We were signed to do this task in our English course, and well, I thought it would be a great one to get an essay point out of!

We got to read some information about different countries’ differences about business and negotiation culture. The info can be found on www.cyborlink.com.

As we already know, cultural differences can be a challenge, when it comes to business. People from different countries do things differently, and that’s really something we can not change, even if some manners felt weird or uncomfortable for ourselves to do in a business situation.
Firstly, it is surprising to me that in Chile people respect and expect punctuality. I’ve lived one year in Spain as an exchange student and it was completely different: people don’t really speak about mañana for nothing! From movies and TV series that I’ve seen, I’ve learnt that in some Latin American countries this is a strong cultural thing, as well. This is why it surprised me that Chile is different.

Even though I know the Spanish culture pretty well, I hadn’t thought that Spanish people do business meetings over food, such as lunch or dinner! In Finland we’re used to book an office or a room for negotiation, but in Spain it seems to be really important to do your business over food at a nice restaurant. I mean, I really wouldn’t mind that to be a thing in Finland, too!

I was pretty shocked to find out that in Japan it isn’t okay for women to wear pants for a business meeting, because men find it offensive. Obviously I know that cultures in different countries can vary a lot, but in my opinion these gender related norms are starting to get, well, kind of boring. These kinds of regulations just make me feel like I never want to even go to Japan, especially for business. I guess I would have to know more about the country’s history to really understand these kinds of things.

All in all, I think it’s important for us entrepreneurship students to get to know cultural differences when it comes to business. I’m pretty sure some of us will end up doing international business one day in their lives, and then this kind of information is goin to come in handy!