When cultures collide.: Managing successfully across cultures - Tapa dura

The successful managers of the 21st century will be the culturally-sensitive ones. If you are in a business meeting, in negotiations, part of a joint venture or just face-to-face with someone from another culture, you gain a competitive advantage from having strategies to deal with the cultural differences you will encounter. This guide provides a truly global and practical guide to working and communicating across cultures, explaining how our own culture and language affect the ways in which we organize our world, think, feel and respond, before going on to suggest both general and specific ways of making our influence felt across the cultural divide. There are insights into how different business cultures accord status, structure their organizations and view the role of leader, alongside useful advice on global negotiation, sales and marketing. The book ranges from differences in etiquette and body language to new thinking in the areas of international management and team-building in Europe and the USA, as well as covering challenging new geographical ground in Russia, China and the Far East. By focusing on the cultural roots of national behaviour, both in society and business, we can foresee and calculate with a degree of accuracy how others will react and respond to us. The author adds the often overlooked dimension of language, for example, how Japanese often react in a certain way because they are thinking in Japanese. A greater understanding of what makes other people tick should enable managers to ensure that their policies and activities exploit cultural synergies and make the right appeal to their chosen market.

Richard D. Lewis is chairman of Richard Lewis Communications, an international institute of crosscultural and language training.