The culture of a country can have a great influence on the cost of doing business in that country.

The
cost of doing business plays the major part for the companies to establish competitive advantage.
For example if a country has a class oriented or caste oriented culture, the employees of the
organization may not be able to intermingle with one another due to this biasness, working in teams
would be difficult for them, the organization would not be able to achieve targets efficiently, hence the
cost would increase.
In Islamic Laws, interest payments are not allowed, it can increase the cost of business in the Islamic
countries. The Japanese have the culture of collectivism, loyalty and honesty, this encourages the
employees to identify strongly with the companies they belong to. This attitude increases the
atmosphere of hard work and trust between the management and employees of the company, hence
proving good for the company.

Answer
Yes, the business practices in the Islamic countries and UAE are likely to be very different. Firstly, the
people of Islamic countries stress on developing relationship at the start, after that they prefer to start
doing business. Islamic countries prefer to have long term business partners, so many times they stick to
the old supplier/customer even if they can get a better margin by doing business with other
customer/supplier.
On the other hand, the people of USA have the business practices in which they prefer the competitive
bidding from their customers/suppliers. The establishment of long term relationship is not in their
priority, they are happy to switch to a new customer/supplier if they are getting a little better margin.
So, they business partnerships with the customer/suppliers are very short term.

Answer:
The countries I have decided are India and UAE. Both have highly diverse cultures but both are different
from each other as well. Indian culture is diversed because it has communities belonging to a many
religions including Hindu, Muslim, Chirstians, Sikh, Budhism, etc. They have been living here for
thousands of year, practicing their beliefs, interacting with each other, sharing and arespecting their
traditions and hence creating created a society containing a lot of societies within. The people in India
are not so liberal in terms of caste, class, family background, etc, a prejudice and discrimination is
frequently found in their practices.
UAE is diverse because more than 50% of its population consists of foregners who come from
worldwide countries. People come here with different geographic, religious and professional
backgrounds, work with people the most of whom are different from them. UAE culture is quite liberal
and open minded that accommodates people from any background, people understand and respect the
differences and the growth opportunities are not limited to the people of a certain background, caste of
class.
The cost of doing business in India is higher than the cost of doing business in India. There can be many
reasons behind this assumption including the fact that tariff and duties in India are higher, the system is
corrupt, the security issues, etc.
However, the availability of skilled and low cost labor makes it a very good place for starting an
international business. The awareness of the People has increased and they are putting much more
efforts in educating their children and making them skillful resource for their country. Thats one of the
reasons that India has become the hub of IT industry and the economical growth is expected to boost
further with this momentum remains consistent.
Indian people are very casual in terms of business practices where they prefer long term relationship to
the profits. You need to befriend and become a brother with them to get your first business.
On the other hand, UAE has very soft tariff and duty structure, it is a free trade zone where import and
export is so easy and the rules and regulations are so transparent and easy to understand and follow.
Highly skilled workers for any post are available very easily in UAE, the people are welcoming and the
political stableness adds more into the attractives to do business in India.
The consistent developments in the infrastructure, freedom of investment and low tariff duties and
simple rules and regulations are playing a very big role in the economical growth of UAE and this is
expected to carry on. The business practices of UAE people are not so prominent as the companies of
different countries are operating there and the culture of that specific country is prominent in that
company.