THE IMPORTANCE OF CULTURAL DIFFERENCES IN THE ERA OF INTERNATIONALISATION OF SERVICE ENTERPRISES

Moving an enterprise’s activity beyond the borders of its home country, under the conditions of expanding globalisation and European integration, creates a need to analyse the specific cultural conditionings of business activity as well as a need to deal with cultural diversity, because cultural differences affect business operations, including those activities consisting in providing services. The aim of the article is to draw attention to the importance of cultural differences in the era of internationalisation of service enterprises. The presented research findings point mainly to the difficulty arising from the broadly perceived language gap and the barriers resulting from misinterpretation of gestures and body language, and different behaviours, norms and standards in the working environment as well as stereotypes and prejudice. All the above factors influence business activity, building interpersonal business relations at various levels, and marketing activities such as product promotion.