The importance of understanding business culture

Business is an organization involved in the trade of goods, services, or both consumers while culture is the cumulative deposit of knowledge, experience, beliefs, values, attitudes, meaning, religion which has had by people or group of people. Accordingly business culture is when we work in the global commercial environment, knowledge of the impact of cultural differences is one of the keys to international business success. In our opinion, business culture is the manner which has by group of people in a business. Every country has different culture in business. Accordingly if we want to join in business, we have to understand their business culture. If we don’t know about that it will lose our business.

            We can treat our partner business well if we know how the manner. There are some manners to satisfy our partner. For instance is non verbal behavior. Non verbal behavior is the communication without words such as eye contact, smile, facial expression, gestures, body language, posture, physical appearance, hand shaking, etc. Hand shaking is very popular in the other country such as France, Germany, Belgium, and Italy even Indonesian. In Indonesian hand shaking is very popular, sometimes if we meet someone whom we don’t recognize them, we shake hand. But in northern Europeans such as British and Scandinavian are not too popular. If we have create good non verbal behavior we can make our business partner satisfied especially in the first meeting because it creates positive impression to our business partner.

            Not only verbal behavior to treat our business partner but also verbal behavior. For instance is small talk. Small talk is informal conversation. There are some topics of small talk like journey, weather, occupation, address, places, homeland. Small talk is very important because it make conversation isn’t too strain and to make opening conversation in business. But we must remember that there are some topics we may not discuss if we meet our business partner in the first meeting such as status, past, family, politics. we may treat our business partner by beverage. It is popular In Europe, Italian.  In Indonesia, when they are meeting, they will do it in restaurant, café. They eat food while they are talking about business. But Germany don’t like entertain their business partner with beverage. They consider business is business. No entertaining. In German title is very important. If you call them by their first name is not impolite. You have to call them by their title. Actually I disagree about that.

            International business is improved by knowing about foreign people’s customs, because if we know about customs foreign people’s, automatically we know the ways how to respect them. It is very important to understand other foreign business culture because it is influence our business. We have many opportunities for joining some partners from the other country. If we treat them in good manner, we may have the deal with them in business.