Week two of our Global Immersion Experience 2013, as part of our MBA program at Sauder Business School, entailed that we work with students from Copenhagen Business School to resolve cases provided by local Danish businesses. This provided us with an excellent opportunity to work with students from a different culture and also partner with Danish firms to gain better insight into the Danish work culture.

One of the first things that stood out when cases and companies were being assigned to various groups, was that all save one company were relatively young start-ups with very enthusiastic management teams. This, again, took me back to an initial observation that entrepreneurial spirit was high in Denmark and looked upon with respect, rather than scepticism. This is even more interesting in light of the fact that such encouragement and acceptance of young entrepreneurship, while common in Scandinavia, is not so prevalent throughout the rest of Europe. The case I worked on, involved developing a market entry strategy for a popular Danish start-up into Germany. The cultural differences despite the geographical proximity were quite significant; what worked in Scandinavia, would not work in Germany. This led me to ponder over the fragmented nature of the European market versus the more consolidated preferences in North America. To successfully capture the European market, an organization would have to devise many different strategies addressing the preferences of many unique countries with different languages and cultures. Given the size and homogeneity of the North American market, it just seems that it is much easier to cater to, and could prove more profitable. But that’s just a thought.

Working with the Danish students was a wonderful experience. We had different methods of approaching cases and they were as eager to learn from us as we were from them. They focused on the use strategic tools and issue identification whereas we placed greater emphasis on developing well thought-out recommendations and implementation plans. There was definitely greater emphasis on organizing our thoughts into various frameworks, which was something the Danish students were more used to doing, and it helped us create a more solid basis for our analysis. Combining both approaches led to a more detailed and structured development plan.

As a group, we meshed well together and agreed on restricting work time to regular working hours, allowing us to socialize in the evening. This was already part of the Danish culture, and we gladly embraced the ‘work hard and work on time’ approach. The final presentations themselves were extremely well done, with both Sauder and CBS students doing remarkably well. I did, however, expect the Danish students to be more familiar with various presentation software or just know more about making high impact slides, since the concept of Danish Design was an overwhelming part of our experience in Copenhagen and was looking forward to learning from them. That was not the case and the CBS students were more accustomed to typical power point formats.

Overall, it was brilliant working with such a smart group of people from a completely different part of the world that I had not previously been exposed to. The Danish familiarity with the English language made interaction much easier and also implied a greater degree of exposure to English culture which helped us connect better with our Danish counterparts. My next challenge in evolving my level of inter-cultural fluency is to immerse myself in a culture that does not strongly rely on English as a mode of communication!

Recently returned from an MBA trip to Denmark, I have gained new business insight into the Scandinavian work culture. Our first week there comprised of visits to many different Danish businesses and cultural sites starting off with the Danish Design Museum followed by Maersk, Fritz Hansen Furniture, Carlsberg, Fredericia Furniture, Arla and Gartneriet PKM.

At the Design Museum, we saw the progression of the Bauhaus movement and the influence of different Danish designers. It became apparent just how important the concept of design is to the Danish culture and business, whereas in North America, design and practicality are seen as mutually exclusive concepts given the costs usually associated with design. In fact, what struck me as being quite odd was the fact that public institutions in Denmark actually used to purchase high-end luxury furniture for their establishments, and spend a significant amount of money on incorporating design into their establishments.

There was an interesting talk at the museum by a Business History professor from the Copenhagen School of Business who tried to explain the evolution of the Danish business and economy using prominent figures from history that played an important role and defined each era. The common features of each of those individuals include a drive to innovate and look outside the realm of just Denmark, connections with the right people that had authority and money including the royal family and a tendency to become ‘stuck in their own ways’ as they grew older, paving the way for the next game-changer. This struck me as slightly different from North America, because rather than having individuals wield that much influence, there seemed to be more businesses or groups of individuals that were able to affect change within the economy.

Each of the companies we visited is large in its own right, and most are in fact still owned by the families that started them. In contrast, most large companies in North America are publicly traded. There is an evident sense of pride in keeping one’s own business and a great degree of respect for entrepreneurship in Denmark. This encourages start-ups and provides relatively easy access to funding that probably allows large companies to stay privately owned; we must remember that connections with the right people also go a long way in Denmark which could further affect access to external funds. Interacting with employees at all these organizations revealed a deep sense of connection between them and the founders or families of the founders of all these firms, and this attitude was entrenched in the culture of these companies. This form of business ownership seems to work well in Denmark. However, while business ethics are strong in Denmark, publicly traded companies are subject to more rigorous scrutiny making their operations more transparent and they also get easier access to external funding.

Finally, design, again, struck me as an important component of Danish work culture. Office buildings were much more impressive than typical North American companies, and incorporated elements of Danish design; functionality and simplicity with great aesthetic appeal. Danish work culture also seemed a bit more casual than the general North American style (excluding Vancouver, which is quite casual) gauging from the style of company presentations and interactions between employees.

Overall, it was a wonderfully enlightening experience and taught me a lot about the difference between North American and Scandinavian business culture.