AbstractsLaw & Legal Studies

Many people travel abroad looking to be successful in business. Someone might get offered a job in another country for a lot of money, but the truth is that a majority of people traveling for business to a foreign country fail. The reason for people failing is because there are several cultural factors involved that many people don???t realize. People think that they can just go into another country and continue living with the same cultural habits and customs as they did in their home country. That is a mistake. In order to succeed in the best way possible, people need to be aware of their cultural surroundings. They need to learn to understand and adapt to the cultural aspects of the countries they visit. Other problems when doing business in another country are communication, language, time, and relationships. The Specialized Accelerated MBA program at California State University San Marcos requires its International Business students to travel abroad as a part of their international experience. The purpose is to open up a new sense of cultural understanding for the student, and it is the student???s job to write a thesis to provide recommendations for doing business in that foreign country. The purpose of the trip is also for the student to learn how to better develop global competencies. The country that the students traveled to this year was Germany. The trip was a required four weeks, with two weeks of class and two weeks of internship at a German company. The German university that is partnered with California State University San Marcos is DHBW. An internship was set up for the American students with an IT company named FiduciaGAD. A DHBW German student who also interns for FiduciaGAD set up the internship. The thesis below describes Germany???s cultural characteristics using Hall and Hofstede???s cultural frameworks, and it is compared with cultural characteristics of the United States. It also talks about business lessons learned on the trip, which included topics such as Brexit, ADA Cosmetics, Daimler, and FiduciaGAD. There were several personal lessons learned as well, which included packing, staying healthy, language, transportation, planning where to stay, money in Germany, and mobile phones/internet. Based on the cultural characteristics, the lessons learned, and the overall experience, there are recommendations for doing business in Germany and developing global competencies. Advisors/Committee Members: Hammerly, James (advisor), Brodowsky, Glen (committeemember).