Culture of Brazil

The culture of each country affects how the people perform certain tasks. The growth of international corporations and international trade forces decision-makers to consider how the people with whom they must deal in other countries make decisions and why. Brazil is case in point. It is a country with a very different history from our own, different social and cultural traditions, and different views of the nature of business and the nature of decision-making. These are the issues we must consider as we try to deal with the people of Brazil.

As Lane and DiStefano (1992) note, one result of not considering these questions can be culture shock, which reduces performance at least during the period of adjustment. To some extent, disorientation is natural and inevitable, but the reasons are known and can be controlled:

The normal assumptions that the manager uses in his or her home culture to interpret perceptions and to communicate intentions no longer work (Lane and DiStefano, 1992, 47).

Brazil is a gigantic country that offers startling geographic and socioeconomic contrasts. The culture is marked by the use of Portuguese as the official language, and the mixture of Portuguese and Brazilian cultures makes this area subtly different from its neighbors with their Hispanic heritage. Brazil is the largest Roman Catholic nation in the world. The nation is also made up of many immigrant groups from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including millions

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families. Thus it does not describe urban middle-class families or those of the lower class, but still it remains a cultural ideal reflected in the ways Brazilians conceptualize and evaluate a range of personal and social relations. The traditional upper class family was patriarchal, and the Brazilians took from Portugal the practice of excluding women. The most significant kin group remains the parentela, a diffuse group comprising the relatives an individual recognizes from both families. The parentela may include hundreds of people, and typically the kin group focuses less on strict rules of descent and more on relationship to an illustrious ancestor (Nyrop, 1983, 108). The parentela serves as an interest group. Lesser members in the group bask in the reflected glory of the prominent and also share through sinecures and the like in the latter's wealth and influence. The highest duty for the individual is family loyalty. Nepotism is the first obligation of the family member, and failure to help one's kin in their need diminishes one's stature. Godparenthood extends and reinforces the web of kinship, and the relationship can be used to strengthen a preexisting one or to bring other parentelas into a pseudo-kinship rela

Category: Foreign - C