Cultural Differences in the Global Business Environment

Cultural differences present a number of challenges in the global marketplace. For one thing, companies must recognize and respect differences in social values, ideas of status, decision-making habits,attitudes toward time, use of space, body language, manners, and ethical standards. Otherwise such differences can lead to misunderstandings in international business relationships, particularly if language differences also exist.

In addition to the suggestion that you learn about the culture, seasoned international businesspeople offer the following tips for improving intercultural communication:

• Be alert to the other person's custom
• Deal with the individual
• Clarify your intent and meaning
• Adapt your style to the other person's
  
• Show respect
  

The Global Business Environment

Enterprises are experiencing the excitement of conducting business in the global marketplace. Altough selling goods and services in foreign markets can generate increased sales, produce operational efficiencies, expose companies to new technologies, and provide greater consumer choices, venturing abroad also exposes comanies to many new challenges. For instance, each country has unique ways doing business, which must be learned: Laws, customs, consumer preferences, ethical standards, labor skill, and political and economic stability vary from country to country, and all have the potential to affect a firm's international prospects. Furthermore, volatile currencies and international trade relationships can indeed make global expansion a risky proposition.

Business

A business (also called a firm or an enterprise) is a legally recognized organization designed to provide goods and/or services to consumers, governments or other businesses. A business needs a market. A consumer is an essential part of a business. Businesses are predominant in capitalist economies, most being privately owned and formed to earn profit to increase the wealth of owners. The owners and operators of a business have as one of their main objectives the receipt or generation of a financial return in exchange for work and acceptance of risk. Notable exceptions include cooperative businesses and state-owned enterprises.Socialist systems involve either government agencies, public, or worker ownership of most sizable businesses.

The etymology of "business" relates to the state of being busy either as an individual or society as a whole, doing commercially viable and profitable work. The term "business" has at least three usages, depending on the scope — the singular usage (above) to mean a particular company or corporation, the generalized usage to refer to a particular market sector, such as "the music business" and compound forms such as agribusiness, or the broadest meaning to include all activity by the community of suppliers of goods and services. However, the exact definition of business, like much else in the philosophy of business, is a matter of debate.

Business studies, the study of the management of individuals to maintain collective productivity in order to accomplish particular creative and productive goals (usually to generate profit), is taught as an academic subject in many schools.