Travels in the Riel World

Much has been written about the differences between the cultures of the United States and China, but what in practical terms do these differences mean? Hannah Seligson just wrote a business article for the NY Times about the growing trend of young Americans taking jobs in China, and about the cultural challenges that arise when people from two very different cultures try to work together. It’s a brief but insightful overview of the American and Chinese cultures and business styles. Here is an excerpt that deals with some of the cultural differences in the workplace:

It is imperative for Americans working in China to adjust, said Mr. Norman, who works on management and work force issues for multinational companies operating in Asia. “In the West, there is such a premium on getting things done quickly, but when you come to work in China, you need to work on listening and being more patient and understanding of local ways of doing business,” he said.

Ming Alterman, 25, a senior account executive at Razorfish, a Shanghai-based digital media firm, is the only American among 40 employees. He says Americans need to understand the importance of building so-called guanxi (pronounced GWAN-she). The word means relationships, but has implications beyond the obligatory happy hour, occasional lunches with the boss or networking. “In China, it’s really expected that you become friends with your boss and you go out and socialize in a way that doesn’t happen in the U.S.,” Mr. Alterman said.

The Chinese now rising in the work force were raised and educated in a system that tended to prize obedience and rote learning. Their American counterparts may have had more leeway to question authority and speak their minds. This can affect workplace communication.

When Corinne Dillon, 25, was working at a multinational company in Beijing, she noticed that her Chinese colleagues were sometimes hesitant about expressing their opinions, which she thought was rooted in views about hierarchy.

“Because foreigners are often in higher positions in companies, or even when they are not, there is sometimes an implicit respect given to them that makes Chinese people not want to directly disagree with them for fear of being perceived as impolite,” said Ms. Dillon, who is now director of sales and marketing at That’s Mandarin, a language school based in Beijing.

The difference cuts both ways. Ms. Zhao, of Blue Oak Capital, recalled her first experience working for an American at an American-run agency in Beijing. What her American boss perceived as directness left her feeling humiliated, she said. “I remember I was so embarrassed when my American boss told me he didn’t like something I was doing, right in front of me,” she said. “The Chinese way would have been much more indirect.”

Communication styles, Professor Taras said, can create workplace challenges. “Americans often perceive the Chinese as indecisive, less confident and not tough enough, whereas the Chinese may see Americans as rude or inconsiderate.” This, he said, “can lead to conflicts and misunderstandings, but also affect promotion and task assignment choice, and ultimately performance.”

There are numerous articles and books that explore some of these cultural differences. To learn more, one book you might check out is Encountering the Chinese: A Guide for Americans by Hu Wenzhong and Cornelius Grove.

India has made tremendous economic strides in recent years on the strength of its outsourcing businesses, but many Indians fret that the nation will not be able to take the next step forward until the culture develops a more innovative nature. The NY Times just ran an interesting business feature on this topic.

Even as the rest of the world has come to admire, envy and fear India’s outsourcing business and its technological prowess, many Indians are disappointed that the country has not quickly moved up to more ambitious and lucrative work from answering phones or writing software. Why, they worry, hasn’t India produced a Google or an Apple?

Innovation is hard to measure, but academics who study it say India has the potential to create trend-setting products but is not yet doing so. Indians are granted about half as many American patents for inventions as people and firms in Israel and China. The country’s corporate and government spending on research and development significantly lags behind that of other nations. And venture capitalists finance far fewer companies here than they do elsewhere.

Why the disconnect between a culture that can be business oriented, but perhaps not very innovation oriented? Many observers, including Indians themselves, believe it is a matter of culture.

“The same idea, if it’s born in Silicon Valley it goes the distance,” said Nadathur S. Raghavan, a investor in start-ups and a founder of Infosys, one of India’s most successful technology companies. “If it’s born in India it does not go the distance.”

Mr. Raghavan and others say India is held back by a financial system that is reluctant to invest in unproven ideas, an education system that emphasizes rote learning over problem solving, and a culture that looks down on failure and unconventional career choices.

And the challenges come not only from a culture that is not accustomed to risk-taking, but also from a culture that is traditionally and heavily based on relationships.

