Business Behavior & Culture

About Brazilian Culture and the Brazilians:

There are many traits associated to Brazilian culture, especially in the business and political issues, where Brazilians excel in peculiarities and certain old costumes, as anywhere in the world.

Real understanding of cultural values related to other’s culture requires understanding about its history and comprehension about what was the upbringing of a group or nation, certain most basic values will determine negatives and positives sides of a same cultural aspect that really serves as two sizes of the same coin, pros and cons of being a Brazilian, as any other culture would be.

Trying to explain the mindset of a culture in a few pages is not a deep insight, but since I am writing a business guide, the cultural aspects are an important, if not, essential part of doing business in other country.

A Brief Historic Resume:

In South America, the area that would become Brazil was being possessed and colonized by the Portuguese Crown by the 14^th Century. The Portuguese were Catholics, they also served the interests of the Catholic Roman Church to not only settle and explore those lands but also to convert and impose Catholic religion to whoever might be settling in those lands, and that is when two major traits of our culture were being implanted, Portuguese language and Catholic Religion and values.

The Portuguese had this model of land exploitation called Plantation, in this model the land is a mono-culture of some agricultural commodity by that time, in Brazil’s case we had Sugar Cane, it seems Sugar was a high commodity to invest in that time, all project is sustained by slave labor, which gave the Plantation maximum profit, since the land is free together with the labor.

In Brazil’s case the Portuguese firstly tried to enslave the South American Indians, what proved very difficult, since they would easily escape into the jungle, hence the Portuguese turned to the black people enslaved in Africa by others and sold to the Portuguese as slaves, old time economics.

Painting of Old Portuguese Settlers

This Plantation model exploited a harsh African slavery in Brazilian lands and during a long period of time, much of Brazil’s economy and politics would be backed up by large farmers, usually European related noble or military. Even after the Plantations were long gone, slavery in Brazil would only be abolished in 1888, by that time the slave population and their direct descendants were much larger than the rest of the population, what created a serious social problem. Most of the population in Brazil living below the poverty line in Brazil are African related people descendants of tortured slaves and there are still rather large farms in Brazil.

Drawing of an old Plantation

By 1850’s until the beginning of the XX century, there was other flux of immigrants to Brazil, there were Italians, Ukranians, Germans, Japonese to name the major immigrants influx, to work as settlers and labor on farms and newly installed manufactures and small industry.

Brazil is a huge mix of three major influx groups that actually intermixed together for generations during a history of 500 years, one European flux, mostly Portuguese with a fair mix of Europeans, the African enslaved people and the local people the South American Indians.These people's miscegenation among these three major ethnic groups for hundreds of years you will have the Brazilian people.

Amazon Indians

The heritage of the colonizer is still strong, the Portuguese language is official, the majority of population in Brazil is Catholic but this Portuguese set up is sprinkled with a mix of other costumes and tradition from all people, including the strong influence of the African culture and the Indian people and then again the diverse geographical regionalisms, like the situation of a large urban area like Sao Paulo and the small village by the Amazon River far away in the forest.

Whilst could be argued Brazil is famous for being a violent country, at the other hand we haven’t been in a War, with the exception of the Ally support in the WWII and UN Peace Forces humanitarian support, Brazil has not been involved in any war  for at least 150 years. Brazilians may have their internal problems, but they are sure very good neighbors.

This cauldron of cultures, clashes, slavery, farms under a tropical sunny continent formed what is understood today as being Brazil.

Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions for Brazil:

The work of Prof. Geert Hofstede is a recognized and internationally used as reference to major cultural traits for most countries in the world.  In this effort to access Hofstede’s tool to further explain the Brazilians’ mind set we are going to explore each cultural dimension allied to the historical context we already presented.

As also can be seen in Prof. Hofstede ows interepretation in,http://geert-hofstede.com/brazil.html

In the Cultural Dimensions study proposed by Hofstede each culture have five main variables, in a 0 to 100 scale, critical to understand and describe somebody’s culture.

Those 5 main variables would be:

PDI – Power Distance Index

IDV – Individualism Level

MAS - Masculinity/Femininity Index

UAI – Uncertainty Avoidance Index

LTO – Long Term Orientation Index

The PDI for Brazil is quite high, 69, it means that positions, hierarchy and titles are important to define power structure in Brazil, as well as many layers between the top higher levels of an organization and the more populated bottom.

Democracy in Brazil is quite new, before that we had a violent dictatorship going, not long time ago people decided that prejudice would be a crime and the government are building social programs in effort to protect the poor portion of the population, but historically Brazilian government is quite distant from most of its population.

Military Generals in Power by 1964

It was only in 2002 people chose to vote on President Lula and his party, it was the first time somebody originally coming from the lower levels of population was risen to power.

