Foreign Interest
Globalization and geography have made Mexico the darling of the international business community.
As the country struggles to increase modernity and stabilize, foreign firms established here ...
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Internal Customers
In the past, the term "customer" always meant the external public, those clients that justify the very existence of a corporation. It was a term especially important in service organizations, since the...
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¡Ni Modo! - Commentary On Business In Mexico
When I was in college, national development was a hot topic. We pondered over why some countries develop their economies faster than others. One popular notion was that for countries to develop quickly...
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Be Straight With Me!
In my experience as a cross-cultural consultant, the issue that seems to most bother non-Mexican businesspeople about their Mexican counterparts is their apparent lack of frankness in dealing with conf...
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No Trust
I recently attended a two-day seminar about the strategies Mexican companies should follow in order to compete successfully in a globalized economy. Economic globalization is creating new and stiffer c...
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El Buen Patron
In the 1980s, many companies in the United States, aware that their employees' personal problems were affecting their performance, began to create Employee Assistance Programs (EAP) to help workers dea...
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Enjoying Life
Recently, during one of the seminars I give in the United States about Latin culture, someone asked me what I saw as the single most important characteristic that would make Latin managers more effecti...
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Mexico's Financial Services Get Web-savvy
The year is 2005 and you've just dropped by your local McDonald's for the usual snack; one large soft drink and medium fries. The queue is moving slowly, giving you enough time to check your savings-ac...
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One At A Time?
Cultures considered to be monochronic are those that stress completing one task before embarking on the next. On the opposite end, there are polychronic cultures, in which people tend to do various tas...
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Mental Colonization
The Nafta partnership has always been a puzzling proposition: Could a free-trade agreement between two developed countries (the United States and Canada) and a developing one (Mexico) work out as a via...
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Walking The Walk
Not too long ago, the term "business ethics" was considered an oxymoron.
Fortunately, in recent years, companies have been paying more attention to developing and maintaining ethical standards among t...
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Racism And Business In Mexico
Although denied officially and, personally by many Mexicans, racism in Mexico is so evident that most foreigners notice it right away. All you have to do is look at Mexican-produced television programs...
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¡Ni Modo!
When I was in college, national development was a hot topic. We pondered over why some countries develop their economies faster than others. One popular notion was that for countries to develop quickly...
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Cultural Hybrid
Much has been written and discussed about the impact that cultural differences have on the way we conduct business and manage people. In this column, I have covered various aspects of cross-cultural pr...
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Office Diplomacy
Remember what your parents would tell you when you were a kid and had a fight with a friend? "Stop fighting! It's not nice to fight!" Later, when you had your first important relationship, you found yo...
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Mérida
Much of the land comprising Mérida was once dotted with lavish haciendas where the henequen plant was grown. From henequen was produced a fiber called sisal, the main ingredient of twine....
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Measure Up!
Businesspeople love to measure things. We measure sales and profits, which is easy enough, but then we also want to measure everything else. This is called the 'administrative bias' of the business wor...
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Supply Chain Reaction
Four years ago, if you had asked people in the transportation industry about their logistics, you would have been greeted with blank stares. Times are changing, though, and now even the word "logistics...
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Fearing Change?
These days, everyone is talking about "innovation." Companies and employees have to innovate or busi-ness will sink. I recently mentioned to a colleague that creativity is also important, but he quickl...
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Just The Facts Ma'am, Or Will My Hunch Do?
I get many inquiries from non-Mexicans interested in investing in or starting a new business in Mexico. The inquiries usually ask the normal "administrative" curiosities: What are the numbers for the i...
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Merger Mess
Are you working for a company that recently merged with another one, or was bought out?
You are not alone. The record number of mergers and acquisitions in the last five years has brought renewed...
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"El Que No Transa ..."
One of NAFTA's positive effects on Mexico has been the renewed attention given to an old problem: corruption. As Mexico attempts to attract more foreign investment, mounting pressure has been placed on...
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Culture Shock
In previous columns, I have argued that cultural diversity in organizations should be welcomed, rather than viewed as a problem to be avoided. Multinational companies in Mexico often have teams made up...
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Customer (lip) Service
One of the oldest clichés in business is "the customer is always right." And while this catchphrase might be repeated in every company training program, the reality is that most businesses fall short ...
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My Boss Is A Jerk!
There is an old movie starring Jack Lemmon in which a father (Lemmon) is frustrated that his less-than-motivated son has quit his job after one day. When he asks his son why, his son simply replies, "M...
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