How Do I Find My Way Around?

When In Rome or Rio or Riyadh . . . is made up of letters I have received from different employees of varying nationalities. In many cases, however, people have not actually written to me, but have asked me questions or described situations when we have met face-to-face. In those cases I ve tried to write down the question as accurately as possible. In yet other cases I ve heard secondhand of situations that have arisen at a workplace, and I created a question that tries to pinpoint the intercultural problem area as accurately as possible. And on the subject of pinpointing, this is a good place to define a couple of the definitions I use.

When I write of Latin America I mean countries with Latin-based languages (e.g., Spanish and Portuguese), so this embraces Mexico as well as all the countries of Central and South America. By Southern Europe I mean Italy and Spain and the southern parts of France. I don t include Turkey here, even though Turkey may well join the European Union in the future.

Most of the questions ask about a specific country, but most of my answers include references to other cultures, usually to point out similarities. I believe that by broadening the scope of the answers this, in management-speak, provides added value for the reader. In other words, if you want to find out something about Brazil, with no extra effort you may also learn a little about Argentina, Norway, and Indonesia! E. M.

Forster, an English author who explored intercultural tensions in the novel A Passage to India before the word intercultural had been invented, has one of his wisest characters urge the others to, Only connect. She, and perhaps Forster himself, meant that you had to apply experiences of your own life in order to interpret and understand those of other people. By the same token if we allow ourselves to think about what cultures have in common, or how they approach the same problems, we may well find that countries connect with each other in strange and unexpected ways.

This book is divided into three parts. The first part, The First Steps, takes you through the getting-to-know-you process, from the initial introduction stage to the point in the relationship when people start to meet and socialize.

The second part, Understanding Each Other, examines two areas that can cause problems from the first moment in a relationship to the last: communication and time. When working with people from other cultures, the message you convey may be quite different from the one you intend, and if you time it wrong, the message may be disregarded anyway.

The third part, Working Together, explores even deeper waters. It looks at (1) how our personal profiles (as defined by our gender, age, ethnicity , and nationality ) are molded by where we come from, and (2) what effect our culture has on our roles and relationships at work. The last chapter of this section deals with fundamental questions about what we believe are right, important, or natural ways to behave. So you could say that the book starts in the intercultural shallows of etiquette and progresses to the murky depths of ethics and assumptions, where potential misunderstandings can have bigger and more far-reaching consequences.

Each of the three parts is divided into related chapters, which in turn are divided into subsections. At the end of each subsection you will find a summary, In a Nutshell, which summarizes many of the points raised in the letters, as well as adding a little basic information about each of the thirty-three key countries that the book focuses on. Sometimes I feel I should remind readers of certain rules of correct behavior that apply wherever they are likely to find themselves , and have included those under the heading Global Business Standards. In other cases I ve highlighted situations that might result in a sticky intercultural misunderstanding under the heading Global Warnings. I have tried not to generalize too much when it comes to the comments in Nutshells, but certain groups of countries do have a lot in common whether in terms of ethnicity, geography, or politics. I m thinking of China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, which form one group; Austria, Switzerland, and Germany, which form another; and the Scandinavian countries of Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark that form a third. So in Nutshells I sometimes write one entry that applies to the whole group . Where I do this I make the reference clear.

These thirty-three countries have not been chosen at random; they make up the world s biggest economies as measured in Gross Domestic Product. (See The Economist s Pocket World of Figures , 2003 edition. There may be minor changes from year to year, but the list remains essentially the same.)

The World s Largest Economies in Order of Size of Gross Domestic Product (2003)

1. U.S.	12. India	23. Turkey
2. Japan	13. South Korea	24. Denmark
3. Germany	14. Australia	25. Hong Kong
4. U.K.	15. Russia	26. Poland
5. France	16. Netherlands	27. Norway
6. Italy	17. Taiwan	28. Indonesia
7. China	18. Argentina	29. Saudi Arabia
8. Brazil	19. Switzerland	30. South Africa
9. Canada	20. Belgium	31. Finland
10. Spain	21. Sweden	32. Thailand
11. Mexico	22. Austria	33. Venezuela

By concentrating on the countries where most international business transactions and contacts take place, I kept the size of the book manageable. The exclusion of many countries, including most of Africa, says nothing about the richness of their cultures, but a lot about the inequalities of global economic performance.

I have tried to make my answers as objective as possible, taking into account that the letters provide us with only a quick glimpse of what may be a very complicated situation. Regard each letter as part of a tiny short story taken from someone s working life. By reading between the lines you can sometimes understand what prompted the letter (anger, surprise, curiosity ) and as in literature, you do not need to have experienced the same situation yourself to identify with it. In these micro-situations there is very little background information and you cannot be 100 percent sure whether the problem has personal, corporate, or cultural roots. But, well, life is like that.

When you read the letters, please look at where the question comes from, as that often reveals a lot about the culture of the person doing the asking. As we all know, what is regarded as self-explanatory in one culture is a complete mystery to another. What you find strange about a culture depends on which culture you come from.