Chinese guy (has different culture), off course if you have a meeting with the colombian guy and you be late for 15 minutes it won’t be a big problem, but if you be late with the Chinese the business would be in risk.

In the conference Meyer talked about different cultural dimensions, but there was one that caught my attention because of the importance it has in today’s world:

- Masculinity vs. Femininity: It talks about the role of the genders in every culture, after doing a research studies found that female roles tend to be similar in the different cultures they tend to be modest and care. In the other hand masculine gender tend to be different, but with similarities like competitiveness and hungry for success.

For example Japanese people (Masculinity 95 on the scale of Hofstede) may be different than the Chilean people (Masculinity 16 on the scale of Hofstede), in this case Japanese people tend to be more competitive and ambitious than the Chilean people.

(stadistics taken from http://www.clearlycultural.com/geert-hofstede-cultural-dimensions/masculinity/)

For concluding my intervention I would talk a little about the role that the manager of a company has to take when dealing with other cultures. I found in the interenet a very interesting paragraph that describes how fro me a manager should think when doing business that says “For those who work in international business, it is sometimes amazing how different people in other cultures behave. We tend to have a human instinct that 'deep inside' all people are the same - but they are not. Therefore, if we go into another country and make decisions based on how we operate in our own home country - the chances are we'll make some very bad decisions” (Taken from Geert Hofstede cultural dimesnions, URL: http://www.geert-hofstede.com/).

I think that is important that comapanies develop cultuaral skills in their employees (sepcially the ones who negotiate) because this way there will be more possibilities of succes .