When Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher made an official visit to Saudi Arabia, the first such visit ever by a British head of government, she deferred to Islamic custom on appropriate attire for women. She wore a long-sleeved, ankle-length dress throughout the day. During her talks with King Khalid, she wore a net veil over...
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Introduction to The Human and Cultural Environments Facing Business A business employs, sells to, buys from, is regulated by, and is owned by people. Therefore an international company must consider differences in groups of people or societies in order to predict and control its relationships and operations. The PRI case illustrates how human differences...
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The Nation-State as Proxy of Society There is no universally satisfactory definition of a society, but in international business, the concept of the nation-state provides a workable shorthand, smce basic similarity among people is both a cause and an effect of national boundaries. The laws governing business operations apply primarily along national lines. This...
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TYPES OF VARIABLES There are too many human variables and too many different types of business functions for us to have an exhaustive cause-effect discussion in one chapter. Depending on how we classify physical and behavioral variables and the busi ness activities that they might influence, we can easily arrive at thousands of direct...
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PHYSICAL ATTRIBUTES Variation Although each country comprises people whose physical attributes vary widely, there are usually some dominant characteristics. The variations are due largely to genetics and become less noticeable as people migrate and intermarry. Even in the absence of mixing with other groups, gene frequency (and thus physical characteristics) may change over a...
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