#Finspain Together in Business, our international project with Finland

Hello, we are the International Trade 2 students from EPJ and we wanted to share our project with you, and all the things we’ve learned from it. 

INTRODUCTION

We’ve been working with OSAO Vocational College, a school in Finland with students from International Business. We’ve done a project together about our cultures and the different forms of negotiation of each country. We had a videoconference with them twice and it was so interesting preparing it and talking with them.

WE MEET EACHOTHER

We first prepared a presentation to introduce ourselves and our school that we would present by videoconference. We divided all the topics between the members of the different groups,  assigning the work we should do in each team, then we prepared a presentation on google slides with visual resources to show our knowledge and make it easier to present.

Later on, we practiced the presentations twice, the first one in class and the second one at the assembly hall, like a simulation.

We learned about how to interact with Finnish people in a business environment and 

about their languages, business culture and customs. 

Especially how they organize their schedule, manners and clothes in different situations.

RESEARCH ON BUSINESS CULTURES

Once we attended the first video conference, we started to research information in several Finnish business sites about the business culture of this country. During our research we have noticed the cultural differences between our countries and how negotiations are conducted in both places.

We have learned things like the importance of etiquette and silence in negotiations, their conservative and close nature, which highly contrasts with the Mediterranean temperament and makes people from both nations find a point to understand each other and have a great business relationship.

When we collected all the information about Finnish business culture, we prepared a presentation which we later shared via video conference with OSAO students and teachers. Our presentation consisted of explaining the information searched the days before. All of us participated in the presentation and they confirmed us our topics were accurate.

FINAL DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS

At the end of the meeting, we had the opportunity to discuss with them some different points about their culture (fashion, saunas…). Some of our classmates asked them some questions.

They told us how they handled the covid situation in their school and it was very similar to Spain. It was funny when they told us that for them it was easier to maintain social distance, because they are always respecting each other's personal space.

They were also interested in some things related to Spanish culture. Mainly they thought that the covid situation affected business relationships since Spaniards highly value physical contact. Related to the last question, they also asked if lunch business meetings were common. They thought it was interesting since they don’t usually mix meetings with personal time. 

It was a fruitful conversation for both parties, where we could dig deeper in both cultures and get a better understanding of how both cultures work despite our obvious differences.

Afterwards we analyzed the project and here are our conclusions. You can click on the pictures to see our results better.