The Cultural Standards Method A Qualitative Approach in Cross-cultural Management Research

When European managers of differing cultural backgrounds meet, they often have considerable difficulties when it comes to understanding one another. These cultural dissimilarities have a decidedly negative influence on their ability to collaborate.. The factor Culture can be especially disturbing when the acting persons are not aware of their cultural dissimilarities. Since the differences between Europeans are not as obvious as between Japanese and German businessmen, for example, people tend to neglect the influence of Culture in business relations in Europe. One innovative way of researching cultural differences is the Cultural Standard Method. It is based on a qualitative research approach and provides a tool for identifying cultural differences on a more subtle level. The purpose of this paper is to describe the cultural standards method as a tool for the comparison of European business cultures and to give examples of recent research results.