Mr. Toshikazu Hirobe, Managing Director of Chiyoda Almana participated as a panellist at a panel session organized by Community College of Qatar (CCQ) titled “Culture and Business Day”.
The event was coordinated by the Management Sciences Division at the Community College of Qatar to explore complex relationship between culture and doing business and attended by Ambassadors and representatives from the featured countries, public entrepreneurial figures, Community College students and staff.
The event featured main five cultures Qatar, USA, Italy, Japan, and India to highlight the points of agreement and points of divergence in each of the five cultures and how it affects all the key factors of doing business.
Mr. Hirobe represented the Japanese culture, while USA culture was represented by Mrs. Brooke Holland, Executive Director at American Chamber of Commerce Qatar, Italian culture by Mrs. Palma Libotte, Director of The Italian Chamber of Commerce in Qatar and Qatari culture was represented by Mr. Hamad Al-Hajri, Owner and Cofounder of Snoonu who also played the role of the MC of the panel session.
Through exchanging ideas and experiences between the panellists, attendees could understand the extensive and enormous influence of cultural factors on business management. Although a society’s culture is often considered as a soft construct, but panellists shown how culture represents the very mechanism by which minds of social groups are programmed. As an outcome of the discussion, it was concluded that culture has a significant impact on all business practices, communication, and management styles, as well as on all business interactions to achieve business objectives. Culture has also an impact on how people communicate verbally and via body language; how people value time and honor deadlines; how they view problems, how they find solutions and innovate; it shapes how people make decisions, how they respond to authority, and how employees are managed.
The event was conducted in two parts. Main activity was the panel discussion between representatives of the five different countries, from (India – Italy – Japan – Qatar – USA). Then second part was a visit by all attendees to five different booths that reflect the five countries’ cultures established by the college’s students as well as booths arranged by students to share their own small business ideas and entrepreneurial talents.