During hundreds of years Brazil had slavery, Monarchy, Dictatorial and non participatory governments and then Democracy. Power Distance is indeed embedded in the culture, Academic, Legal or other titles are used with proud, especially in business and more formal meetings.

Usually people with decision power are not easily approached in Brazil, since there is this cult for authority, and as a form of self preservation. In the event those people give their attention to you cherish the moment because they are only available if they have real interest on what you have to offer.

The Individualism level is 38, quite low if compared to some other Western countries, Brazil is not a very easy place to make a living, and the government still have to catch up with public services. Because of our history and our Latin culture Brazilians do have extended families, in a proportion unthinkable for other cultures. Also, good friends and their families are commonly invited to family reunions and holidays, participating in the other’s family as Godfathers and “Uncles” for the young.

This gives the Brazilian people a certain difficulty to accept new ideas, costumes or products individually, without having the consent of family, friends or people, something must be publicly accepted before being really embraced by everybody, mass media plays a definitive role in Brazil to deal with public perception, is almost literally if it is on TV must be good or true.

A low Individualism marks a culture where group expectations and group initiatives a much more cherished than individual needs and wants, people are pretty much aware and careful for their public image and efforts to excel in appearances, our plastic surgery industry is among the best in the world.

Typical Brazilian Family

Also, Brazilians tend to mix friendship and business very easily, because of this low individuality, and also the PDI being high, personal relation for Brazilians are more valuable than a strict commercial relation, best way to talk business to Brazilians is get to know them with a nice personal conversation.

The Masculinity/Femininity Index is 49, it is an index that shows which values a predominant in a given society, while Masculine states for financial power, position, status as being the success values 

to be displayed the feminine side is related to quality of life and like what you do. Brazilians are pretty much in the middle, meaning is a society that seeks a balance between such things as money and power with a good quality life.

Brazilians in this effort to obtain certain status and power with a balanced life style work very hard, long hours and low wages. Good work positions are really disputed by hundreds, and at this moment that Brazilian personal, group or family associations will really determine how far you are going into a company and other careers.

Nevertheless we have to remind this is a Latin country, and Latin culture is rather sexist, women in Brazil just recently had access better to job positions, our current President Mrs. Dilma Russef was cherished as being the first woman in the Presidential chair, sure times are changing, but some old habits still remains within the population.

The Uncertainty Avoidance Index is 76, pretty high, this is caused by our past of uncertainty, dictatorships, corruption and lack of a participatory government for most of its history.

Joaquim Barbosa - First Blackman
 to Occupy a Highest Court seat
2006-current

Brazil’s harsh history gave birth to a very complex bureaucracy and legal system, Brazil works through a Civil Law system, adopted from the French, diverse from the Common Law system.

In the Civil system every situation and activity must be ruled by extensive and comprehensive rules and principles defined by Law. The role of judges is limited to interpret the Law and apply it to the concrete situation.  It is a very comprehensive system, especially regarding the criminal and tax procedures, organized by Codes and Laws determining the functioning of the Estate and Society.

Because of that there are many documents and certificates of all kinds to conduct any aspect of society, leaving behind no much doubt about what has been accorded, said or given. Everything in Brazilian society is run by lawyers, public records and contracts.

 This uncertainty aspect also is embedded in the way Brazilian express their thoughts and language, Brazilians do talk with their hands, gestures with hands are often used as popular language, also Brazilians touch others and can underline emotions using gesture associated to words, to make sure communication was the most perfect possible.

And Finally the Long Term Orientation Index, 65 places Brazil among one of the most long oriented western cultures, Brazil is used to hardships and crisis, things can and will change, this perception of future give Brazilians a habit to always be in search for alternatives, and open to new proposals.

Traditional Candomble Community
(Afro-Brazilian Religion)

Brazilians tend to like more conservative towards investments, since uncertainty avoidance is quite high; savings, real state, pre fixed investments are preferred options for the general public; long and defined contracts also are in very high regard in Brazil.

Long term traditions, such as religion, is present, but they are not taken as absolute truths, there are a multitude of faiths in Brazil, representing the many influences Brazil had along its history, is common for people to go to many different temples and churches without being really attached to none of them. It is not an extremist religious country, very far from that.

This religious tolerance is also observed in other places in Brazilian society; not very long ago Brazil has legalized gay union, a clear sign of high levels of social tolerance.

At the other hand this tolerance is also abused by many groups within society, tolerance may become omission if practiced in excess, what happens mostly regarding corruption and auditing privileges and influence of the most rich.

Demographics and Hard Data:

In this effort to briefly describe Brazilian culture Demographics will describe the current reality of the Brazilians, a good sized population of 200 million approximately, living in five diverse Geopolitical regions within Brazil.

Initially, the most relevant data to access in terms of Demographics is a comparison to GDP (per Capita), Wealth Distribution and Levels of Education.