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Top Ten CultureClues for Doing Business in the Middle East.
In a region as complex and fluid as the Middle East, understanding the culture is essential to business success.
Working abroad is different. The food is different. People dress differently. People behave and even think differently. So why shouldn’t the way they do business in different cultures also be different? In many ways, it is, and you need to know before you go. Especially true if your competition knows the cultural rules, and you don’t. In the new “global world”, crossing borders is easy; crossing cultures is hard. So here are some important top ten CultureClues© to successful work in the very complex Middle East:
#10: It’s complicated: The region is mainly Muslim, but not all (Israelis are mainly Jewish; many Lebanese, Iraqis, Syrians and Egyptians are Christian); the region is mainly Arab, but not all (Iranians are Persians, Turks are Turkic, most Israelis are European); the economics are staggeringly different, ranging from extreme wealth in much of Gulf Arabia to extreme poverty in much of Egypt, and the Levant (Jordan, Syria, Iraq); sub-regional differences can be great (like the differences between Near Eastern, Levantine and Maghrebi or North African cultures), with tribal affiliations (Baath, Hashemite, Saudi, etc.), and…
