Coyotes vs. Road Runners: Managing in the Americas

BUSINESS CULTURE

A spirit of adventure born of plantations and Portuguese seafarers

Is history destiny? The origins of what many businesspeople recognise as particularly Brazilian talents can be traced back to the late 15th century race between Spain and Portugal to exploit the new world, writes Jonathan Wheatley.

Both countries were looking for a sea route to Asia, says Professor Alfredo Behrens of São Paulo’s FIA business school. The Portuguese found one and became merchants. The Spanish found America and become conquerors.

The Portuguese also found Brazil, but largely ignored it until it became their sole overseas possession after they lost their Asian trade routes to the Dutch.

“They had to concentrate on Brazil,” says Prof Behrens. “By then they were merchants through and through. They knew how to negotiate. They had jogo de cintura [a knack for flexibility and problem solving]. This is what makes Brazilians different from other Latin Americans.”

He traces other Brazilian characteristics back even further, to the expulsion of the Muslims from the Iberian Peninsula during the Middle Ages and the subsequent fall in population. This created a culture of low-density ranching rather than high-density agriculture, translated to Latin America in the form of enormous plantations controlled by a few wealthy landowners and worked for centuries by millions of African slaves.

Echoes of this hierarchy – and a resulting distance and lack of trust – endure in the workplace, he says. “This leads to a personalism that tries to override those processes, where people try to be friends with the boss [and] to the jeitinho [another hard-to-translate concept of personal flexibility], and a spirit of adventure that means people may only stay put for a while and are dreaming of bigger things.”

And this, he says, creates a business culture that foreigners sometimes find it hard to handle: “One British banker told me it was like trying to lead a herd of cats.”

It is also a culture that fosters creativity and enterprise. Rolf Steiner, regional head at Swiss Re in São Paulo, was previously based in Italy, and says he was delighted to find an atmosphere of openness and creativity in the reinsurer’s Brazilian offices after the much more conservative business environment he had encountered in Italy.

It is the kind of comment heard in many sectors. Tarek Farahat, chief executive of Procter & Gamble in the country, counts Brazilian executives among the most talented in the company’s global operations.

But one of the most famous examples of Brazilian overseas enterprise – Anheuser-Busch InBev, the world’s biggest brewer, created and led by Brazilians – is an exception that proves the rule, says Prof Behrens.

“Brazilians are better negotiators than our Latin neighbours,” he points out. “But that doesn’t mean we don’t have our conquerors