the “Silent Language" of EU Business [1of3]

Introduction


This document can only be cursory in its effort to address the questions at hand, and remain a modest document. Among the concerns are as follows (with an eye toward a focus on the European Union), [1] time, space, things, friendship, and agreements, [2] influence on negotiating styles, [3] identify and discuss some of the dominant cultural characteristics, and [4] what cross-cultural negotiating challenges arise.

Clearly no small deal, when a full on effort might easily be expressed as an entire consulting corporation. As a matter of defining terms it should be noted the EU (European Union) is comprised (at this writing) of 27 countries. Approaching a sixtieth anniversary, it began in 1951 with six members (the most prominent economically, France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands as the European Coal and Steel community). That still leaves two dozen countries today not members, four of which currently seek membership (Appendix 1 & 2).

Aside

A moment ago in the introduction this writer referred to “a full on effort … as an entire consulting corporation”. There are such globally positioned consulting firms. Unfortunately, without the research dollars to become a member of every one it is impossible to determine who knows what, and where the gaps may lay. No doubt, most smart countries (global agencies, organizations, etc.) have likely allocated in the necessary budget funds to underwrite such subscriptions. Aligning oneself with such a country, agency, etc. would not only reveal what gaps there may be, yet also the inevitable overlap of information. Moreover, a significant amount of this information is likely public information. Therefore, this writer invites the reader to consider this moment a kind of bookmark, that if there are enough of us we can (A) collaborate on the construction of a master database upon which we may represent ourselves as an affiliated consulting Consortium. (B) When we have enough funds to support the Consortium as a separate entity we could buy into all the other subscriptions (accessing proprietary data). (C) Doing this all with an eventual eye towards streamlining (deleting overlap), filling gaps, pursuing delineating the ongoing human condition, making ever more information ever more public as we establish ourselves as the supra-organization (a kind of union to those that have gone before).

This illustration may be glib, and it does not have to be. Two things to extrapolate, one is that this is entirely possible, and the other is to point out the “corrupt” manner with which these knowledge bases are evolving. By corrupt I mean exclusive versus public, duplicated and overlapped alongside vast gaps, the danger that once a certain dataset is established it may go without update and other whole areas of neglect.

Identify and Discuss some Dominant Cultural Characteristics

We know from other research that acknowledging demographic attributes by country is shorthand, and specifics may find ourselves crossing country borders, collecting a region, looking at a metropolitan area in particular and at the micro level, even neighborhoods. Nonetheless, we push on, working with what we have.

Time

In the reference book International Marketing Research by Dr. V. Kumar, the entirety of Chapter 18 refers to sensitivities vis-à-vis his marketing (in particular telephone marketing and direct mail)(Kumar, 1999). Unfortunately, as muscular as the text may be for what it is looking to target, a discussion of time and space as regards the fuller menu of cultural characteristics across Europe would likely take up a book of its own. The issue of time is briefly touched. Dr. Kumar is right to acknowledge the rigidity in the perception of time regarding the Germans, less so with the British and the less so still with the French. However, it is humbly submitted that it is the Swiss who are the most rigid with reference to time, and that there is a somewhat organic path radiating nearly vertically, marking an area of Europe that has a particular emphasis on time, and diminishing at the edges. This is not absolute, of course, and the point of the illustration is that it represents something of a pattern. The Germans take time almost as serious as the Swiss; the Scandinavians take time almost as seriously as the Germans. The British and those of the Baltic States are also notable in their seriousness about time, variously as much as the Germans across the spectrum to less than Scandinavians.