In the United States, Israel and elsewhere, the initial, or seed, capital for many start-ups comes from rich individuals known as angel investors. But most rich Indians prefer to invest with family members or close friends because its considered safer and provides assurance that the lender will be able to borrow from relatives in the future.

If you’re interested in understanding more about these cultural differences there are a few good books out there, including Speaking of India by Craig Storti.

National culture changes very slowly, but there is no doubt that it is something that constantly evolves. Sometimes in small ways over centuries, and sometimes in bigger ways over shorter periods of time. One example of this is the role of women in the Middle East, and particularly in the conservative nation of Saudi Arabia. Saudi women have few rights when compared to their Western counterparts, as they still aren’t allowed to drive or to participate in many things outside the home without permission from a male family member. But there are glimmers of hope and pockets of openness, as shown in this recent story in Time magazine, which looked at the small steps toward freedom that have been achieved by some women in Saudi society.

Like those of its competitors in New York or London, the sleek glass and steel offices of media company Rotana are filled with preening attitude and fashion-conscious staffers: assistants teeter in shoes that might have absorbed much of their monthly paycheck; executives parade the halls in power suits and pencil skirts. But Rotana isn’t in New York or London; it’s in Riyadh, capital of Saudi Arabia, a country in which women normally adhere to a strict dress code in public — a black cloak called an abaya, a headscarf and a veil, the niqab, which covers everything but their eyes.

There’s another reason many Saudis would find Rotana shocking: men and women working side by side. The sight unnerves enough men who come looking for a job that human-resources manager Sultana al-Rowaili has developed a trick to see if a male applicant can handle working in a mixed-gender office. She arranges for a female colleague to interrupt the initial interview, and watches to see if the man loses concentration or stares too much. Sometimes even that isn’t necessary. Many men are undone by the very idea of being interviewed by a woman. “They are in a state of shock to see a woman in a position of authority and to have to ask her for a job,” al-Rowaili says.

Saudi men may have to start getting used to such situations. True, Rotana remains an anomaly protected by the position and progressive ideals of its owner  — global investor Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz al-Saud. And Saudi women still can’t drive and legally can’t even leave the house to shop, let alone get a job, without a male family member’s permission. Yet under the guidance of a few members of the Saudi royal family — in particular the current King, Abdullah — the kingdom is slowly changing. Mixed-gender workplaces are becoming more common, especially in banks and good hospitals, where female doctors are not unusual. “People used to say, ‘Why is she working? Why does she need the money?’ Now they say, ‘It takes a woman to solve a problem,’” says Norah al-Malhooq, an administrator at King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Center in Riyadh.

The government is expanding educational opportunities for women by building women’s universities (as opposed to segregated campuses at male-dominated universities); last month it even launched the kingdom’s first coeducational university. The state is trying to encourage women’s entry into the workforce, and is sponsoring initiatives to protect women and children from domestic abuse. And it is pushing Saudis to discuss the notion of empowerment, formerly such a taboo subject that even the word was off-limits in newspapers. “The message is that women are coming,” says Dr. Maha Almuneef, one of six women named earlier this year to the Shura council, a 156-person advisory body appointed by the King. “It’s a good first step. The King and the political system are saying that the time has come. There are small steps now. There are giant steps coming. But most Saudis have been taught the traditional ways. You can’t just change the social order all at once.”

Check out the entire article. It’s a fascinating glimpse into a relatively closed society, and an intriguing look at the cultural tensions that often arise between tradition and modernity.

Some more examples of culture in the news:

In Washington, D.C., the retirement of the White House florist, Nancy Clarke, sheds light on the fact that even flowers have different meanings across cultures:

In addition to providing flowers for the occupants of the White House, Mrs. Clarke has also ended up becoming something of an expert on international floral protocol.

In an article published in White House History, the journal of the White House Historical Association, Ms. Clarke said she learned to tailor floral arrangements to accommodate foreign customs, tastes and the allergies and personal preferences of the presidents’ guests.

