FAQWhat is meant with „national culture“?

We‘re interested in business cultures. Literally how folks do business. So we combine culture and nation. Nation as in nation state. The United States of America is a nation state. The Federal Republic of Germany is a nation state.

A nation state is a legal construct, however. Within those two nation states, the U.S. and Germany, there are societies, are peoples. American society. German society. People living and working together, within the borders of a nation state.

There can be different ethnic groups within that society, within those borders. But, it the society functions well, there is a culture, a national culture. A way of doing things, of thinking, acting, reacting, that holds it all together.

If a given society functions well, then there is agreement in fundamental areas. Shared beliefs, norms. Unspoken, accepted, lived, seldom debated.

Now we are not sociologists or anthropologists. Our focus is on how Germans and Americans act and react within the business context. How we: communicate in spoken and written word, via email, in meetings; enter into and maintain agreements; persuade and allow ourselves to be persuaded; make decisions, recurring and non-recurring; lead and want to be led; give feedback upwards, downwards, sideways; resolve conflict within teams; set up, live and modify work processes; define what makes a good product or service; initiate, develop and deepen business relationships, whether they are corporate-internal or with the external customer.

There is a whole host of foundational issues which define how we do business. These are foundational areas in any business enterprise. How we understand them, define them, how we think and act, our operating assumptions, go the core of our business culture. And at the core, or the roots, of our business culture is our national culture, our society. We‘re talking about ways of thinking, methods, traditions, approaches, beliefs, belief systems.

Please keep in mind that an American engineer is an American first then an engineer. A German financial analyst is a German first, then a financial analyst.