Definition of culture

The definition of culture is “the learned, shared, and enduring orientation patterns in a society. People demonstrate their culture through values, ideas, attitudes, behaviors, and symbols”. Every single country in the world has its own culture. When corporate personnel are trained to be aware of these differences, business relationships can be enhanced. A key element in making international operations successful is finding new approaches and creative solutions to cultural differences by combining both cultural perspectives.
Cultures differ in every country, so as the people and the behavior. It is really important to learn about other foreign countries’ cultures and understand them, especially in world of business. I’m going to work in the hotel industry; this particular business area is dealing with mostly foreign people from foreign cultures. That means that I’m going to have to face the cross-cultural risks. Cross-cultural risk is a “situation or event in which a cultural misunderstanding puts some human value at take”. People from different countries think that their culture is the normal one. This is biggest problem because it can cause a lot of inconvenient situation. This is called the ethnocentric- orientation. Businesspersons have to understand the importance to respect other cultures. The most common example is the differences between greetings. If the participants of an important business meeting don’t know how to salute each other, it is not likely that the meeting is going to turn out in a good way. Differences in languages make it difficult to understand each other. The importance of language comprehension should never be underestimated, as each language has its own particular meanings, at times not easily understood even with proper translation. Businesses should contract services of excellent translators so that language failures do not cause business transaction failures.
As a prospective manager, I would say that when it comes to doing business in a foreign country, businesspersons have to be aware what counts inappropriate in that country and culture. If I was a manager now, and I had to make a business, I would gather all the information about that particular country, and I would give presentations to my employees. Today’s world requires us to speak the as much foreign languages as we can. Also, it is important to have a general knowledge about the world.