IX. Relation to nature


An important point in intercultural business is the aspect how nature is seen by your business partners. There are two views about nature. One is, nature should be controlled, used and taken advantage of it. The other implies to go along with the nature and live in harmony as well as to your whole environment. Compared to business there are cultures which try to guide and control their lives by themselves on a high scale like the USA and to a lower extent France. The origin for that might be related back to their history and the discovery of a new continent. The great enforcement was to fight against the nature and create a new nation.


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The French see themselves as the „Grand Nation“ with a centralized state. They have fought already many battles and wars and resisted natural forces. Even the Germans and Finns take a more centred position they still have a major tendency to control nature respectively their actions in general. But in comparison to the first mentioned countries they also care about nature and environment which is obvious when looking at the environmental protection measurers they use to recover and keep the nature. Germans were close to destroy their nature through the industrialization process in the 19th century. The Finns who use nature as their resources, especially wood, grow up with a deep nature awareness. Chinese in comparison have the highest relation to nature. They try to live with nature and their people in harmony. All these theories can be transformed to how cultures act in business life – the relation from company and market. A company’s philosophy or strategy how to discover a market and win a greater market share is comparable to the relation culture to nature. In one hand market share or advertising can be aggressive and forcing with less concern to fair play and good relationships. On the other hand more „caring“ cultures emphasize is to market in harmony with good and trustful relationships to other business partners. *7

*7 „Riding the waves of culture“, pages 148/149