“In Muslim and many Pacific Rim countries, the color white is reserved for funerals,’’ Ms. Clarke wrote in the article last year. “In many of the Central and South American countries, the same is true of the color yellow,’’ she said. “Sometimes it is the type of flower that must be avoided; in some countries and regions, lilies, mums or carnations are used only for funerals.’’

And in Damascus, Syria, the opening of a very modest stock market is a reminder that many Arabs are at heart traders and businesspeople:

For the moment, it looks more like a sleepy college library than a booming bourse, with trading — indirectly controlled by the government — only five hours a week and share price fluctuations limited to 2 percent per day. There are only six stocks on the market, and in the first weeks, only one was traded.

But for many Syrians, the fledgling exchange represents a long-deferred dream of economic liberalization and prosperity after decades of socialism and isolation.

In a sense, it is a return to Syria’s roots: trade has always been at the center of this city, with its famous souks and its mercantile elite. Syria had the first central bank in the Middle East, and a thriving informal stock market until the late 1950s, when it unified with Egypt and adopted an austere socialist creed…

Still, the new stock exchange represents the aspirations of a younger, business-oriented generation for whom economic prosperity may ultimately trump Syria’s longstanding support for militant groups. Many young entrepreneurs are descendants of the old Sunni Muslim mercantile elite of this city, who still tend to dominate in business.

In recent years, this younger generation has helped transform the face of Damascus, with new restaurants, bars, nightclubs and boutique hotels. The economy has grown despite the American sanctions, and private banks, first reintroduced in 2004, are becoming more prevalent.

As the global financial system tries to right itself after staggering to the brink of collapse, one banking sector finds itself in somewhat better shape than most of the world. That would be the Islamic banking system, which credits its steadiness to practices that are unique to Islamic finance, such as banning interest and shying away from excessive debt and risk. The Washington Post has a story on the topic:

As big Western financial institutions have teetered one after the other in the crisis of recent weeks, another financial sector is gaining new confidence: Islamic banking.

Proponents of the ancient practice, which looks to sharia law for guidance and bans interest and trading in debt, have been promoting Islamic finance as a cure for the global financial meltdown.

This week, Kuwait’s commerce minister, Ahmad Baqer, was quoted as saying that the global crisis will prompt more countries to use Islamic principles in running their economies. U.S. Deputy Treasury Secretary Robert M. Kimmet, visiting Jiddah, said experts at his agency have been learning the features of Islamic banking.

Though the trillion-dollar Islamic banking industry faces challenges with the slump in real estate and stock prices, advocates say the system has built-in protection from the kind of runaway collapse that has afflicted so many institutions. For one thing, the use of financial instruments such as derivatives, blamed for the downfall of banking, insurance and investment giants, is banned. So is excessive risk-taking.

“The beauty of Islamic banking and the reason it can be used as a replacement for the current market is that you only promise what you own. Islamic banks are not protected if the economy goes down — they suffer — but you don’t lose your shirt,” said Majed al-Refaie, who heads Bahrain-based Unicorn Investment Bank.

The theological underpinning of Islamic banking is scripture that declares that collection of interest is a form of usury, which is banned in Islam. In the modern world, that translates into an attitude toward money that is different from that found in the West: Money cannot just sit and generate more money. To grow, it must be invested in productive enterprises.

“In Islamic finance you cannot make money out of thin air,” said Amr al-Faisal, a board member of Dar al-Mal al-Islami, a holding company that owns several Islamic banks and financial institutions. “Our dealings have to be tied to actual economic activity, like an asset or a service. You cannot make money off of money. You have to have a building that was actually purchased, a service actually rendered, or a good that was actually sold.”

The United States is renowned for having a culture that rewards risk-taking and innovation. This is so ingrained into the culture that it’s easy to forget it’s actually a somewhat unique trait that is not always so easily replicated elsewhere. Here’s a reminder of that, buried in a NY Times profile of scientist-businessman John Kao.

Before long he had written dozens of the kinds of case studies that are the basis of the school’s teaching and had organized a course on entrepreneurship, creativity and organizations.

