-There are great similarities in the Polish and American business cultures. Although I am Dutch I have worked all my life for American companies. The ways the Dutch and the Americans do business is quite normal and I guess quite the same as the Poles do it. Fairly rational and generally inpatient with bureaucracy. The American management style is to get straight to the point and to have clear lines of responsibility. This is different from business practices in southern parts of Europe where roles and responsibilities are often a bit more diffuse. And even if the speed of business often requires quick verbal communications and a certain level of trust, documenting those communications and exchanging written reports are important to ensure a full transparency and accountability in a modern organization. That approach is sometime still missing in Eastern European business practices, explains Manuel Kohnstamm, Senior Vice President and Chief Policy Officer, UPC/Liberty Global answering my question about perciving the differences in Polish and American way of doing business.
-Nowadays language skills are crucial. The role of internal communications is very important for international corporations who are modernising their management structures. In the past international corporations had long vertical hierarchies in their structures. Modern organizations are much more like a matrix. Local management teams very often not only reports to a local CEO, but also have direct lines of responsibility to their functional leader. That functional leader is often in the US, the UK or elsewhere. That requires a good command of foreign language so there is still a need to further developing language skills, especially a sophisticated understanding of the English language- when asked about the role of language skills.