Another thing I wanted to mention is that the corporate culture may vary from department to department. When I first started in advertising as a writer/editor, I was in the creative division of the company. Now, we didn't wear shorts or jeans, but the women did wear slacks and sweaters, and none of the guys wore jackets or tics. The people in the front offices wore suits, though.

The idea is that you need to find out what the culture of your peers is and adapt to it. Generally speaking, when you first join a company and don't know what is expected, you should keep in mind that it is better to err on the side of conservatism and formality than on the side of informality.

IV. AMERICAN CULTURE

The U. S. is not a melting pot: ethnic groups persist. Nonetheless, Americans feel a bond to other Americans that transcends differences in ethnic origins.

—Jackson Toby, "America Works Despite All the Odds" —Wall Street Journal

Like people all over the world, Americans take their culture for granted. Indeed, it's only in juxtaposition with other cultures that Americans begin to understand the influence of their own culture on their behavior. Only when we can see that there is more than one approach to life and many different ways of behaving can we begin to experience the strong, pervasive influence of our own culture.

It is more difficult to describe American culture than German or French culture because the United States is not just another country; it spans a continent, and has a population of over 250, 000, 000 people whose ancestors came from virtually every country in the world. American culture is a rich mix of Anglo-Saxon, French, German, Scandinavian, Spanish, Italian, Latin American, Native American, African, Polish, Russian, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Filipino, Vietnamese, and Arab influences, Just to name a few. In its early days the country was strongly influenced by the British and other people from northern Europe; its laws are based on British common law and American English has absorbed many northern European words. While the U. S. is a nation of immigrants and there are ^any people in American business who are not of northern European heritage, for the purposes of our discussion of American culture, it is the American-European culture we refer to and not the many other cultures represented in the American population. This dominant or mainstream business culture is the norm to which people with other cultural backgrounds are expected to conform, particularly in large corporations.

Despite its ethnic diversity, the U. S. has managed to absorb bits and pieces of many cultures and weave them into a unique culture that is strikingly consistent and distinct. You can pick out Americans any place in the world, often very quickly, because of their behavior. Among their most observable traits are openness, friendliness, informality, optimism, creativity, loudness, and vitality.

In common with others, Americans tend to be ethnocentric, in part because of the great size and economic power of the United States. Unlike the Germans and the French, Americans do not have close foreign neighbors with whom they interact constantly. The country shares borders with Canada and Mexico, but relatively few Americans have dealings with or know much about either country.

While the United States has absorbed millions of people from countries around the globe, the core culture of the United States has its roots in northern European or Anglo-Saxon culture. As a result, it is a predominantly monochrome, low-context culture. To succeed in the American economic system, people must adapt to schedules and the other conventions of doing business in a monochrome, low-context environment. It also means their approach to life is compartmentalized and they need detailed background information because they do not have well developed information networks.

V. Corporate Culture and Local Culture

Businesses which have strong corporate cultures have certain advantages over those that don't. A strong corporate culture provides shared ideals and a common way of communicating. It also performs several other important functions:

1. Increasing context (i. e., providing necessary background data)

2. Decreasing compartmentalization

3. Increasing information flow

4. Facilitating organizational unification and coordination

5. Increasing survival capabilities

In good times a strong corporate culture is not a prerequisite to survival. In bad times it is vital. Companies that do not have a strong corporate culture and a strong corporate image will tend to fragment under the stress of the struggle to survive when times become difficult. Strong corporate cultures are cohesive; they bind their employees together. They encourage cooperation and enable companies to respond quickly and effectively to changing conditions.

But a strong corporate culture at home does not necessarily guarantee an effective corporate presence abroad. Overseas, it is necessary first to create an environment in which the indigenous employees can flourish. Management must adapt the company's corporate culture to the local culture. This adaptation requires great patience in the home office and depends in large part on the selection of the foreign manager, who must understand the requirements of the home office and also have the skills to interact effectively with the local people. Interfacing between the home office and the local affiliate is the greatest challenge to any overseas population. In time local employees should be encouraged to adapt the corporate culture and corporate image to ensure maximum impact on both local people and local markets.

VI. American Business Executives Abroad

Corporate cultures are apparently more exportable than national cultures and are certainly more understandable to Americans, who are used to the idea that working for a company means doing things the company way.

When Americans work overseas, they tend to isolate themselves in "golden ghettos" and interact with each other rather than with the people of the host country. We have observed this phenomenon for over thirty years; only in the last decade have we noted a heartening change. Today many Americans, the younger executives in particular, really do try to live in the country of assignment, making friends and learning the language. Somehave had prior experience living abroad with their parents or in the Peace Corps. This change in attitude and behavior has made an enormous difference in their ability to adapt and learn the foreign culture.

American business is often criticized for its lack of concern for the families of its overseas employees. Many executives are assigned overseas for short periods, usually two years, which is simply not enough time to learn the language and integrate into the society- Additionally, since they expect to be leaving m two years, they may feel the effort of learning the language would be wasted, another example of how the American short-term time orientation adversely affects business performance.

