the “Silent Language" of EU Business [2of3]

The brush stroke quality of the seriousness of time seems exploited when looking at the graphic by the OECD referencing the sedentary activities of eating and sleeping. The French are known for their food and their joie de vivre, to the point, the French people has a well-rounded life that is not work-centric, by comparison to their Norwegian cousins. By the way, the OECD originally formed in 1948 as the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation.


Let us take another approach. In Levine's 97 table, speed is relative, we find the countries ordered by “pace”. As we see, Germany is close to the top. Yet the Irish and Dutch alone beat Switzerland when it comes to walking speed. Only the German work ethic supersedes the Swiss at Postal Service. Proud of their association, and world-famous for its timepieces, the Swiss are unsurprisingly first at public clocks.

The relativity of time, therefore, is not by culture alone, yet further confounded by the posture or perspective with which we are treating time. For example, the questions that were addressed regarding time were what are you doing with it, how quickly is said doing and what their attitude about it is. In addition, these are only three different approaches.

Space, Things, and Friendship

As this writer sought earlier to illustrate the dynamic of time, coupled with the understanding that culture blurs, merges, fades or melts as it breaches geographies, the conjecture is similar as we come to a conversation on proxemics, kinesics, chronemics & haptics. Cultures that will physically get closer to you and are more apt to touch you tend to be closer to the Mediterranean. The further we move from the Mediterranean, it appears the less apt the culture is to be tactile and the more space is demonstrated (Remland, Jones, & Brinkman, 1991).

It is uncertain if this is associated at all with alcohol. The “drift” of alcoholism appears to follow a similar path. However, it is just as possible, given the history of alcohol production, that alcoholism had slowly evolved out of the gene pool over time, closer to the Mediterranean. The further away we go (and possibly the colder the climate), the less of an opportunity there has been over time to actually see a similar breeding out. Wherein a glass of wine may be common on most dining tables, and presumably had been for hundreds of years, around the Mediterranean, alcoholism does not seem as rampant. By contrast, the Scandinavian countries have serious issues with alcoholism, and in Russia, the figure is as high as half of all deaths have some connection to alcoholism. These are not countries that have had alcohol around for as long a period (one could throw Native Americans into this mix, as a relatively new gene pool to alcohol).

People are friendly everywhere. As always, it simply becomes a matter of doing one's research and paying attention, honoring where you are as best as one can.

Agreements, Influence on Negotiating Styles and Cross-Cultural Challenges that may arise

It is a safe bet that urban managers in more prosperous European countries are likely already familiar with the nuances and idiosyncrasies of their colleagues in nearby countries. Moreover, whole books have been written about basic structures of negotiation (that underlie strategy), even a few on multicultural negotiations (Lewicki, Barry, & Saunders, 2010).

This may seem simplistic; negotiation truly is more than just communicating, and for the purposes of this passage let us simply considers that negotiation is among the most muscular of communications. That said we cycle back to basic issues that may arise around nonverbal communications. Once again we see that the more we know, been inculcated, exposed to and are otherwise open to embracing, the better off we will be. It is been written many times elsewhere, there are things that one can do to prepare. It does not matter if one is from North America (non-European) or Bosnia-Herzegovina, if you doing business in Italy you had better dress to the nines and if you are doing business in Sweden, you had better be on time. If one wishes to

call these pointers (that can be readily collected online) part of the skill set, so be it. Perhaps that is a good base from which to start. Just know that there is a universe of nuance and subtlety out there, and in some measure, the development of one’s multiculturalism has the capability of producing success, by degree.