Many of his cases were about failures — individuals under pressure, partnerships unraveling, learning through trial and error and so on. Today, Dr. Kao says failure’s relative lack of stigma is “a unique aspect of U.S. culture” that does not exist even in countries like Singapore or Finland, both clients and both, he said, “relatively hip.”

“There’s a saying in Silicon Valley,” he said. “If you haven’t gone bankrupt a couple of times you are not trying hard enough. It’s part of our national advantage.”

What happens when a prominent Thai businessman takes over a British football team that is managed by a Swede? Perhaps a clash of cultures was inevitable.

Regardless of your interest in sports, there is a fascinating recent article in the Financial Times that illuminates many of the cultural differences between Thailand and northern Europe. The story specifically recounts the management issues that arose between Thaksin Shinawatra, former prime minister of Thailand and a wealthy entrepreneur who last year took over the Manchester City Football Club, and Sven-Göran Eriksson, the team’s now former manager. The article includes numerous insights for anyone who works across cultures. An excerpt:

Mr Thaksin … is fond of promoting “modern” business techniques, yet he remains steeped in Thai culture. He tends - like most Thais - to trust family, friends and old associates, above all others. So he placed loyal executives and a son and a daughter on the Manchester City board.

A boss who commands awe and respect in Thailand will also expect to be obeyed in a fashion that Mr Eriksson may have found alien. “Over the centuries, the kings of Thailand have been feared and adored. Thais have grown to expect a leader to demonstrate a blend of authoritarianism and benevolence,” writes Henry Holmes in his book Working with the Thais .

There are arguments among academics about how deferential Thais really are these days, but no one doubts that society is much more hierarchical than in the west. The nuances are complex but, crudely, traditional Thai bosses delegate less and are less inclined to discuss their plans with people outside their inner circle.

“Traditional Thai and western management practices are like night and day,” says Stuart Raj, an expert in cross-cultural management.

The Thai boss is very likely to be a rather paternal figure, who is never “off duty”. Every meeting with subordinates is, in this sense, formal. A senior Thai is expected to consult with his juniors but to have the authority, strength and wisdom to make his own decisions. On the other hand, as a father-figure, he is expected to look after his loyal staff, family and friends…

Mr Eriksson, from conspicuously egalitarian Scandanavia, may not have been comfortable as poodle, as he might have seen it. Once relations had cooled, the Swede would most likely have found himself further outside Mr Thaksin’s circle of favoured advisers and - as wins became rarer - increasingly distrusted.

Any sharp comments Mr Eriksson might have made will have been taken badly. “Thais are extremely sensitive to criticism. Everything is about relationships, so criticism becomes very wounding,” says Somjai Pakapasvivat, a Thai management expert at Chulalongkorn University.

There was an interesting column by Joe Nocera in the New York Times business section a few days ago. It started by looking at the relative lack of MBA-type skills among Chinese managers, but then diverted into an examination of Chinese and Western business cultures and the difficulties that companies have in meshing the two. An excerpt:

When dealing with each other, the Chinese, quite simply, do business differently than Western companies do business. For one thing, there is a lot of petty corruption that is an ingrained part of business, especially among the state-run companies. Purchasing managers favor one vendor over another because they get a kickback. A sales rep buys customer loyalty with under-the-table payments. And so on.

People also tend to put their own interests over the interests of their company — not a huge surprise, given that everyone worked for the state just a generation ago. Middle managers tend not to take much initiative. “Somebody said to me the other day, ‘We are paid to obey,’ ” said one American manager at a Chinese company…

But there are also things that can seem straightforward to a Westerner that are anything but in China. “Take the word ‘accountability,’ ” said Liu Chijin, the chairman of Pan Pacific Management Institution, a management consulting firm he founded in 1999. “It is a natural concept in the West. Here, people know what it means, but it is not in their blood. If you give them an assignment, tomorrow they are likely to tell you that something else came up.”

Finally, there is the gnarliest issue of all: the importance placed on the deep, intertwining set of relationships known as guanxi. Unlike the West, you don’t just have a business relationship in China; you have a relationship that interchangeably mixes the personal with the professional.

