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The cultural aspect of doing business has recently become the object of attention in many countries around the world. Experts in the field of economy and entrepreneurs are closely studying the sphere of influence of national cultures on business, as well as national characteristics and peculiarities of doing business in different countries. And indeed, the experience of many companies stresses the importance of cultural and national dimensions when leading the company to foreign markets, in the processes of mergers and acquisitions, as well as the opening of representative offices and affiliates in other countries.
The aim of the paper is to outline the reasons why the various elements of culture might increase the cost of doing business in a country.
Also in the paper it is necessary to provide examples of countries, compare the cultures of those countries and discuss the ways in which cultural differences will affect the cost of doing business in each. In conclusion of the discussion it will be examined the way in which business practices and ethics vary across the cultures.

Cross-cultural peculiarities of doing business

“Our own way of living is just a common, it is other people have ethnic, individual-specific and cultural peculiarities.”
Terry Eagleton
In the late 1990’s in the business culture area dominated two concepts: “culture as the essence” and “Culture as a difference” that allow analyzing cross-cultural challenges that managers and organizations face only in terms of differences in values, linguistic and mental differences. Context of interaction was not taken into account, and all the cultural factors were considered as a set of external phenomena, not related to the activities of the organization.
According to research by Professor of Comparative and International Management of Business School and University of Nottingham, Nigel G. Holden conducted at the beginning of the XXI century, the culture should be viewed as an organizational resource, and cultural differences – as a form of organizational knowledge, calling for solving inter-ethnic cultural problems.
As the basic components of modern international management could be considered interactive global information network, team forms of work and organizational education. In this regard, today’s managers out of practitioners have turned into “sophisticated analysts, capable of managing complex of projects, people, resources and problems” (Drucker, 1996).
In the development of thought, Peter Drucker pointed out that for managers in different countries the main challenge is to increase the productivity of knowledge and training of professionals working with him. With respect to the global economy, Drucker outlined the of trend productivity increase of knowledge factor and working people, united in a multicultural team, with the global information network communicating with the external environment of the company (customers, shareholders, society, authority).
Management and marketing have become international, and multicultural teams are key elements of cross-cultural management and marketing, which Nigel Holden proposes to consider as the management of different cultures. The concept of culture is interpreted not as a set of national or ethnic characteristics, but as the “area of general knowledge and a unified system of values that influence the organization, without sufficient awareness of the bright, clear, defined boundaries” (Holden, 2005).
Thus, in the new economy culture indeed has become one of the resources of the organization. The main requirement in the world market is formulated as “obtaining the maximum benefit from alliances “across borders” and promoting organizational learning”.
Consequently, culture can be regarded as one of the factors affecting the organization. As for the interaction of organizations with lots of different cultures can be noted that the firms involved in international economic relations depend on a variety of external experts: tax services, lawyers, bankers, advertising and marketing agencies. And in a situation of economic globalization transnational, multinational companies need new forms of expertise: the experience of successful ways of working, successful solutions (applied to the local business culture).
“With increasing global competition it is a cross-cultural knowledge that becomes the source of the additional benefits of the firm” (Fink and Meyerhof, 2001).
It is important that the culture was realized and used by the management of the organization as a resource, and all the values of it were transformed into knowledge. Such a transformation makes the culture a possibility of organizing and competence, which is a “set of skills and technologies that enable the company to give the buyer something special” (Holden, 2005).