Doing business Thirld World style

The major obstacle facing people doing business in Third World countries is a cultural one. It is that of understanding the mentality of the people one would be dealing with.

What characterizes a third world country nowadays is a low Human Development Index (HDI). Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, an economist known for studying the notion of economic well being, developed the HDI in 1990. The index is basically a combination of economic, demographic and educational criteria, which evaluate the economic well being of the population of a country, and hence places this country on a scale of human development.

Doing business in the Third World countries would demonstrate the accuracy of the concept of human development. Numerous obstacles would face an entrepreneur intending to do business here.

First of all, there is the barrier of approach. When tackling a certain issue, people from the Third World generally lack depth and profoundness. They treat the matters on the surface as if they were not fully aware of the details of their tasks.

A sales representative, for instance, would probably be embarrasing when promoting a new product in the local market. In such cases, international companies dispatch a team from the country of origin to do the job and train the locals for their own market.

Local companies rarely introduce new products and rarely innovate already existing products. Even the packaging rarely evolves over the years on the claims that it had always worked.

This difficulty to adapt and apathy towards change is also clear upon dealing with emergency situations. The Third World's working force is almost never up to the challenge of dealing with an emergency situation requiring more efforts and concentration.

Speaking about concentration, there is certainly a lack of preciseness from the side of people coming from underdeveloped countries when doing business. For example, you rarely get the answer you need for a question that you might ask.

State officials would find it difficult to answer even your very basic questions about custom formalities, document certification or about the laws applicable in certain cases.

Concerning the law issue, officials and workers in these countries are often reluctant when it comes to expressing their opinion and assuming responsibility for it. You might get an answer on the phone that you would never get by fax or email since state employees do not like to provide you information in writing.

This is generally the case when your business presents a slight exception or particular case to an established practice or procedure. The answer you get would be of the kind, "I think", "I suppose" and "I am not sure" despite that the employee is an authority on this matter.

Another problem is that of mixing what is personal and what is professional with business. This phenomenon is acute in developing societies. We are not here speaking about a model to be followed or asking people to separate business relations from personal ones. The only goal is to facilitate business relations.

Mixing ego with business is hasty: it would lead to the overestimation of the capabilities, obstruct the flow of information and create difficulty in assessing situations.

The reasons for all the above are very mixed but an essential part is the absence of a complete educational cycle that teaches the person how to adapt to new situations, how to look up information and how to distinguish relevant and important information from less important ones.

Companies of the third world rarely approach educational institutions for cooperation programs such as internships, seminars or even introduction to products or the companies themselves. This kind of partnership would bridge a gap and contribute to the development of the human element in Third World economies.

It is true that this lack of professionalism is the result of unfit educational, political, social and economic factors but it is also the result of failure of professionals themselves to open up to new concepts, to be more involved in their daily tasks and to innovate.