The Art of Doing Business Across Cultures

10 Countries, 50 Mistakes, and 5 Steps to Cultural Competence

Craig Storti

• Publisher: Intercultural Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781941176146
• eBook ISBN: 9781473645325
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: International Business
• Index: Business

50 common cultural mistakes made in business are presented in the form of short conversations which show that there's always a reason why people do the strange things they do, the reason is almost never to upset you, and there's always a way round. The Art of Doing Business Across Cultures presents five brief, unsuccessful conversational exchanges between Americans and their business colleagues in 10 different locations-the Arab Middle East, Brazil, China, England, France, Germany, India, Japan, Mexico, and Russia.

1

The Arab Middle East

Arab thought tends more to move on an ideal level, divorced from the Procrustean bed of reality.

—Raphael Patai

One of the greatest passages in all of travel literature comes from one of the greatest of all travel narratives: Eothen by A. W. Kinglake. (“Eothen” means “from the East.”) The book is an account of a journey the Englishman Kinglake took in the late 1820s from the Danube through Turkey and the Middle East, as far as Egypt. The passage occurs when Kinglake crosses the Sava River, the boundary at that time between what he calls “wheel-going Europe” and the Ottoman Empire, or, in his words, “the Splendour and Havoc of the East” (1). Not long after leaving Christendom behind and passing into Ottoman lands, while approaching a Turkish fortress, Kinglake writes that

presently there issued from the postern [city gate] a group of human beings—beings with immortal souls, and possibly some reasoning faculties, but to me the grand point was this, that they had real, substantial, and incontrovertible turbans. (1982, 3)

It is that single word “incontrovertible” that secures this passage a place in the pantheon of timeless cross-cultural observations. These are human beings with immortal souls and the power of reasoning—to that extent they are like you and me— but then come those “real, substantial, and incontrovertible turbans.” Until that detail, we are in the realm of the familiar, but the turbans change everything. They cannot be denied, cannot be gainsaid; that’s the brilliance of “incontrovertible.” You and I and no one we know on our side of the river has ever worn a turban. These people are not like us.

The people Kinglake saw were probably Turks, not Arabs*, but it is fitting this scene took place in the Middle East, for of all the peoples profiled in these pages, the Arabs of that region are the least understood by Americans. Americans cannot relate to the geography: dry, barren, and hot. They don’t think much of their forms of government: monarchies, dictatorships, and military states. They don’t understand their religion: Islam. And they find their societies closed and very often anti-Western. Ask Americans their opinion of Arabs, and the most likely response is that they are either cruel or dishonest. What Americans do know about the Middle East usually has something to do with Israel.

The gap between Americans and Arabs is incontrovertible, but it is not unbridgeable. Read on.

1. A DAY IN THE DESERT

MARTHA:	Kevin, you’re back early. How did your visit with the Saudis go?
KEVIN:	Not that well, actually.
MARTHA:	What happened?
KEVIN:	Well, I gave my presentation the first morning, but they stopped me after an hour and gave me a tour of their facility. I met a lot of senior people, and we had a very long lunch. But no one asked about our proposal. It’s like I had never even given the presentation.
MARTHA:	Really?
KEVIN:	And the next day was more of the same. We went on an all-day excursion to this village out in the desert. I met the head man of the tribe, and everyone was very nice, but no one said anything about our offer.
MARTHA:	No one?
KEVIN:	Nobody. And after that they didn’t schedule any more meetings, so I decided to come home a day early.
MARTHA:	Did you hear? We got an e-mail from them this morning.
KEVIN:	Really?
MARTHA:	Yes, they want us to sign a contract.

In several of the countries featured here, business is personal, very personal, and nowhere more so than in the Arab Middle East. The terms of the deal matter, of course, but not nearly as much as the character and personality of the dealer. Kevin, who does not know he has been tested, much less that he has passed the test, is using American criteria to evaluate the success of his visit to the Saudis, and by those criteria his trip has been a failure. His pitch was cut short, no comments were made about his proposal, people went to a lot of effort not to talk about business, and a three-day series of meetings and discussions was reduced to two.

Kevin would have good reason to be discouraged if the Saudis were primarily interested in his proposal, but they’re not. Having done their due diligence, the Saudis already knew that Kevin’s company could execute the job even before inviting him to visit. The presentation was just a formality, and one hour was more than enough to satisfy propriety.

In short, the Saudis had already made up their mind about Kevin the business; now comes the important part, deciding about Kevin the man, which explains everything that happened next. They showed him around their facility primarily so he could meet the senior people. During their long lunch together, the key players took Kevin’s measure and decided whether they can work with him. The reports must have been very favorable because the Saudis then conferred the ultimate honor on Kevin by inviting him out to the ancestral village for a meal. This was also an opportunity for the head man of the tribe to size Kevin up and have the final say. That too must have gone well, for no more meetings were needed and Kevin got to go home early.

