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The Business Culture Complexity Index™
Which of the Top 50 World Economies has the Easiest Business Culture?
Which has the Most Complex?
The countries at the top of our league table below have 'easier' business cultures, whereas those at the bottom are potentially more 'complex'.
In the 2022 index, Denmark retains its spot at the top whereas Bangladesh has now replaced Nigeria at the other end.
To view the previous results, please see BCCI 2019-2022 League Table.
The Business Culture Complexity Index™ was formulated using economic, cultural and social data from 14 sources.
You can read more about the data sources here and you can also learn about the different country’s business cultures here.
The Business Culture Complexity Index™ League Table
About the Results
Why is Denmark the 'least complex' business culture?
Denmark comes out on top for lots of reasons:
• The data shows that the Danes are very trusting of others, with one of the highest trust scores.
• As a society they are one of the happiest, pointing to a well-functioning country that looks after its citizens, provides jobs, welfare, etc. This is also reflected in Denmark’s scores in areas such as the Human Development Index.
• The lack of religiosity perhaps points to a more open culture when it comes to dealing with outsiders and a less collective and protective approach to business and commercial relationships.
• Scores for Ease of Doing Business, Economic Freedom, Press Freedom and Corruption are excellent, again pointing to a more transparent commercial environment providing minimal barriers to entry.
• Culturally speaking, the data points to an egalitarian culture, where hierarchies are relatively flat, perhaps reflected in its to relatively relaxed business culture.
• Denmark’s leaning towards individual responsibility explains the greater emphasis placed on values such as rule of law, fairness and equality which in themselves are also expressed in the way business is done.
In conclusion, we can surmise that Danish business culture is very open, trusting and transparent where the rule of law governs how things get done.
Why is Bangladesh the 'more complex' business culture?
Bangladesh comes out bottom for the following reasons:
• The country scores relatively low in terms of trust, pointing to a 'tight culture' where there may be many barriers to entry, whether personal or professional.
• Happiness-wise, Bengalis are one of the most dissatisfied populations. This is further reflected in the low literacy rates, poor internet usage and low Human Development scores for the country.
• Bangladesh’s Ease of Doing Business, Economic Freedom and Corruption scores were all on the lower end of the scale highlighting the multi-layered complexity of doing business in the country.
• It also scores amongst the more religious countries which may reflect there being more barriers to entry for foreigners.
• Culturally-speaking Bangladesh is more of an 'Embedded country' meaning that people put the group’s needs way above their own, matching in with the point above.
• Bangladesh was also one of the least Egalitarian countries, which potentially points to a business culture in which hierarchies, protocol and personal networks are very important.
In conclusion, Bangladesh's weak business infrastructure combined with domestic protectiveness over access to resources makes it potentially one of the most complex business cultures.
Business Culture Complexity Heat Map
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Statistical Correlations
By cross-referencing and analysing the statistical data, we found some interesting correlations.
* Human Development & the Internet
- The highest statistical correlation we found between the different measurements were that of Human Development and the use of the internet.
- The higher the internet usage of a country, the higher its score in the Human Development Index, essentially drawing a powerful argument for the positive impact the internet makes on modern-day life.
* Human Development & Corruption
- The second most significant correlation was between Human Development and Corruption.
- The data illustrates that in a society in which people are happy, healthy and prosperous, the need for corruption is lessened dramatically.
- On the other hand, in those countries in which the populations are not so well cared for, corruption is much higher.
* Religion & Group Orientation
- On a cultural level, one of the highest correlations we found in the data was between how religious a society is and how much emphasis they place on group bonds and connections.
- As we would expect, due to years of intercultural research, the data showed that the more religious a country, the more group orientated they were.
* Group Orientation & Human Development
- Interestingly our data also found a link between the Human Development Index score and the level of group orientation within a country (i.e. Schwartz’s Embeddedness).
- It suggests that the more group orientated a country, the potentially more developed the society, which in many ways makes sense and a higher social awareness would naturally lead towards wanting to look after others too.
- Similarly, we also found a high correlation between a country’s Happiness Ranking and its level of Embeddedness.
- Again, pointing to a link between people’s sense of happiness and how group orientated a culture is.
About the BCCI
The Business Culture Complexity Index ™ (BCCI) was created by Commisceo Global Consulting Ltd.
We wanted to use data to see if we could create a league table that could highlight the potential complexity of a country’s business culture.
The scores we have produced are based on the following 14 data sets for the world’s 50 largest economies.
