The global economy has really changed the way that business is done. One of those changes is to make the business culture in different countries more similar than in the past. In most cases companies have adopted American business practices. The one place where this has not happened to any great extent is in Europe where the tend to stick to their own way of doing business. The result is that there are some major differences in the way businesses operate in Europe and the way they operate in the US.

The biggest difference in doing business between the US and Europe is the huge range of cultures and languages that have to be dealt with in Europe. Europe is of course made up of many different countries and businesses often have to work in several of them at the same time. This has become a much bigger issue now that the European Union has come into existence. This adds a great deal of complexity and cost to many business transactions in Europe. Things are much simpler in the US where everybody lives in the same country.

The fact that business in Europe has to be done across several different countries also means that there tends to be a lot more rules that European businesses have to follow. Individually most of the countries don't have any more rules than you would find in the US but when you have to comply with the rules of more than a dozen countries you will find that things get a lot more difficult. This is one area that the EU is working to address by simplifying the rules and coordinating them between countries however there is still a long way to go. In the US there may be some differences from one state to another in the rules but in most cases these are minor and most of the important rules come from the federal government anyway.

Another difference in the way business is done in Europe than in the US is that in Europe companies tend to stick to a more traditional business structure. Business executive Steve Heyer who has worked on both continents points out that in the US businesses are tending towards a flatter business structure with fewer steps between senior management and the employees. This has eliminated a great deal of the middle management. In Europe this has not happened to any great extent.

Oddly although businesses in the US tend to be more willing to change the structure of their business they also tend to be less innovative than companies in Europe. Certainly there are innovative companies in the US but these tend to be smaller companies. The large corporations go to great lengths to avoid having to innovate. This is not the case in Europe where the big companies tend to be the ones who are leading the change.