That great Arab-watcher Raphael Patai traces much of Arab behavior back to the concept of familism, which he defines as “the centrality of the family in social organizations [and] its primacy in the loyalty scale” (282). A key goal of Kevin’s visit from the Saudi perspective, then, was to introduce him to the family, including the work family (all those “senior people”) and the founding family, especially the patriarch (head man). This determined his suitability to join the business, which is seen as an extension of the family. Patai writes that for Arabs

to encounter someone not known to [them] from before is quite an unusual event; if it occurs both sides will spend considerable time discussing their ancestry and relatives in the hope of finding somewhere a connecting link; only thereafter will they approach the subject that brought the stranger in the first place to the . . . tribe. (283, 84)

In Kevin’s case, there were no common relatives, of course, and “the subject that brought him to the tribe”—business—had already been discussed. Clearly the Saudis’ priority was to establish a personal connection, a link that would bind Kevin and the “family,” however broadly defined.

“In business relationships,” Margaret Nydell writes in Understanding Arabs,

personal contacts are much valued and quickly established. Arabs do not fit easily into impersonal roles, such as the “business colleague” (with no private socializing offered or expected) or the “supervisor/employee” roles (where there may be cordial relations during work hours but where personal concerns are not discussed). For Arabs, all acquaintances are potential friends. A good personal relationship is the most important single factor in doing business successfully with Arabs. (35)

The difference here is one of degree, not of kind. Americans also consider the personal when making business decisions; they would not give a contract to Company A solely because their terms were more favorable than Company B. But it is certainly true that the personal factor influences the decision much less than it does in the Arab Middle East.

The Fix

When working with Arabs, Americans should be prepared to spend much more time on “pleasantries” before getting down to business. Indeed, until Arabs decide whether it will be pleasant to work with you, business may not be an option. “In strongly relationship-based societies,” Erin Meyer writes, “the balance of social talk to business may tip heavily to the former” (191). You should assume that proposals have been closely studied and vetted before any face-to-face meetings are scheduled, so there is usually no need to spend very long discussing the deal. Do not interpret social invitations as time-consuming distractions; they are what matter most. Arab presentations may be quite general and even vague, so you should ask for more details if necessary.

If you are an Arab working in an American context, you should not be surprised or offended if Americans fail to extend many social invitations; that does not signal any lack of interest. Meanwhile, you should spend much more time fleshing out the details of your proposal. Because you believe the personal relationship matters so much more than the terms of the deal, your business proposals often appear quite vague to Americans. “What are details between friends?” Arabs will say. “If we’re friends, there will be no problems.” To which most Americans would reply, “If there are no problems, we can be friends.”

2. SARAH IN CHICAGO

PETER:	Before you all go, I was wondering, Ali, about that risk assessment. It’s due tomorrow, I think.
ALI:	Yes, sir.
PETER:	Are we on track with it?
ALI:	Yes, sir, but I am still waiting for a woman named Sarah in Chicago to answer my e-mail.
PETER:	That’s right. She works in risk assessment. Did you try calling her?
ALI:	Yes, sir. But she did not return my call.
PETER:	I can help you with that, Ali. I’ll give her a call. I know Sarah.
ALI:	Thank you, sir.

It all sounds very civil, doesn’t it? Unless you’re Ali, of course, in which case you’ve just been ambushed by your boss and made to look a complete fool. Arabs have an exquisite sense of personal dignity and a correspondingly acute nose for any slights to their self-esteem. Raphael Patai has written of “the single issue which seems to be the overriding moral aim of the Arab: the preservation of his self-respect” (100). Ali will have a hard time forgiving Peter for what he has done here.

Where to begin? The first mistake Peter made (but arguably not the biggest) was to bring this whole matter of the risk assessment up during a meeting. We learn that Ali may in fact miss the deadline while he waits for an answer to his e-mail. To admit this in front of everyone at the meeting is deeply humiliating for Ali. Which is bad enough, but so far as Ali can tell, Peter’s behavior is completely gratuitous since he could have waited to discuss the issue after everyone else had left. If Ali is the least bit paranoid, as sensitive Arabs can be, then he probably thinks Peter brought this up on purpose to shame him.

The next slight occurs when Peter asks Ali if he tried calling Sarah. Whether Ali did or did not, this question suggests (to Ali, anyway, and to the other Arabs at the meeting) that Peter doubts Ali is actually trying to resolve the delay. Why else would he ask? And how else could this be interpreted than as a vote of no confidence in Ali? In this context, we should note that Ali does not know Sarah, referring to her as “a woman named Sarah.” He would probably feel uncomfortable calling someone for help with whom he has no personal relationship or, more to the point, would not expect a stranger to offer any help even if he did ask. The fact that he actually did call Sarah is a mark of Ali’s desperation to keep this project on schedule and please his boss. And for his efforts, he gets a public slap on the wrist.

Peter makes his worst mistake when he reveals that he actually knows Sarah. If Ali was mostly embarrassed up to this point, now he is genuinely angry. It turns out none of this was necessary: Peter knows Sarah, he knows she works in risk assessment, and he knows Ali is working on that topic. Why wouldn’t he have offered to call Sarah before now, one day before the deadline? And come to think of it, if Peter has a personal connection with Sarah, why hasn’t he helped from the very beginning to smooth the way for Ali? What kind of boss is so uninvolved in the work of his staff?

Some readers are probably wondering if we’re not being a bit unfair to Peter. All he has...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword
• Introduction
• 1 The Arab Middle East
• 2 Brazil
• 3 China
• 4 England
• 5 France
• 6 Germany
• 7 India
• 8 Japan
• 9 Mexico
• 10 Russia
• 11 Five Steps to Cultural Competence
• Reading List
• Bibliography
• Index