• Global market activities take place within the political environment of governmental institutions, political parties, and organization through which a country’s people and rulers exercise power
• Each nation has a unique culture that reflects its society
• Each nation also has a political culture that reflects the relative importance of the government and legal system and provides a context within which individuals and corporations understand their relationship to the political system
• Any company doing business outside its home country should carefully study the political culture in the target country and analyze salient issues arising from the political environment

• These include the governing party’s attitude toward sovereignty, political risk, taxes, the threat of equity dilution and expropriation

Nation-States and Sovereignty

• Sovereignty can be defined as supreme and independent political authority
• ”Culture” can provide us with many answers on how and why people behave differently around the globe. One explanation it surely provides is that people have very different views on "what is a good boss", or on ”how teams should be led”.
• A major challenge in developing intercultural management competence is the fact that there is no "one way" to lead. This is especially relevant as all "new" and growing markets have something in common, they can be characterised as hierarchical cultures. Many companies need to face the fact that the leadership styles/guidelines they have been practicing might not be suitable for these cultures.

Power Distance

This dimension expresses the degree to which the less powerful members of a society accept and expect that power is distributed unequally. The fundamental issue here is how a society handles inequalities among people. People in societies exhibiting a large degree of power distance