“Most Americans would say that we have it as well with the old boys network,” said Mr. Chiang, the marketing professor. “But Chinese intertwine business and personal affairs much more deeply. They do things for their partners even if they are personal affairs. And it is very difficult to disentangle what is institution to institution and what is person to person.” On the one hand, this leads to a sense of deep mutual loyalty. On the other hand, it is at the heart of the petty corruption that is so prevalent.

So, if a Western company wants to utilize the best of its own culture, but also recognize the need to “retain at least some aspects of a Chinese business culture,” what would the end result look like? Matthew McDougall, an Australian who founded a company in Beijing, had this advice:

“We want to be viewed as a Chinese company. We deal with investors in the American way, but we deal with customers in the Chinese way. In the U.S., you talk to customers about your unique selling proposition. In China, you talk to them about schools, your family, your friends in common, and what you can do for them.”

There was an article in the NY Times this week about the challenges and the allure of doing business in emerging markets around the globe. Or, more accurately, “emerging emerging markets.” Buried within the story was a fascinating account of just how business gets transacted in some cultures.

First, the overview of these markets:

Forget Hong Kong, Beijing, Moscow and Mumbai. Intrepid bankers, investors and hedge fund managers are journeying to farther corners to do deals…

Many of the new investment targets are mineral- or oil-rich nations, like Ghana, where high commodity prices are spurring domestic economic growth, the political framework is solid or stabilizing, and doors are opening to foreign investment. Others, like Vietnam, are adopting capitalism and creating industries. Most of these places have large young populations that are moving from rural economies into cities, eager for cellphones and cars.

Some investors and deal-makers call them “frontier” markets, but there are plenty of other names for these nations. A Merrill Lynch analyst refers to them as “emerging emerging” markets, while Goldman Sachs focuses on the N-11, or Next 11, developing countries.

And, for our purpose of understanding cultures, here is a description of a business meeting in Saudi Arabia in which the actual business was transacted at the very last moment - literally on the way out the door, and only after the necessary relationship-building was accomplished.

Bassam Yammine, a managing director and co-chief executive of the Middle East at Credit Suisse, recently took a colleague from the bank’s London office to see a client in Saudi Arabia. He noticed his guest’s discomfort when, 40 minutes into the meeting, Mr. Yammine, a 40-year-old Lebanese banker, and the client were still chatting about politics and the weather. His colleague shot him a panicked look when everyone got up to leave, still not having mentioned business deals. Halfway out the door, Mr. Yammine turned around, quickly discussed the deal and he and his colleague left the meeting with a check.

“In this part of the world, that’s how you do business,” said Mr. Yammine, who spends his time in Riyadh or Dubai and traveling the region. “Relationships are an important factor in clients’ decisions.”

For more of an understanding of the work culture of this region of the world, check out Margaret Nydell’s book, Understanding Arabs.

Cultural lessons also apply to the military, as evidenced by this interesting piece in Newsweek, which shows how one soldier took cultural lessons learned as a youngster in Peru and applied them to some of his dealings with locals in Iraq. 

For Capt. Jim Marckwardt, coming to Iraq in 2005 was like being a kid again. Blackouts, water shortages, car bombs and guerrilla shoot-outs—just like his middle-school years in Peru, where his father worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development in the 1980s. Even the people seemed familiar. He was good at bargaining with Iraqi contractors.

“In the U.S., you sit down and negotiate directly,” Marckwardt says. “In Iraq you have to build more relationships. It’s very similar to the Peruvian way of doing business.” He also recognized the sense of honor that drives many Iraqis—another echo of his childhood in Latin America—and has used it to his and his men’s advantage.

Now that corporations recognize not only the benefits of international experience but also a real need for managers to have a broad global perspective, a wide array of programs are popping into existence in order to meet these training needs. One of the more interesting programs that I’ve heard about was just profiled in the NY Times. IBM is actually sending budding managers abroad to work as volunteers in various business-related projects.

In July, a team of 8 to 10 I.B.M. employees will travel to Ghana to help tiny businesses make their operations more professional. Another team will help entrepreneurs seek microloans in Turkey, while yet another will create training programs on information technology in Vietnam.

