Chinese Business Etiquettes

Chinese business etiquettes and importance of cross-cultural communication for business extension.

Cross-cultural communication is one of the important aspects of the global business market as the effective communication helps to penetrate other business markets. Cross-cultural communication becomes a strategy for some of the companies as they train their employees to let them know about different countries and business environment so that when the deal will be supposed to be closed, this person interference will finalise the deal. In case of global business deals, intercultural interaction must involve a simple way of cultural adaptation (Berthon et al. 2012). The effectiveness of service and to prevent misunderstanding through this communication, individual expression and the understanding the body language is important.

In case of Mary, an Australian girl wants to penetrate in China with the business of condiments. “The Aroma Shop” is the name of the name of the organisation and it has branches in Australia too. A meeting has been fixed for the market penetration in China and Mr Lau is the concerned person with whom Mary has to interact and thus, understanding of Chinese etiquettes and business culture is important for the better business acceleration.

The purpose of the essay is to highlight the concerning aspect of Chinese business etiquettes and possibilities of market penetration for “The Aroma Shop”. In this case importance of cross-cultural communication and process of thought-making sense in case of communication are also justified. HOFSTEDE model of cultural difference is there to understand the effectiveness of two nations and their cultural alteration, which will affect the business dealing and market penetration.

Some of the business etiquettes of China are quite relevant and important for meeting and they strictly follow those etiquettes and maintain a high standard of business.

They love to consider small talk at the beginning of the meeting. The speech must be a valid one that signifies the importance of the meeting but this should be short. A strong relationship is another aspect of meeting and several times it has been evaluating that due to the string personal or professional relationship deals are taking place (Burns 2016). In case of decision-making, enrich associations of business dimension and know about the business wholly is the concern matter of formulating the meeting. In case of entering the room in a meeting place, they used to maintain a hierarchical order. So at the initial stage, executives, managers or maybe the owner will enter and after that, all the delegated person and employees will come along. The business hour set by Chinese is 8 am to 5 pm in between Monday to Friday. The best appointment schedule for fixing a meeting is from April to June and again from September to October. Mary needs to take care of that so that meeting intention will be fulfilled.

Cross-cultural Communication for Business Extension

Handshakes are quite common in China and whenever they meet they must shake their hands and that is quite common for every Chinese people. This is a treatment that they do mostly for the initial time of their meeting. Another greeting process is to call by surname, as this is considered as showing respect for the person. Another greeting process has been noticed in case of gift-delivering. The people will take the gift by both hands and this will be considered as one of the vital business etiquettes.

Conversation art

Appreciation from the Chinese people is the use of a couple of words in Chinese and the meaning of the word must be known to the person from the other end (Okoro 2012). Pleasantries way of taking is the concerning aspect of China and they love to provide simple answers for that. In between the conversation, they avoid political discussion and that is the reason fair concern of business dealing can be evaluated. In between the meeting or the conversation, negative statements are needed some careful attention. If the negative statement is irrelevant, then this will be impacted by the business dealing also.

Body movement and body language is concern aspect of business dealing with non-verbal communication is conducted by the expression of body language (Washington, Okoro and Thomas 2012). Body posture is important and how the personal presence in a meeting is the concerning aspect of business in China. Biting nails, putting hands in mouth, removing food from teeth – all these actions are strictly prohibited in case of an on-going meeting.

Conservatives suits are the right option for the meeting as the formal dress is quite favourable for the Chines. Being late is not expected from the Chinese and thus people need to be punctual about the time. When the meeting end, allow the Chinese counterpart to leave the room after that Mary can come out. Chinese people are not well-accustomed with English, so simplified form of Chinese or the non-verbal expressions are quite vital in that case. In case of the business card, Chinese people use golden ink as they consider gold as a colour of prestige.

Cross-cultural communication creates a barrier for the formulation of business and in that case negative impact imposed in this situation. Communication style varies in some cases and that is the reason inter-cultural communicative ways and the processes are done for the development of a business. In this collective experience working with hundreds of individuals on cross-cultural teams around the globe, leaders of multicultural teams can use the following some tips to build trust among team members. Socialization influences intercultural communication and through this process business development has started Eisenberg et al. 2013). Ethnocentrism is the process that set the parameters of quality production. This is a sensible and presentable form of business culture that affects the initial challenges and states the best way for the business culture. Recruitment of local people or the people who have command over Standard Mandarin language can be recruited. They know about the taste of people, their market economy and have a good knowledge of extracting positive situation form this market. This is one of the challenging situations that faced by the level of communication and interaction that has been done from the business standard.  

