Resources of the Week: Cultural Awareness and Country Information
Resource Roundup: Cultural Awareness and Country Information
By Shirl Kennedy, Senior Editor
"Cultural awareness" is a phrase that has made its way into increasingly common usage over the past few years. For one thing, it's a key aspect of globalization/international business. Your suppliers, your customers -- even your coworkers and/or employees -- can be anywhere in the world these days. If you want to keep the wheels of international commerce turning smoothing, you'll want to know at least something about the cultures in the places where you're doing business; good information is "out there" to help you do that.
The U.S. military, of course, has learned the hard way what happens if cultural awareness is overlooked or ignored. So there's been an increasing emphasis across the Department of Defense on this aspect of international relations -- a good thing for the rest of us as well, since the result has been a steady stream of useful, publicly available resources.
If you're not already familiar with the excellent series of bibliographies produced by the librarians at the Muir S. Fairchild Research Information Center, at Air University (Maxwell AFB), you'll definitely want to have a look. Several of these focus on particular countries; while there is a military emphasis, you'll also find pointers to general information from high quality websites such as:
Don't overlook the bibliography on Cultural Awareness and the Military, produced just last month. The collection of Internet resource links includes websites, feature articles, reports, and other documents, including:
For resources with more of a business focus, start browsing at globalEDGE, from the Center for International Business Education and Research at Michigan State University. The Country Insights section offers "(c)urrent information on the business climate, news, history, political structure, economic landscape, and relevant statistical data are provided in a region and country-specific format, covering 197 countries." The Resource Desk provides an annotated listing of culturally oriented websites, most with a business emphasis. There's also an extensive international business glossary here.
We often post new reports on DocuTicker from the World Bank's Doing Business database, which "provides objective measures of business regulations and their enforcement. The Doing Business indicators are comparable across 175 economies. They indicate the regulatory costs of business and can be used to analyze specific regulations that enhance or constrain investment, productivity, and growth."
The U.S. Department of State continually updates its Background Notes publications, which "include facts about the land, people, history, government, political conditions, economy, and foreign relations of independent states, some dependencies, and areas of special sovereignty." These are just part of State Department website's large Countries section. Note that you can sign up to receive these by e-mail, plus lots of other State Department information, including Current Travel Warnings.
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