The projects, which were devised by I.B.M.’s citizenship group and are being coordinated through nonprofit organizations, have all the trappings of corporate philanthropy. But that is not why they were created, or how they are being used.

“This is a management development exercise for high-potential people at I.B.M.,” said Randy MacDonald, senior vice president for human resources.

What does I.B.M. hope to gain from sending these employees on volunteer missions abroad? Quite a lot, actually.

“As a development tool, this is a four-for-one,” said Allan R. Cohen, dean of the Olin Graduate School at Babson College, near Boston. “It’s stretching to work in another culture, to work in a nonprofit where the measurement of accomplishment isn’t clear, to take a sabbatical from your everyday routine and to learn to accomplish things when you can’t just bark orders.”

Indeed, Paul Ingram, a management professor at the Columbia Business School, is planning a similar program for this fall, in which executives attending the school’s Senior Executive Program will work with nonprofit groups in New York. Because 80 percent of the students are not from the United States, the New York location is outside their comfort zone.

“The fact that you are an excellent programmer or salesman, or can lead a project in your own area and culture, doesn’t mean you can be a great leader outside of your technical or cultural expertise,” he said.

That is I.B.M.’s logic as well. The company views the Service Corps as a way to learn how well employees work with strangers, in strange lands, on unfamiliar projects.

It’s always a challenge for an individual to fit into the work culture of a new country. The NY Times recently profiled Heidi Manheimer and asked about her experiences as an American working for the Japanese cosmetics company Shiseido. Here is some of what she had to say:

Shiseido is a large, old, conservative Japanese company that still offers lifetime employment. People joining it often shift positions every three years. They might run fragrance marketing and then become general manager of one of the company’s restaurants. (Restaurants are another company business.)

When I started, it felt like being in a traffic jam. To manage projects, I had to learn who was last to serve in a position and who was coming to that job next. I knew where I needed to go but I wasn’t quite sure how to get there.

I was used to having meetings to make decisions. I had to learn when things get done in Japan. You get information in meetings, but the important decisions are made in sidebar conversations, during coffee in the hallway, over dinner at night, or at karaoke. In the beginning, I skipped dinner and karaoke often because I was so exhausted, but not after I learned that’s where things get done.

There was just a three-part series about Russia in the Christian Science Monitor. It focused on the young people who are part of what has been dubbed the “Putin Generation” - those who have come of age in a Russia that is more stable and prosperous, but still tightly-controlled politically and beset by corruption in business.

The whole series is worth a read, but there were some interesting cultural points in the second article, which focused on a young woman who has struggled to establish herself as a new business owner. The story points out the opportunities of the new Russia, but also the country’s inability so far to break free of some of the stifling practices of the past. An excerpt:

Yulia Barabasheva never wanted to have her own beauty salon…But with a dream of securing a steadier income and starting a family, she opened her unmarked brown metal door to the public in April last year.

It took the help of her husband, Igor Barabashev, a businessman, to get $180,000 in start-up loans and complete a six-month slog through Russia’s formidable bureaucracy to obtain a license. Now, she and her staff of 14 take clients up to 12 hours a day, seven days a week, giving them thinner eyebrows or 5-inch nails.

At 25, Barabasheva is politically unengaged, like many of her “Putin generation.” But she enjoys a rising prosperity, which Russians typically chalk up to President Vladimir Putin. Serving that new wealth has opened the door to opportunities that would have been unheard of for average Russians just a decade ago. But even as Mr. Putin’s Russia allows ever greater numbers of people, like Barabasheva, to move up the economic ladder, it demands a scrappy persistence to battle red tape and corruption while trying to get ahead…

That shift toward broader prosperity, especially in Moscow, has been dramatic. In his first five years in office, Putin brought the poverty rate of his countrymen down to about 16 percent, according to the World Bank…Official figures put the middle class at about 20 percent of the population…

But the backstage of business in Putin’s Russia is much messier, according to Barabasheva and other entrepreneurs. “The state structure is quite complicated, quite corrupted, and it requires a lot of financial investment and emotional investment,” she says.

