How is business done around the world?

June 29, 2011 5:47 PM

I was reading up on a book on international marketing and they had a section that summed up cultural business mores per country. Like in South Korea, it's considered an insult if you send an entry-level salesman to meet up with another company's top executive, and in China negotiations continue long after the contract has been signed. It was a short page and I'm looking for books that contain more information like this; it was a very interesting read. Any suggestions?
posted by drea to Work & Money (4 answers total)

Kiss, Bow, or Shake Hands: How to Do Business in Sixty Countries is the classic, but the reviews on Amazon are anything but complimentary.

Luckily, this is a big field of interest so there's a lot of other books to fill the gap. Two I happen to like are Bridging the Culture Gap: A Practical Guide to International Business Communication and Cultural Intelligence: A Guide to Working with People from Other Cultures.

Popular terms in this field are 'cross-cultural communication' or 'intercultural communication' though neither of those terms is business-specific. The books I mentioned are maybe a bit academic for your tastes (there's the more popular-oriented Gestures: The Do's and Taboos of Body Language Around the World but with a publication date of 1997, that's a little long in the tooth) but will certainly cover the topic.
posted by librarylis at 6:02 PM on June 29, 2011 [1 favorite]

You may find these two websites interesting - you can search by country:
International Business Etiquette & Manners
Kwintessential
posted by ainsley at 6:09 PM on June 29, 2011

My lilbrary shows several titles under Business Etiquette. I haven't read them. I'm just listing them here to give you an idea of what's out there.
- Doing business internationally : the guide to cross-cultural success.
- The Arab world handbook.
- Doing business with Japan.
- Doing business in the new Latin America.
- International business etiquette. Latin America.
- International business etiquette. Europe.
- Doing business in Mexico : a practical guide.
- Breaking through culture shock : what you need to succeed in international business.
- China : the business traveller's handbook.
- Lebanon : the business traveller's handbook.
- Qatar : the business traveller's handbook.
- Cowboys and dragons : shattering cultural myths to advance Chinese-American business.
posted by bentley at 8:06 PM on June 29, 2011

You might also be inerested in the Culture Shock! series. Though not limited to business interactions, they cover daily interactions and business things and an intro to all of the systems that you think would be the same everywhere but actually or not (as a major market for the books is soon-to-be expats). The books are country by country, with some regional or city-specific versions.

Make sure to check out the publication date, as they do publish new versions when they get dated.
posted by whatzit at 2:58 AM on June 30, 2011