Intercultural Management in Brazil

Bachelorarbeit von Anna Irene Meyer

Introduction:

In a world of increasing cross-cultural business encounters, it becomes more and more important to focus not solely on expert knowledge in one’s field of business, but to possess intercultural competence. It means, amongst other aspects, to be aware and to study cultural differences which otherwise might lead to misunderstandings when people from different countries interact with each other.

Brazil as South America’s most promising economy is attracting more and more foreign investments. To successfully negotiate as a foreigner with Brazilians, it is necessary to have some knowledge about this country, its people and their culture.

Chapter 2, following this introduction, gives the reader an insight into the necessary theoretical background. After defining culture and stating the importance of intercultural management, five dimensions for classifying different cultures are explained. Brazil and Germany are each ranked within the dimension, displaying some significant differences.

In Chapter 3, Brazil is looked upon from various sides. Besides an historical, geographical and economical overview, the reader finds the description of various socio-cultural conditions, such as demographical facts, religion, education and values and characteristics of Brazilians. In addition, the verbal and non-verbal communication in Brazil is analyzed.

Chapter 4 is entirely dedicated to Brazilian business practices, describing a business relationship from the first contacts and meetings to management issues, such as negotiating successfully and dealing with conflicts. Furthermore, it delivers a small insight into how Brazilians assess their foreign counterparts and what training a business visitor to Brazil should receive before his trip.

Finally, Chapter 5 shows the practical approach the author undertook with conducting a survey on experiences in Brazil. The background, goal, implementation and results, including a fault analysis, are given.

To end the thesis, the reader finds a conclusion on page 97, followed by the references used in the course of this paper.

However, to begin with, the author likes to draw the reader’s attention to one closely related topic: stereotyping.

Trying to describe an entire culture and talking about certain characteristics always runs the danger of building up a stereotype. This is not the author’s intend. People are individuals and common sense should tell us that we will not find an absolutely „typical Brazilian” as described in this work.

Yet, it is a fact that human behavior is nothing that happens at random. The cultural background does influence behavior and certain attitudes or characteristics are likely to be experienced when dealing with someone from a certain culture. Therefore, the use of estimates on how people might react helps to overcome obstacles and enhances communication.

All statements and findings of this paper shall help to identify a framework for acting across cultures by making broad generalizations about Brazil and the Brazilians.

In the end, though, there are always exceptions to any rule and the success of a cross-cultural encounter depends on both sides and their openness to new experiences.

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