Blog entries

The Art of Working across Frontiers

Richard Hill — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 09:21:45 +0100

Any process of developing a positive business relationship means bridging a cultural barrier of some kind or another. Even a person-to-person relationship between individuals from the same community or country implies bridging a cultural barrier, because everyone carries a 'microculture' around in his or her head.

But when it comes to dealing or negotiating with people from another conRead More...

E se non è vero è ben trovato...

Richard Hill — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 13:27:02 +0100

It’s no secret that Italy’s economia sommersa is one of the biggest in Europe. Traditional estimates of no less than 15 per cent of GDP have now been topped by an independent study which puts the Italian black economy at nearly 25 per cent, one-third of which is not surprisingly attributed to creative minds in the Mezzogiorno – Italy has always produced great artists.

As Italian sociologist Franco Ferrarotti said in a momentRead More...

The pros and cons of communicating in virtual teams

Richard Hill — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 13:29:42 +0100

Drawing on my personal experience of acting as an extranet website content provider to one of the oil majors, backed up by discussions with multinational managers of various nationalities, in particular for my book EuroManagers & Martians, I have come to these tentative conclusions (after all, it is still early days for these new technologies and for in-depth experience of them).

The benefits are obviously time- and cost-savings, the absence in some cases of anRead More...

How to reinvent your cultural identity…

Richard Hill — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 09:37:13 +0100

Some countries, like Serbia, seem to drag their past around like a millstone around their necks. A few others have managed the far more difficult task of totally reinventing themselves and their culture. Two examples: the Normans and the Prussians.

The Normans: Various Viking raiders (who did not wear those funny hats with horns you see in cartoons) sailed down the Normandy coast in the early-ninth century and liked what they found. By the late 800s, they were rowing up and down thRead More...

Eurospeak and the English

Richard Hill — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 10:46:35 +0100

I first started worrying about the European Commission’s ability to express itself clearly when I came across the following statement: “For the Nuclear Safety Sector, a major sector with some 15-20% of the Tacis budget, 2003 was a year that saw major changes and improvements, both in the managerial sense as well as in the start of major important projects. The safety in Nuclear Power Plants of Soviet design has been a major concern since a mission of the Read More...

So who’s to blame?

Richard Hill — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 12:34:03 +0100

Unless you happen to be American or Asian, there is no such thing as a ‘typical’ European. The reality is much more complex… and richer. But it does take time and experience to be fully aware of this reality. Its complexity comes out in practical matters like the comparative statistics for average payment terms in business transactions which vary enormously from North to South – Finnish companies have to wait three times as long if they export to Italy, for eRead More...

So that Balkans bogeyman

Richard Hill — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 07:52:23 +0100

So that Balkans bogeyman – the row about Macedonia (sorry, FYROM) – is raising its ugly head again. Like Serbia’s stance on Kosovo, Greek opposition draws on the historical mythmaking of communities that claim to have suffered the indignity of occupation by the Ottomans (an experience often portrayed in that part of the world as much worse than it really was).

The Greek attitude fully exploits the fact that there is no clear identification with real estate. Pre-AlRead More...

A case of the tail wagging the dog

Richard Hill — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 09:01:02 +0100

The revelation that Greece had been fiddling the accounts for so long prompted one of its citizens to exclaim to a reporter that" we gave the world democracy, and we expect the European Union to support us!"

Yes, well… If the democracy we're living with today is anything to go by, we don't have much to thank the Greeks for. Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.

Democracy in Europe is increasingly a case of the tail wagging the dog. Europe's political leaders seriously lRead More...

So who's to blame?

Richard Hill — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 11:27:44 +0100

Unless you happen to be American or Asian, there is no such thing as a 'typical' European. The reality is much more complex… and richer. But it does take time and experience to be fully aware of this reality. Its complexity comes out in practical matters like the comparative statistics for average payment terms in business transactions which vary enormously from North to South - Finnish companies have to wait three times as long if they export to Italy, for example. To some extent you Read More...

Stereotypes

Richard Hill — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 21:06:49 +0100

Many of the world's foreign affairs initiatives are powered and propelled by stereotypes. "Freedom", "evil axis" and the like. We tend to think such things are a product of folk wisdom handed down over generations. After all, didn't the Sicilians have a saying back in the 17th century that "the French are wiser than they seem and the Spanish seem wiser than they are."? It was recorded nearly 400 years ago by two visitors from the British Isles - Francis Bacon in his essays Of Seeming Wise andRead More...

How about going back to our roots?

Richard Hill — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0100

The national political establishments find many ways to undermine the strenuous efforts made by the European Parliament to grab the attention of Europe's publics: gerrymandering the candidate lists, putting forward 'safe' people who will not challenge positions back home, and so on. On top of this, there is every sign that, out of disenchantment with these political establishments, voters in the European elections will tilt in favour of the margins rather than the mainstream.

RegreRead More...

Welcome to our new website

Richard Hill — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0100

We've done a 'facelift' for two reasons. This new website reflects the fact that our business has evolved considerably in recent times, with growth in two key areas: research studies and publishing. The second reason is we want our website to be more user-friendly, while at the same time remaining what we think is a 'mine' of information. We hope you like the result!