August 2005
Project Manager Today
www.pmtoday.co.uk
In “Cross-border disconnection”,
Chris Fox has put together a fascinating article on the problems
in negotiating across borders – either in bidding for work
overseas or in forming business partnerships. It is illustrated
with an example of an American company tendering for a major infrastructure
project in Mexico. Failure to understand what conditioned the business
thinking of their potential clients resulted in spending a large
sum of money with no chance of success.
The types of cultural difference which need to be understood include:
• Is the orientation towards the group’s interest
or the interests of the CEO?
• Is power shared and are decisions made consensually or
do executives hold the power in an individual?
• Is status based on merit, seniority or family connections?
• How soon should you get down to business? Is small talk
and forming a personal relationship important?
• Physical gestures – should you be stand-offish or
walk around holding hands with your counterpart? It’s easy
to offend here.
• Should communication be clear and direct or diplomatic
and implicit?
• Is time important to your counterparts? If not, ensuring
that events happen to a timetable could have a destabilizing effect.
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