Sheryl Buckland - Netherlands - Culture Smart!: The Essential Guide to Customs & Culture

This book is available for special discounts for bulk purchases for sales promotions or premiums. Special editions, including personalized covers, excerpts of existing books, and corporate imprints, can be created in large quantities for special needs.

For more information contact Kuperard publishers at the address below.

ISBN 978 1 85733 881 2

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A CIP catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library

First published in Great Britain

by Kuperard, an imprint of Bravo Ltd

59 Hutton Grove, London N12 8DS

Tel: +44 (0) 20 8446 2440 Fax: +44 (0) 20 8446 2441

www.culturesmart.co.uk

Inquiries:

Series Editor Geoffrey Chesler

Design Bobby Birchall

Printed in India

Cover image: Seventeenth-century merchants houses fronting onto the canal in Amsterdam. iStock.

Images on the following pages reproduced under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license: Paul Kusters.

Reproduced under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license: ZanderZ.

Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Netherlands license: ).

Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license: User:Iulianu.

Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license: (bottom) Minke Wagenaar from Amsterdam, NL.

Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication: Shutterstock.

About the Author

SHERYL BUCKLAND is an English management trainer and business studies tutor who lived for sixteen years in the Netherlands, and who has worked for public and private organizations in both Britain and the Netherlands. A member of the British Chartered Institute of Personnel Development, she holds an M.A. in Education and an M.A. in Social Sciences. While living in the Netherlands, Sheryl immersed herself in Dutch culture, conducting research on cultural acclimatization, the role of Dutch-language teachers, and child development. During this time she also worked as an Associate Lecturer for the British Open University Business School, and as a Business Communications Tutor for undergraduates in the Utrecht Hogeschools Faculty of Economics and Management. She and her husband now live in Stratford-upon-Avon, but she retains close links with the Netherlands through her Dutch and expatriate friends and regular visits.

The Culture Smart! series is continuing to expand. All Culture Smart! guides are available as e-books, and many as audio books.
For latest titles visit
www.culturesmart.co.uk

The publishers would like to thank CultureSmart!Consulting for its help in researching and developing the concept for this series.

CultureSmart!Consulting creates tailor-made seminars and consultancy programs to meet a wide range of corporate, public-sector, and individual needs. Whether delivering courses on multicultural team building in the USA, preparing Chinese engineers for a posting in Europe, training call-center staff in India, or raising the awareness of police forces to the needs of diverse ethnic communities, it provides essential, practical, and powerful skills worldwide to an increasingly international workforce.

For details, visit www.culturesmartconsulting.com

CultureSmart!Consulting and CultureSmart! guides have both contributed to and featured regularly in the weekly travel program Fast Track on BBC World TV.

Culture Smart! Netherlands is written for those travelers who want to get to the heart of the country. It describes the main features of Dutch society and culture and offers insights and practical advice on what to expect and how to behave in different circumstances.

In painting this picture it has been necessary to use a broad brush. Generalizations, of course, have their limitations. For every description of a typical Dutch person in a typical situation there will be somebody who behaves quite differently. However, over the centuries certain national characteristics have evolved. The Dutch are renowned for their organizational skills and their commercial acumen. They are known for being hospitable, friendly, pragmatic, tolerant, fair-minded, and just. They are famous for their struggle to control the sea that constantly threatens to flood their land, and their hydraulic engineers are highly regarded throughout the world. At the height of its power in the seventeenth century, this small seafaring nation led Europe and the world in cultural and scientific endeavor, and laid the foundations for the modern age.

This book covers different aspects of Dutch life. The chapters on social values and attitudes and on the way business is conducted offer psychological insights and practical advice that will help in your personal and professional dealings with Dutch people. Personal vignettes and case studies illustrate the general points. Other sections provide background information on geography, politics, and government. One of the most important of these is the brief historical outlinea people are their collective memory, and Dutch history and contemporary culture are closely intertwined.

There is also more general informationfor instance on travel, accommodation, and festivals in the Netherlands. You can use the index or the extended contents pages to dip into sections that particularly interest you, or you can start at the beginning and work through from cover to cover.

Culture Smart! Netherlands introduces you to the inner life of the Dutch people and the subtle complexities of their culture. As the historian Simon Schama says in The Embarrassment of Riches: But if there is one Dutch culture, there are many rooms within it it can swim with variety yet remain coherent unto itself. And such puzzles divert. They can even instruct.

Great riches await the visitor. Enjoy your reading!