Asia Pacific business
Asia is accounting for half of the annual growth in world trade over the past quarter century, since it has enormous potential markets. ... 1) For western companies this means that if they want to participate in the expansion of trade, they must do business with Asian countries. Westerners have reported difficulty penetrating the Asian market and business world. However, these difficulties disappear if the smart Western business person attempts to understand the Asian way of doing business and adapts their own approach. Business culture in the East Asian countries of Japan, Korea, Taiwan, China, and South East Asian countries of Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines differs greatly between them, and indeed from Western cultures. In the following easy, a variety of real situations in doing business between in Asia and in Western, such as cross-culture, human resource management and marketing would be compared and contrasted. ... 125) stated, ¡°Asian business is not only very difficult for Westerns to understand but ignorance of the cultural differences could have fatal consequences.¡± The failure of many Western firms in Asian is often related to their incapability to adapt to Asian management philosophies and business practices. In Asia, culture affects not only social norms, but also government policies, business transactions, management practices, and labour relation. ... (Terpestra & David 1985) So, it is vital for business managers to understand fully how people in different cultures behave and why they behave in the way they do. ... The success of business overseas, whether marketing, negotiating, advertising, depends on how well the staff can develop their job-related skills and personal sensitivity and responsiveness to the different cultural environment in a new location. At home, businesses equip themselves with a plenty of information about employees, customers, suppliers and business partners. Yet in the international arena most business and staff attempt to operate and deal with overseas partners, customers and employees with inadequate information. ... Before doing business overseas, or before negotiating business deals with people from different cultures, it is necessary to learn about their cultural assumptions and the attitudes about the communication process. ... Business can therefore only be developed after trust has been established. ... (Stella 1992) According to Stella(1992), communication between Eastern and Western cultures, specifically between Asia Pacific cultures and US and Canadian cultures is in terms of individualism and collectivism. This dimension centres on organisational practices in individualistic cultures such as Canada, US, Australia, and Great Britain contrasted with collectivistic cultures in East Asia, such as Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Singapore. ... 11) Face protection is very critical when Western companies want to negotiate business deals and relate to people from Asian cultures. ... (Stella 1992) Americans could not offer a meaning for face giving, whereas Asian business people could talk about the meaning of this term. ... ) claimed, ¡°Businesses hold a deep distrust of politicians and government bureaucrats in the United States, whereas in Asia relations between government and business are far less adversarial. ... They are also the cultural keystones of most government-business relationships in Asia.