Cross- cultural Communication This page intentionally left blank

Doing business in a foreign culture
Another student exercise that the authors have used to good effect is to issue 
business people who are about to go to work in another culture for the first 
time with a short questionnaire aiming to highlight the key cultural differ-
entiators between their culture and the one in which they are going to work. 
Many of their answers will be their perceptions, which may be incorrect, 
and these can be discussed further with their tutors. An example of such a 
questionnaire follows.

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Teaching Cross- Cultural Communication 289
Question
My culture
Their culture
1.
Is English widely understood in business?
2.
Do people use first names or last names 
in greeting and general conversation?
3.
Can humour be used in meetings and 
presentations?
4.
Do people proceed direct to business 
at meetings or do they first use ‘ice-
breakers’?
5.
Is it essential to build good personal 
relationships before doing business?
6.
How important are socializing and 
hospitality?
7.
How important is punctuality? Do things 
always keep to schedules?
8.
Do decisions have to be unanimous or 
do they depend on consensus?
9.
What importance is given to status and 
hierarchy?
10.
Is an agreed agenda issued before a 
meeting?
The next step is to summarize the key differences for both your culture 
and the foreign culture, and discuss the reasons for the differences.
Exercise on stereotypes
As we have seen earlier, stereotypes are quick, simplistic ways of classifying 
people into categories. They are useful as we try to sort people into catego-
ries and therefore become handy pigeon holes. They are relatively harmless 
if used only as a rule of thumb, but can be dangerous if they are taken as 
the whole truth about other people, for example, in relation to race, gender, 
class and religion. Unfortunately, most stereotypes contain value judg-
ments. Our own group loyalty tends to encourage us to believe our group is 
more important or better than other groups. Although national barriers are 
disappearing, national stereotypes may take longer to remove. The danger 
lies in the speed and intensity of the assumptions, perceptions and predic-
tions about other people on very thin information and evidence, and our 
attribution of the supposed characteristics of a whole group to its individual 
members. Stereotypes can take two different forms:
traits that we admire – ambition, cleverness, boldness, industry, modesty;
traits that we deplore – laziness, stupidity, untrustworthiness.
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290 Cross-Cultural Communication
Students should be aware of their stereotypical views of people from other 
cultures. By using a simple exercise, ‘What do you know about people from 
these cultures?’, they can list separately the characteristics they perceive as 
‘positive’ from the ‘negative’ ones. Trainers can then discuss any ascribed 
stereotypes and question whether such generalizations are in any way valid. 
This short exercise could be used, for example, by a businessman instructed 
at very short notice to go to the ‘Baltic States’ to ascertain the market for a