America, thou art half-brother of the world;
With something good and bad of every land.

Phillip James Bailey, “The Surface”

Before we attempt to describe, understand and work with Americans in business, we have to face three important questions:

• Is there any such thing as a “typical American”?
• Is an American, typical or not, different from, say, a Brazilian, an Indian, a Swede or even a Canadian when it comes to business?
• If there are differences, do they matter? Are they important?

IS THERE ATYPICAL AMERICAN?

In answering the first question, we can take one thing as certain: any attempt to provide a single uniform description of the beliefs, values, and behavior of more than 280,000,000 people is impossible. American is big and diverse. You may think of it as a “melting pot” or, more fashionably, as a “mosaic” of people of different races, regions, national origins, and cultural backgrounds. Either way, this makes it more difficult to define a single “America” in cultural terms.

The question of stereotyping

Despite that certainty, we must also accept that people everywhere use general labels to describe other groups of people, in the form of stereotyping. People believe that certain traits or characteristics of these groups are not merely typical, but stereo-typical, a word drawn from the printing craft to describe type that is cast from a mould. In other words, a national or ethnic stereotype implies that all members of that group have been identically “moulded”. They are all the same.

We would all like to think that we do not stereotype others, but it is in fact a normal response to differences that we observe. We need to generalize; otherwise we would be unable to cope with millions of isolated cases. The danger comes when our stereotypes become prejudices. We then judge others according to these categories, often negatively.

Perhaps you have a stereotype of Americans. You may have met – or may even work with – a person whom you would refer to as “typically American.” Through our discussion of the “American way” of conducting business, you may come to alter your stereotype. On the other hand, you may not change your mind at all. Each one of us can find examples from our own store of experience and impression to confirm our own stereotypical images. Each one of us will probably be able to recall an experience that contradicts any of the general tendencies described in these pages. In either cause, it will be helpful for you to be aware of what your stereotype of Americans may be. We will have more to say about that below.

At the same time, we do not want simply to replace one stereotypical view of Americans with another. We cannot predict the behavior of a group of people, nor can we attribute a single fixed set of “values” to it. For every general observation concerning either common American behavior or attitudes toward some aspect of business life, you will find many exceptions.

Sharpening our focus

We can avoid this difficulty by sharpening our focus. Our objective, after all, is to better understand and deal with the Americans you are likely to find in business. These people are likely to be fairly well educated by American standards, and in professional or managerial positions – what we in America refer to as “white collar.” They may be independent business people, small company entrepreneurs, or members of large multi-national organizations. There will be exceptions here as well, and it would be a mistake to assume that the factory worker, farmer, or supermarket checkout clerk is somehow a different type of American from the rest.

With this narrower focus, we will be better able to make more valid generalizations about Americans, in order to prepare you for possible differences and alternative ways of dealing with them.

ARE AMERICANS TRULY DIFFERENT FROM OTHERS WHEN IT COMES TO BUSINESS?

Here again we can start with a certainty: Americans, like any group, are both similar and different in certain respects to other groups of people. Americans have developed particular ways of answering the universal questions of human society – how to organize and educate themselves, communicate among themselves, and establish relationships of authority and friendship, among others. Their responses are similar in some respects to those of people in other parts of the world, while being different in other ways that reflect the unique conditions and demands of American life. Narrowing our focus to the world of business narrows the range of potential difference. While business people from around the world do many of the same things – negotiate contracts, manage production, organize companies, and so on – most of us would agree that people do not necessarily do these things in the same way.

But where do the differences lie?

Despite the attempts of social scientists to specify and measure these differences objectively through surveys and interviews, what is different depends on one’s point of view. How are Americans different from people, or business people, in your country? If you happen to be Japanese, you may look at Americans and see differences in management practices and behavior toward their bosses (they often disagree openly with them). You may also see many similarities between Americans and Europeans. On the other hand, if you come from northern Europe, you may be aware of differences that are less apparent to a Japanese, in certain aspects of communication style, for example. You, too, may see differences in the way Americans relate to their bosses, except that from your perspective they do not disagree with them often enough!

A Venezuelan looks at North Americans and sees a people who have a different approach to social relations and to relations between men and women. If you are Nigerian, you may see a wide range of differences between the people of a developed capitalist society, and those of a developing society with an entirely different heritage.

Before going on to the third of our critical questions, it would be useful for you to think more precisely about your own point of view.

What are your perceptions of Americans?

