Cultural Dimension Seminars

            Today we stayed in the hotel as Professor Fernandez conducted a morning seminar on Cultural Dimensions and an afternoon seminar on Intercultural Relations.  Both seminars presented an extremely useful insight into how other countries conduct business and how it relates to the difference of countries society structures.

The morning seminar focused on the research of Dr. Hofstedes and IBM.  IBM placed Hofstedes in charge of introducing IBM into foreign markets in the 1970’s.  However, before IBM could thrive in foreign markets they wanted to better understand different countries cultural dimensions.  Dr. Hofstedes’s study spanned over a decade on broke into the five following categories; power distance, individualism, masculinity, uncertainty avoidance ad long-term orientation.  He also assigned a ranking of all the countries on a scale of  0-100.  One such example is the Power Distance (PD).  A country with a higher PD index, Guatemala 95, has centralized companies and strong hierarchies.  A country with a low PD index, Israel 13, views managers and employees more as equals and involves many people in decision making.  This system is highly regarded in the international business world today and provides a road map of each countries society, in which, an individual/entity can approach a prospective business deal without disrespect and therefore a much higher chance of success.

In the afternoon, Professor Fernandez taught us Intercultural Relations in Business.  We watched several short videos on proper verbal and non-verbal language in international business.  This included many do’s and do not’s of different countries.  For instance, in Brazil, never give the thumbs up as it is same as flicking someone off in the USA and understand that Brazil’s language is Portuguese, not Spanish.  In another example, China, business cards are to be carefully presented and received, slowly, with both hands and then placed, vertically, on the table with the most qualified business card on the top of the table.  Also, China values trust over contracts, which is similar to a “western marriage.”  To the Chinese, the future is in the hands of the Gods and all contracts are subject to unseen variables.  So it is important to respect business with a sense of the long-term and not set over a period of contract terms.