The subject of this diploma thesis is the foreign policy of Japan in the period since the Second World War to the present and its cultural and historical determinants. The aim of the thesis is to identify fundamental cultural and historical factors reflected in Japan's foreign policy and in its behaviour in international relations. The thesis comprises analysis of history, culture and foreign policy of Japan and the connections between them. The thesis is divided into five chapters. The first chapter is focused on the history of Japan. The second chapter concerns Japanese culture and its specifics. The third chapter characterizes Japanese culture using cultural dimensions models by Geert Hofstede and Fons Trompenaars. The fourth chapter focuses on the analysis of Japanese foreign policy. The final chapter attempts to identify the major cultural and historical determinants of Japanese foreign policy.

This diploma thesis applies the theory of cultural differences in the web environment. Several dozens of selected websites from various national cultures are evaluated and analyzed. Differences in the web design and marketing communication are studied depending on the culture. The evaluation is based on cultural models of social psychologist Geert Hofstede and anthropologist Edward T. Hall. Research sites are selected from nine cultural clusters according to the Inglehart-Welzel cultural map, based on the World Values Survey data. Other site surveyed includes the world's largem producers in the industry. The authors of this study build on and developed work of Aaron Marcus and Emilie Gould in the web design of Cross-Cultural Strategies for Web Design (Armando Calabrese et al., 2012). The objective of this diploma thesis is to analyze whether cultural differences are manifested on a selected group of websites.

Nowadays the world is becoming increasingly economically connected, and cultural diversity of employees is gaining importance as a crucial competitive advantage. Cross-cultural communication ability is becoming a key management skill in multinational firms and is equally important for other employees who are exposed to other cultures in the workplace. This work mainly focuses on cultural specifics of management in multinational firms. The goal of this thesis is to discover how different national cultures influence management of people, particularly work relationships, management tools and organization structures. The author discovers this through cultural dimensions that she updates for the Czech Republic and Slovakia for her work using methodology of Fons Trompenaars. The author tests three hypotheses: about the development of preferences of cultural dimensions in time, differences in preferences of cultural dimensions of Czechs and Slovaks and differences in preferences of cultural dimensions based on people's gender, age and the number of years spent abroad. The work also presents mapping of changes of attitudes in specific work and personal situations of Czechs and Slovaks over a period of time. The work additionally analyzes the influence of economic factors on work attitudes and preferences of cultural dimensions and identifies areas of potential conflicts between the cultures of Czechs and Slovaks in the workplace. It also compares results with other researches about cultural dimensions and cultural standards. The work concludes by presenting culturally specific recommendations for management of Czechs and Slovaks.

Consultancy practices have significant influence on the ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) project success. In this sense, client-consultant relationship comes into prominence in terms of  project  achievement.  Therefore  client-consultant  relationship  needs  to  be  understood  in depth in order to strengthen the consultancy practices and eliminate problems between two parties.  Hence,  in  this  research  client-consultant  relationship  is  examined  from  ERP consultancy aspect during ERP implementation phase in Turkey. Some factors that influence this relationship is evaluated and existing client-consultant models are analyzed whether they are compatible with the client-consultant relationship within ERP concept. Cultures basis as an influential factor is examined in order to understand this impacts on this relationship. ERP consultancy profile and partially client profile are drawn in order to have deep insight of this relationship.

The diploma thesis is focused on identification and mutual comparison of Czech-British and Slovak-British cultural standards at work environment. The main goal of the thesis is to define British cultural standards from both sides, from the Czech one and the Slovak one, and then to compare, whether the information from qualitative research corresponds with theoretical assumptions. The next goal is to find out how much different is the view on this topic from the Czech and from the Slovak perspective, if it is different. At the end of the thesis will be proposed a few suggestions, how Czech and Slovak should prepare for a longer staying in the United Kingdom in order to avoid possible cultural misunderstandings.

Despite a close geographical position to the Czech Republic, there are vast differences between the Czech and British cultures. Commonly after arriving in Britain, many Czech nationals experience a cultural shock and do not understand the behaviour of the British people. The same can be said about Britons arriving in the Czech Republic. This makes it important to understand the cultural differences to help both nationals interact successfully with one another. This Master thesis focuses on cultural standards, a concept made by Alexander Thomas. Therefore, this report aims to define the Czech-British and British-Czech cultural standards, whilst comparing them with the theory and then to apply them in a cultural-historic framework. This report will hypothesise that the defined cultural standards do not differ from the standards analysed within the book by Karel Čapek. Other hypothesis of this thesis is: Many Britons see Czech people as over-caring and anxious. In conclusion to this report, the author will provide recommendations to both Czech nationals travelling to Great Britain and also the same for British descendants arriving within the Czech Republic.

The aim of this thesis is to identify and more closely analyse Italian cultural standards, specifically from the perspective of Czechs and Slovaks, who came to a closer and more extended contact with the Italian culture. Identification of these standards was based on in-depth personal interviews and the theoretical part of this thesis. This part is focused on terms such as culture, intercultural communication, culture shock, cultural dimensions and standards. The practical part of this work is dedicated to the research itself and its evaluation as well as Italy per se, its history, culture, economy or demography. This work can also serve anyone in closer personal of professional contact with this culture.