In a recent speech, Putin acknowledged such challenges. “To this day, it’s impossible to start a business within months,” he said, laying out his vision for Russia through 2020. “You have to go to every office with a bribe: firefighters, hospital orderlies, gynecologists, you name it. It’s just a nightmare.”

Here’s an interesting confluence of religion and business - the Dow Jones Dharma for faith-based investing. Business Week has the story.

Back in India, a new generation of gurus is promoting the latest thing to hit the Indian stock market: values investing. Not to be confused with Warren Buffett-style value investing, values-based investing draws on the principles of Indian religions such as Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism, and Buddhism. Last month Dow Jones launched the faith-based Dow Jones Dharma indices, which measure the performance of 254 companies that have characteristics like good governance and environmental friendliness in common.

Letters are pouring in to support the new group of five indices. They are not your typical congratulatory notes, but blessings and endorsements from assorted Indian spiritual leaders and scholars. “May the maximum number of investors utilize it, and thus globally advance core Hindu values,” writes Shastri Narayanswarupdas, a religious leader from Ahmedabad in western India. Writes another: “Trust is the breath of business, ethics its limbs, to uplift the spirit its goal.” …

The dharma-compliant stocks, according to Gor, are those that adhere to the precepts relevant to good conduct. They include opposition to animal slaughter, support of the environment, and adherence to good corporate governance. Assorted temples, scholars, and academicians support the idea…

There’s no shortage of companies that adhere to these Dharma principals. Already, in India, Dow Jones has compiled a list of 254 companies that are dharma-compliant.

Business schools in China are growing by leaps and bounds, with more programs and a significant increase in the number of international students, according to this article in Business Week. The expatriate students are there to gain a better understanding of the Chinese business world, which they gain not only with on-the-ground experience in the country but also with academic programs that focus on integrating the unique culture of China with Western business thought.

In a course on competition strategy at BiMBA (Beijing International MBA), readings include Sun Tsu’s The Art of War and cases on military battles drawn from ancient and modern Chinese history. “We are integrating Chinese philosophy and realities with Western management theories,” says BiMBA’s U.S. dean John Yang.

Perhaps no school has gone as far as Cheung Kong GSB, which runs its MBA program from a 70-year-old villa in Shanghai. Courses range from the globalization of Chinese companies to Confucian humanism. While its faculty is drawn from top universities worldwide, the majority of professors are of Chinese origin.

One of them is Zheng Yusheng, associate dean and a professor of operations management. After spending 20 years in the U.S. and becoming the first tenured Chinese professor at University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, he returned to the mainland in 2002 to help set up the school.

His understanding of both Western and Chinese business cultures has made a mark on the MBA program. “In the U.S. there is almost no manufacturing, so what we teach there is how to manage retailers,” he notes. “China is a center of manufacturing, so we focus on manufacturing here. I say: You need to produce the right product, at the right time, for the right customers. That’s exactly what we have been doing.”

The world of the business expatriate is not what it was a decade or two ago. The destinations are different, the cultural challenges have changed, and new business skills are needed for success abroad. That’s the opinion, at least, of this interesting article in Time magazine, which focuses especially on executives who work in China and India.

The expat gig used to be a cushy one for U.S. executives of a certain level: jet into Tokyo or Paris, tuck family into American schools and clubs, slide into fully established local office as the bigwig from headquarters. It was more of an exotic detour for loyal lifetimers than a slingshot into directorship for the young and ambitious–but who cared?

Somewhere, perhaps in Tokyo or Paris, that old-timey expatriate still sips his midday martini at the foreigners’ club. But in the rough-and-tumble markets of China and India, a new generation of expats–they prefer “global executives,” thank you–haven’t yet had a chance to sign up for membership. They’re too busy chasing local talent, adapting to a wildly different culture and riding phenomenal growth in markets vital to their companies’ futures…

The U.S. expat population has leaped over the past five years, according to experts, in large part because of growing delegations to China and India. And yet the two emerging giants remain famously tough for Western executives to navigate. In a 2006 survey by GMAC Global Relocation Services, they are cited among the three most difficult locations for expats (the third is Russia). Corporations are learning that these 21st century markets require a new kind of expat.

