Networking is like brushing your teeth: Does it feel natural or enjoyable? Not really. Is it enough, however, to brush only when a toothache occurs? Regrettably, no. In the same way, networking requires constant and careful attention for a prolonged period of time.

Who hasn’t made business contacts at a social event or given out business cards at a party? Such behavior is almost universal – but is there an ethical dimension, a right and wrong, to such blurring of the boundary between the private and business worlds?

If you think you have it tough rebuilding your business in the wake of the financial crisis, put yourself in the shoes of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, president of Liberia, who has the formidable task of rebuilding her nation amid the ruins of a civil war.
Africa’s first elected female head of state visited the Instituto de Estudios Superiores de la Empresa at the University of Navarra in Spain earlier this year, accompanied by a delegation that included Richard Tolbert, responsible for promoting Liberia as an investment opportunity. The four pillars of Sirleaf’s recovery plan offer insights for business leaders in implementing their own.

The nations that constitute the Gulf Cooperation Council – Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – have deep-rooted and complex legal traditions. Laws within these countries include elements of Quranic jurisprudence, Ottoman legal scholarship and European codes of law introduced during the colonial period. This rich fabric is being pulled apart, however, by the various strains of modern business, which needs an impersonal, ubiquitously applicable legal framework that is complex in the more modern sense, one wherein the business itself replaces the handshake and personal commitment. Even more vexing is the inability of foreigners to own their businesses outright.