Individualism: An emphasis on the importance of guaranteeing individual freedom and self-expression.

Collectivism: An emphasis on collective goals as opposed to individual goals.

Cross Cultural Literacy: Understanding how the culture of a country affects the way business is practiced.

Culture: The complex whole that includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and other capabilities acquired by a person as a member of society.

State Directed Economy: An economy in which the state plays a proactive role in influencing the direction and magnitude of private sector investments.

Mixed Economy: Certain sectors of the economy are left to private ownership and free market mechanisms, while other sectors have significant government ownership and government planning.

Command Economy: All economic systems where due allocation of resources, including determination of what goods and services should be produced and in what quantity is planned by the government.

Market Economy: The allocation of resources is determined by the invisible hand of the price systems.

Political risk: The likelihood that political forces will cause drastic changes in a country's business environment that will adversely affect the profit and other goals of a particular business enterprise.

Political Economy: The study of how political factors influence the functioning of an economic system.

Foreign Direct Investment: A foreign direct investment is one that gives the investor a controlling interest in a foreign company.

Merchandise Export: Tangible products sent out of a country.

Globalization of Production: Trend by individual firms to disperse parts of their productive process to different locations around the globe to take advantage of differences in cost and quality of factors of production.

Globalization of Markets: Moving away from an economic system in which national markets are distinct entities isolated by trade barriers and barriers of distance, time, and culture, and towards a system in which national markets are merging into one global market.

Multinational Enterprise (MNE): A firm that owns operations in more than one country.