Proceedings of 6th Annual American Business Research Conference
9 - 10 June 2014, Sheraton LaGuardia East Hotel, New York, USA, ISBN: 978-1-922069-52-8
Managing Cultural Differences in International Business Operations: A
Perspective from Europe
Desalegn Abraha and Syeda-Masooda Mukhtar
While the advantages of globalization are numerous, (including economies of scale in
research and development, production, marketing, access to large and many markets,
access to new ideas, technologies, competencies, resources), globalization also brings
with it new challenges. Cultural differences arguably being one of the most important of
these challenges. Literature suggests that cultural differences and the firms’ ability to deal
with them have a significant impact on firms’ operations as well as performance. Against
this background, this study explores the relationship between cultural differences and the
effectiveness of international business operations. The data is drawn from a sample of
North European firms operating in diverse foreign markets. The findings show that for the
European firms in our sample the learning, in the main, tended to take place 'by doing'
over time. The paper concludes with managerial implications.
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Dr. Desalegn Abraha, Associate Professor, University of Skevde, Sweden
Professor Dr. Syeda-Masooda Mukhtar, Professor of Management, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration,
King AbdulAziz University, Jeddah 21589, Saudi Arabia
Tel: +966565308872, smmukhtar@kau.edu.sa, s_m_mukhtar@hotmail.com