What are some of the cultural and business challenges now faced by expat executives in these Asian nations?

The right leader in China and India, for many companies, is someone with the drive and creativity to manage what often feels like a start-up. The highest hurdle is usually building a local workforce from the ground up in savagely competitive labor markets…

In India, Leonhardt has to wage a full-court recruiting press. Candidates might receive dozens of offers, accept them all–then simply show up at the one that’s most appealing. Leonhardt estimates that as many as 3 in 10 accepted hires are no-shows on the first day of work. “It’s pretty frustrating, as you can imagine,” he says.

Employers there thus use what’s called a keep-warm strategy, in which newly approved hires are plied with informational packets, calls from executives and even small gifts for their parents … before their first day of work. Appealing to workers’ filial loyalty is so critical in India that some employers fly parents to headquarters for visits, and at least one is said to offer parents free Internet service. Target competes by offering health insurance to workers’ parents.

Once a team is in place, expat bosses often have to reinvent themselves as managers. Lin Chase, 44, arrived in Bangalore in January 2006 to head Accenture’s research and development lab. “I come from a culture where people love a plan,” she says. “The plan is God.” Not in India. She would step away from meetings confident that a plan was in place and wait for its execution. And wait. And wait. “It happened so many times that finally I changed my whole style,” says Chase. “I talk to my team every day, ask them how it’s going. I spend a huge proportion of time chasing people for commitments they made to me, but now I see it less as chasing than as a relationship.”

In the Japanese culture, loyalty and conformity have long been valued traits. This is especially true in the relationship between workers and employers, where nonconformity has long been frowned upon. In recent years, though, Japan has seen the emergence of a new phenomenon - the whistleblower. According to a story in the Christian Science Monitor:

It’s not easy for an individual to call attention to illegal or unethical behavior in the workplace in any culture. But in Japan, where conformity is seen as a virtue, it can be especially difficult.

When officer Toshiro Semba revealed that his bosses in the police department were forging receipts in order to wine and dine on the public’s money, they took his gun away. He was decreed too emotionally unstable to carry a weapon – a humiliation, he says, designed to corner him into quitting. For 500 days, he was ordered to sit alone in a tiny room at the Ehime Prefectural Police…

Whistle-blowers like Semba have been especially solitary in Japan, where conformity and respect for hierarchy are venerated as tradition. They have been labeled as traitors. But that attitude is gradually changing. As Japan modernizes, people increasingly see themselves as individuals and consumers, with a duty to speak up against wrongdoing…

Whistle-blowers have been rare because Japanese companies, even major ones, are run like families, and individual workers don’t see themselves as hired by contract as do American workers, says Koji Igata, business administration professor at Osaka University of Economics. “Whistle-blowers are seen as eccentrics who’ve turned on their parents,” he says. 

The term guanxi refers to the time-honored way of doing business in China by cultivating relationships. Anyone who works in China or with a Chinese company eventually has to learn about guanxi.  This week, Business Week magazine has an article about the practice of building relationships with the Chinese and discusses not only the traditional meaning of guanxi but also more contemporary ways of networking in China.

Loosely translated, guanxi means “connections” and, as any China veteran will tell you, it is the key to everything: securing a business license, landing a distribution deal, even finding that coveted colonial villa in Shanghai. Fortunes have been made and lost based on whether the seeker has good or bad guanxi, and in most cases a positive outcome has meant knowing the right government official, a relationship nurtured over epic banquets and gallons of XO brandy.

Now, like so many things in China, the old notion of guanxi is starting to make room for the new. Businesspeople—local and foreign—are tapping into emerging networks that revolve around shared work experiences or taking business classes together. Networking that once happened in private rooms at chichi restaurants now goes on in plain view—at wine-tastings for the nouveau riche, say, or at Davos-style confabs such as the annual China Entrepreneurs Forum held annually at China’s Yabuli ski resort.