1. Trust in Others – Measuring the level of trust people have in others. Source: Esteban Ortiz-Ospina and Max Roser - "Trust". Published online at OurWorldInData.org. Retrieved from: https://ourworldindata.org/trust [Online Resource]
2. Happiness – Measuring how happy citizens of countries say they feel. Source: The World Happiness Report is an annual publication of the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network. https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/happiness/ [Online Resource]
3. Internet Use – Measuring the internet penetration of a country. Source: Julia Murphy and Max Roser - "Internet". Published online at OurWorldInData.org. Retrieved from: https://ourworldindata.org/internet [Online Resource]
4. Religiosity – Measuring how important religion is considered within a country. Source: Pew Research http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/11/2018/06/12094011/Appendix-B.pdf [Online Resource]
5. Ease of Doing Business – Measuring how easy it is to do business in a country. Source: The World Bank https://www.worldbank.org/en/programs/business-enabling-environment/doing-business-legacy [Online Resource]
6. Economic Freedom – Measuring a range of personal, social and economic freedoms. Source: https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/economic_freedom/ [Online Resource]
7. Corruption – Measuring the perceived corruption in a country’s public services. Source: https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2021 [Online Resource]
8. Press Freedom – Measuring the amount of freedom granted to the press and media. Source: https://rsf.org/en/ranking [Online Resource]
9. Human Development Index – Measuring factors such as standard of living, education and life expectancy. Source: Max Roser (2019) - "Human Development Index (HDI)". Published online at OurWorldInData.org. Retrieved from: https://ourworldindata.org/human-development-index [Online Resource]
10. Tourist Arrivals – Measuring the number of tourists that visit a country. This was used in the original 2019 data set but not in the 2022 results. This was due to heavily skewed data during the COVID-19 pandemic.
11. Literacy – Measuring the rates of literacy within a country. Source: Max Roser and Esteban Ortiz-Ospina (2019) - "Literacy". Published online at OurWorldInData.org. Retrieved from: https://ourworldindata.org/literacy [Online Resource]
12. Position in World Economy – Measuring how important the country is within the global economy. Source: https://ceoworld.biz/2022/03/31/economy-rankings-largest-countries-by-gdp-2022/ [Online Resource]
13. Embeddedness (Schwartz) – Measuring how group-orientated a country is. Source: “The 7 Schwartz cultural value orientation scores for 80 countries” https://www.researchgate.net/publication/304715744_The_7_Schwartz_cultural_value_orientation_scores_for_80_countries [Online Resource]
14. Egalitarianism (Schwartz) – Measuring how much emphasis is placed on independence and equality within a country. Source: “The 7 Schwartz cultural value orientation scores for 80 countries”
Caveats
It is important to remember that the scores, the table and the index are not meant to reflect reality. It is simply the results of a particular algorithm we have developed and used against a particular set of data.
- The results are produced as a matter of interest, to stimulate speculation, generate debate and encourage more people to take an interest in business culture and cultural awareness.
- The data should not be used in any way to form decisions, whether business or personal.
- It is important to recognise that the data, its interpretation and the findings have all come from a Western perspective. As our audience is primarily from N. America and Europe, many of the results will make sense to them, however, this will not necessarily be the same for people from Asia or Africa. What is “complex” to one culture, might be simple to another.
- Bear in mind that much of the data used has been economic in nature. It was very difficult to find data on things such as social attitudes or intercultural research with scores on all the 50 countries.
- In a few cases, Schwartz did not have any scores for a few of the countries on the list, so we used common sense and created mean scores based on countries with very similar cultures.
Linking and Citations
You are more than welcome to link to this page or reference it.
If you would like to show the table or map on your website, or in any other format/form, then please contact us first for permission.
Source: Business Culture Complexity Index ™ (2022) by Commisceo Global Consulting Ltd. Published online at https://www.commisceo-global.com/resources/bcci
Discover Global Business Culture
Click to find out more about the culture of a country. If there is no link it means we are still working on that page.
Argentina - Australia - Austria
Bangladesh - Belgium - Brazil
Canada - Chile – China - Colombia - Czech Republic
Denmark
Egypt
Finland - France
Germany
Hong Kong
India - Indonesia - Iran - Iraq - Ireland - Israel - Italy
Japan
Malaysia - Mexico
Netherlands - Nigeria - Norway
Pakistan - Peru - Philippines - Poland
Romania - Russia
Saudi Arabia - Singapore - South Africa - South Korea
Spain - Sweden - Switzerland
Taiwan - Thailand - Turkey
United Arab Emirates - United Kingdom - United States
Vietnam
Business Culture Training Courses
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The Data
You can download the raw data from all 14 sources in an Excel file here.
Any questions?
Please contact us if you have any questions.
FAQs
"Will this be updated every year?"
This is the second iteration of the index. We plan on updating the table every two years which means the next one is due in 2024.
"Can I cite this in my school paper?"
Yes, of course, you can cite this in any school or academic research just as long as you follow the correct protocol in terms of reference.
"Can I link to this page from my website?"
Yes, as per above, please use the correct citation.