Context: Agile methodologies are widely recognized in western countries. From past few years, its practices are being successfully adopted in global settings especially in eastern countries. Across the world, teams are following its values and principles. Are all the teams behaving in the same way? Potential difficulties related to culture arise while implementing agile practices. Due to variance in backgrounds and behaviors, social cliques and issues are likely to be formed between the team mates which become a hurdle. Objectives: The study unravels the list of relationships between the agile team behavioral characteristics and Hofstede cultural dimensions. It also explores whether Indian employees working in an agile environment possess the required behavioral characteristics which are useful for the effective functioning of a team. The other objective of this study reveals the influence of the years of experience of the agile employees on behavioral characteristics. Methods: Data collection processes include a literature review and a web survey. First, in the literature review analysis of the empirical studies from year 1999-2011 was done. The review approach helped in collecting and summarizing the data. The studies were identified from the most reliable and authentic databases that are scientifically and technically peer reviewed such as Engineering village, IEEE Xplore, ACM digital library, Springer Link and Google Scholar. A survey was conducted with 33 practitioners from various multinational organizations in India. Statistical analysis was used to analyze the data. Results: Hofstede’s cultural dimensions had noticeable influence on agile team behavioral characteristics. Although, all the enabler characteristics were not seen in Indian culture, the results clearly show that some of the cultural dimensions are enabling factors to function well in an agile team and some hinder the team effectiveness. The result from the literature review shows the list of relationships between Hofstede cultural dimensions and agile team behavioral characteristics. All team behavioral characteristics were to a certain extent demonstrated by Indian agile employees, which can be known from the survey results. It is also seen from the survey results that, team behavioral characteristics can be demonstrated more effectively by the experienced agile employees. Conclusion: From this study, we have found the relationships between Hofstede cultural dimensions and agile team behavioral characteristics. List of agile team behavioral characteristics which were followed by Indian agile employees were obtained from the survey. We conclude that Indian agile employees were able to demonstrate all the agile team behavior characteristics required for an effective functioning of a team. One more interesting thing which came into our attention, after analyzing the survey was that years of experience of agile employees do have an effect on the employees which influences the demonstration of team behavior characteristics. It was clear that demonstration of these characteristics were not only dependent on individual’s nature but also on the years of experience in agile environment. The absence of relationships which were not found through literature needs to be focused. Hence we conclude that there is a need for conducting even more in-depth surveys and reviews to investigate the unfound relationships.

文化常被認為是跨國併購失敗的重要原因，許多文化因素在研究與調查中仍屬薄弱。在本論文中，國家文化是衡量跨境併購文化差異的重點，我們使用了Hofstede 六維度來分析兩種家公司併購情況，即使聯想案例文化維度距離高於TCL案例，但聯想理解在最短時間內和解文化差異，聯想最終解決了問題並變成了利潤。研究表明，溝通是必要的，大大提高了併購的成功性，管理層在合併前，文化評估是必要決策收購的成敗的重要因素。 / The failure rate of cross-border M&As is still high and culture is often blamed for hampering performance. If substantial research has been devoted to investigating M&As performance, cultural factors remain largely unexplained. In this research, national culture is the focus to measure cultural differences in cross border M&As. we used Hofstede 5 dimensions to analyzes two cases, even though Lenovo case cultural dimension distance is higher than TCL case, but Lenovo understand reconciling cultural differences in the shortest time, Lenovo eventually solved the problems and turn into profit. The studies reveal that communication is a necessity, drastically improving the success of a merger, and a cultural assessment of both fit and potential are important factors for providing direction and guidance for necessary decision making and planning initiatives required by management throughout all stages of a merger or acquisition. The purpose of this conceptual paper is to highlight the tensions generated by national culture in cross-border M&As and Chinese enterprises want to increase the success rate of Cross-border M&As, they have to pay close attention on the cultural problems, make a good cultural assessment and manager the cultural integrating work in the cultural integrating process.

This diploma thesis is focused on Czech-Scottish cultural standards at work environment. The main aim is to define Scottish cultural standards at work environment from the Czech point of view and to compare them with the theory. The thesis begins with the definition of culture, cultural dimensions introduced by G. Hofstede, F. Trompenaars and E. T. Hall and cultural standards by A. Thomas. It continues to the description of Scotland with its geography, history, language, economic situation and various systems in the society, such as the legal system, educational system, health care system, a role of the family and religion. Further, Scottish national identity, key values and traditions are identified and there are added some information about work in Scotland. The thesis then leads us onwards to the determination of eight cultural standards at work environment and six cultural standards connected with the daily life in Scotland based on the qualitative research. The standards concerning work environment are further compared with the theory. At the end of the thesis, there are provided some recommendations for Czechs who are going to work with Scots.