Using the questions in Box 2.1, make a short list of some of the characteristics of Americans in business that you have observed, based on your experience. Some of these may reflect your stereotype, or image, of the “typical American” in business. They may also reflect the ways in which the Americans whom you have met have been different from what you expected.

If you have not yet had contact with Americans, think about what you have heard from others, or the impressions you have formed from books or films.

Being aware of your own perceptions is a necessary starting point for gaining a greater understanding of the American way of business. We notice these characteristics of other people because we believe that they are evidence of differences between them and ourselves. We will have much more to say about these perceptions below, as we face the third of our critical questions: Are these differences important?

DO THESE APPARENT DIFFERENCES MATTER?

In the arena of international business, it is easy to exaggerate the significance of apparent group-level differences. After all, if we were in reality so very different from each other, we would not be able to do business at all. We would be unable to reach commercial agreements, unable to co-operate, unable ultimately to trust each other. Yet somehow people of different backgrounds have managed to do this, not just in the recent past, but for centuries.

Organizational and environmental factors

We must be careful not to overrate the impact of the “culture” of a nation, group, or society. Many of the differences that you have experienced, or will experience, in working with Americans are due to the requirements and norms of the organisations to which they belong, and business environment in which they operate. As President Calvin Coolidge declared in 1925, “The business of America is business”. The day-to-day behavior of people and organisations in America is “driven” (a fashionable American business term for “influenced” or “governed”) by a number of practical day-to-day factors:

• The marketplace

• How competitive is it? In the USA you can normally expect it to be very competitive.

• How segmented and differentiated is it? Foreign businesses dream of a share of what appears to be a “single market” of over 280,000,000 people. There is nothing uniform about it, however. In America, market segmentation, according to any demographic or geographic variable you can name, is an art.
• In responding to the market, how important is innovation? Marketing? Customer service? Quality? Short development cycles and time-to-market?

• The customers

• Who are they? What do they demand? If the government or public sector is an important customer, adherence to set procedures and standards may be more important than cost control or innovation. Priorities are likely to be different if customers are private sector enterprises.

• Accountability

• To whom does management of the company feel accountable? In most cases this will be shareholders, customers, the financial sector, and the media. Other bodies to whom management may feel accountable include the general public and government regulatory agencies. People from other countries may have an image of American business as being totally free-wheeling law-of-the-jungle capitalism. The reality can be very different. In some sectors, businesses are tightly regulated by federal, state, or local authorities.

• The values of the founder, the chairman, or the chief executive

• America has always offered opportunities to individual entrepreneurs. Their personal leadership or “vision” is often reflected in the type of people they have selected for their “team”, and in the “mission” of the company. We shall have more to say about this aspect of American business life in Chapter 6.

Our list of organizational factors is not necessarily exhaustive. We mention them here to remind you that in preparing to work with Americans, there is no substitute for this knowledge. Indeed, Americans will expect you to come prepared with it.

Despite the diversity of peoples and organizations in America, there is much in the way of outlook, attitudes and behavior that we Americans share, especially when it comes to business. This brings up back to the question of specifying these common elements, and our need to make “informed generalities” about Americans. Let’s look again at your general observations in Box. 2.1.

What can you learn from your perceptions of Americans?

You can learn at least one thing: differences are important if you believe them to be.

The positive and negative impressions that you listed are clear indications of, on the one hand, areas of likely comfort and compatibility with Americans, and on the other, of potential frustration, misunderstanding, and conflict. We can reduce the potential for frustration by remembering one other thing: those American attitudes and behaviors that appear so confusing, while they may not make sense to you, do make sense to an American, as later chapters will explain.

Your impressions – notably the negative ones – are also a clear indication of something else: of what is important to you, according to your background and the way business is done where you come from. To explain better what we mean, let us take an example not relating to America, but to Europe. The British consistently describe Germans as lacking a sense of humor. Whether or not this perception is accurate (it is not!), it says more about the British – that displaying a sense of humor is important to them, and that Germans appear to be different in this respect – than about Germans.

In summary then, our perceptions are indicators of (1) where important differences may lie between us and other people; and (2) norms of belief and behavior that are important to us. These perceived differences may or may not culturally shock us, but they are clues to potential or actual problems in the conduct of international business.

In your list of negative impressions of Americans, did you include something like “Americans have little knowledge of other countries”; “They pay little attention to the rest of the world”; or “Americans think that their way is always the best”? Perhaps you included words such as “proud” or “nationalistic”. When an American says “globalize” does he really mean “Americanize”?

If the answer is yes, then we need to understand how Americans see themselves and the rest of the world.