HOFSTEDE Model of Cross-cultural Approach

Figure 1: HOFSTEDE comparison between Australia and China

(Source: hofstede-insights.com 2018)

HOFSTEDE model shows the aspect of cross-cultural approach and in this case, Australia and China are the two nations that HOFSTEDE is implying on. there is some positional gap has been situated in case of both the countries and positive and negative vibes is there but in case of culture, posting of business is important for both the countries.

Power relation is the approach of making the power dominated approach to deal in. In case of that, most of the relationship is based on the power, and China has score 80 and it almost double form Australia (Dunn, Dastoor and Sims 2012).

Individualism is the best opportunity to lead the life in an independent form and China has a prevention of that and it shows 20. On the other hand, Australia scores 90 in that case. As an autocratic country, no such space for individually will sustain in China. 

Masculinity is the promotional behaviour in the organisational place. Australia and China are more or less similar in this content. China is little ahead of Australia as they strictly maintained organisational etiquettes so they score 66 in that case.

Uncertainty avoidance is influencing the workplace belief and makes more handling of an uncertain situation. In case of Australia, uncertain things are more acquainted so they score 51 in that case and China is more compact in that case so they less uncertain happenings are established in that case (Obeidat et al. 2012).

Long-term orientation is signified the improve situation of present market scenario. In case of future handling in business or cultural aspect, China is almost four times better than Australia and that is the reason they impacted a solid momentum in the business (Dunn, Dastoor and Sims 2012).

Indulge situation is the case of desire, possessing, positive attitude and making good relationship with the counterpart. In that case, Australia scores 71 and that signifies the open-culture and employees satisfaction level in the organisation. China is on 24 and the reason behind this case is their closed and autocratic culture of leader decision. 

Some of the recommendation that Mary needs to understands before going to China and to make success over the business strategy. Mary needs to be on time with a formal dress and be ready with four or five pages of meeting scenario. Mary needs to greet in a polished manner with handshakes and offers good respect to Mr Lau. The interpreter used in the conversation may be effective but in most of the cases, the use of body language is important that Mary needs to be used for the development and success of market penetration in China.

Conclusion

“The Aroma Shop” is the organisation that needs to adopt the Chinese culture and from all the discussion these objectives of the essay can be extracted. With the use of HOFSTEDE model cultural difference is quite clear to Mary and thus extra care of cultural evolves need to be imposed for the development of market penetration for this condiments business

References

Berthon, P.R., Pitt, L.F., Plangger, K. and Shapiro, D., 2012. Marketing meets Web 2.0, social media, and creative consumers: Implications for international marketing strategy. Business horizons, 55(3), pp.261-271.

Burns, P., 2016. Entrepreneurship and small business. Palgrave Macmillan Limited.

Dunn, M.W., Dastoor, B. and Sims, R.L., 2012. Transformational leadership and organizational commitment: A cross-cultural perspective. Journal of Multidisciplinary Research, 4(1), p.45.

Eisenberg, J., Lee, H.J., Brück, F., Brenner, B., Claes, M.T., Mironski, J. and Bell, R., 2013. Can business schools make students culturally competent? Effects of cross-cultural management courses on cultural intelligence. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 12(4), pp.603-621.

Obeidat, B., Shannak, R.O., Masa’deh, R.E.M.D.T. and Al-Jarrah, I., 2012. Toward better understanding for Arabian culture: Implications based on Hofstede’s cultural model. European Journal of Social Sciences, 28(4), pp.512-522.

Okoro, E., 2012. Cross-cultural etiquette and communication in global business: Toward a strategic framework for managing corporate expansion. International journal of business and management, 7(16), p.130.

Washington, M.C., Okoro, E.A. and Thomas, O., 2012. Intercultural communication in global business: An analysis of benefits and challenges. The International Business & Economics Research Journal (Online), 11(2), p.217