According to Hospitality Net on July 19th, 2007, the Center for Hospitality Research (CHR) of Cornell University is “making available to the hospitality industry an intercultural education exercise that was initially developed for its executive education programs and has subsequently been used in college courses and corporate training.” It is in fact a Cocktail Party Simulation in which “participants examine their experience and apply it to their own professional lives”. According to Cornell Professor Daphne Jameson – the simulation developer, participants gain new insights about the following principles of intercultural interaction:

• Cultural values are relative, not absolute;
• Intercultural communication involves emotional as well as rational responses;
• Invisible cultural differences, such as values, attitudes, and beliefs, are more difficult to handle than visible differences, such as manners, customs, and rituals;
• Deciding who adapts to whom—and how—is the greatest challenge in intercultural interactions; and
• Cultural identity is multidimensional, involving far more than nationality alone.

The University has made the simulation tool available for free on the center’s website: Developing Hospitality Managers’ Intercultural Communication Abilities: The Cocktail Party Simulation.

German culture is actually something new to me and it naturally becomes a focus these days since I am in the country. Besides fascinated by Dresden’s Baroque architecture, I started to search for references in respect to German business culture etiquettes. Here come the results:

Business Etikette in Deutschland. Mind your Manners is a book that is written “to help the business professional or student prepare for an assignment in Germany”. The book tells you about the german business culture and is said to be “Your Compact Guide to Doing Business in Germany”

What behavior are expected in Germany, a country where the people are known for their guttural language, their obsession with “Ordnung”, their square-jawed seriousness, and other habits and sensitivities?

And, here is an more detailed introduction to the book.

The famous fast food company Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) was under fire for its controversial video advertisment showing an old Taoist surrounded by his apprentices enjoying chicken burgers and claiming it as a masterpiece. China Daily has this report citing China Business Post. The article on this weekly financial post criticizing KFC for dishonoring Chinese history and culture.

KFC entered China in 1987, and opened its first shop on November 12 at the downtown area of Qianmen in Beijing. Currently, it has more than 1400 shops in over 200 cities around the country. It employs totally 60,000 staff and its overall annul turnover is about 7.1 billion RMB yuan.