Spouses of American executives overseas bear the brunt of adjusting to the local culture since they must cope with housing, schools, shopping, repairs, health care, and social life- They need not only language training but orientation to the culture as well. Quite often American-espouses are unable to obtain work permits. With their husbands or wives working long hours or traveling extensively and the children at school, the spouses are left alone with no means of communication—with predictable results. The rate of marital difficulties, divorce, and alcoholism among American families abroad is high and reflects a lack of understanding and intelligent planning by American business. Recently, however, some American business firms have become slightly more realistic and are now willing to make longer assignments overseas, permitting employee and spouse to become fluent in both language and culture.

American overseas business personnel today are much better educated and informed than their predecessors of thirty years ago and more competent and adaptable. For many years American business was not cognizant of the crucial importance of proper selection and training of overseas personnel. As a result they lost millions of dollars. In the past there was an unfortunate tendency to transfer problem employees abroad, and even today there are many Americans working overseas who should never have left the United States. You can usually spot them in restaurants and bars of clubs or international hotels, loudly voicing their frustrations with locals, arrogant and impatient. Despite these unfortunate errors in selection, there has been a noticeable improvement in the quality of American business representation overseas. An executive who has been successful in the U. S. often has difficulty when transferred abroad because of her or his expectations of continued success. When those expectations are not met (because the techniques that were successful in the U. S. do not always work in foreign cultures), the result can be a devastating sense of failure. The ability to cope with failure is therefore a prime qualification for cross-cultural effectiveness, but is unfortunately not a quality highly prized in American business.

It is our strong recommendation that only the best and most adaptable people be sent overseas and that their training in both language and cross-cultural effectiveness be extensive. A recent study for the Southern Governors' Association concluded, "We have yet to learn a critical lesson: the language of trade is the language of the customer. " We would add that the language of the customer includes not only the spoken language but also the language of behavior, that is, the culture.

Once the company has invested the time and money in training, it should leave the employees in the country long enough to reap the benefits (a minimum of five years). Several executives agreed with the highly experienced general manager of a German subsidiary, who said, "American companies make a big mistake by rotating their managers too often. "

Companies should also develop long-term plans for utilizing the expertise of overseas employees once they return to headquarters. All too often their knowledge and experience is ignored and lost. Even worse, their overseas experience may be a handicap to career advancement in the United States since they may be perceived as having been out of the mainstream.

In our interviews overseas, almost all the directors of American compan ies overseas ranked the home office as their number one problem. Americans have a world-wide reputation for oversupervising their foreign operations. One top manager (a Swiss) with many years of experience working for American companies abroad had this to say: "American companies tend to keep you on a short leash. There are constant demands for reports and financial data. At headquarters you are smothered with staff who 'know better' about everything. Overseas you are alone but you are closely watched; whenever there's a blip, you hear from headquarters and they hover and hover. "

It is difficult for headquarters to understand what is happening i in a foreign operation. The people who are most likely to know f are those on the spot who are cognizant of the cultural differences involved. Thus, the best policy for the executives at the home office is to assign good people to foreign posts and then, listen to what they say.

VII. Key Points for Foreigners to Keep in Mind

There are several characteristics that flow from the massive size of the United States as well as from the great variety of cultural antecedents that distinguish American culture from all others.

In spite of the numerous and visible inequities in the American system, there is still no society in the world that provides both the freedom and the opportunity to become a success for anyone who has brains or talent and is willing to apply her- or himself. America is still the land of opportunity.

Because of the way in which American business and marketing systems are organized, and possibly because of reinforcement from the extensive and ubiquitous television commercial, the tempo of American business interactions is unusually fast. Everything is faster and bigger in the United States. Keep this in mind: Americans tend to "tailgate" other people.

In the U. S., there is no defined class system. People are constantly moving up and down in the social system because of variations in their financial and educational status. Americans are very status-conscious and place great emphasis on status symbols such as money, celebrity, power, image, possessions, and institutional affiliations.

In over a quarter of a century of working with, talking to, interviewing, and being friends with people from other parts of the world, there is one point that is made consistently: American friendship patterns are of the temporary sort and often do not go very deep. The reasons behind this are many and varied and relate to the unusual mobility of most Americans, especially those in business.

As a consequence of their extreme individualism, American loyalties are for the most part linked to careers and no/ to the organization. Loyalty to organizations is discouraged by the narrow, bottom-line, cost-cutting philosophy of many American business firms.

a. When Working with American Business

1. Remember that American business works in a short time frame. Its executives and managers want immediate results and are not as interested in building long-term relationships as Europeans are.

2. In general, when you employ Americans, check their education and previous employment references carefully. Do not assume everyone is honest. In our research, we heard many complaints about falsified records.

3. Be very careful in choosing an American manager. Spend the necessary time and money to investigate the backgrounds of those you consider good candidates. Encourage the person you select to make friends and build networks at your home office.