BEYOND HOFTEDE: CULTURAL APPLICATIONS FOR COMMUNICATING WITH LATIN AMERICAN BUSINESS

It is notorious how the Latin American subregion had been seen nowadays as a real important subregion for international business. As a prove of that we can see how this economy has been growing lately, we have a population of  over 550 million people and the GDP exceeds $3 trillion, for anybody who know how to count  that’s not a negligible number. This region is hugely rich in natural resources and off course we count with a big emerge service industries which make it globally competitive. In the other hand, our region has the seventeen of the world’s largest 100 cities and commercial centers are located in Latin America. Also in the recently years the foreign direct invest has been increasing because of the constantly grow and strengthening of the middle class in the region.

In fact, the only country of the first world who has been exploited this important and increasing market is the U.S, which the most part of his foreign direct investment flows to Latin America than to the middle east or Asia – pacific. We also see that the twenty percent of U.S exports go to Latin America, and how the Latin Americas subregion  provide  twelve of the most importer partners’ for U.S.  It’s important to add that all this has been possible because of the political and fiscal reforms made in the region.

Due to those changes, the continued development of U.S trade with Latin America is promising. Since the government of George bush in 2002 where he was granted a free trade authority, with has the duty to establish a hemispheric trade zone that will economically integrate over 30 countries. In fact Chile was the first country to sign a bilateral trade agreement with the U.S in 2003. Moreover the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) established a free trade zone within the U.S and five Central American countries, in order to liberalize trade and eventually eliminate tariffs in international trade between them.

In the importance of Latin America consumers in the global market is significant. Currently, there are more Spanish speakers than English speakers in the world, 358 to 341 million, respectively. This is just one number to show how important to create better and bigger links with the Latin America subregion. Given this enormous potential for commerce, business men and entrepreneurs from U.S need to approach, negotiate, and create and maintain closer relationships with Latin American professionals whose cultural backgrounds differ from their own.

In order to make successful long term business and personal relationships in this subregion, it’s important to know and understand cultural differences and backgrounds in creating links between people.

With the intention of understanding better the Latin American culture, let’s try to do it through 5 primarily concepts. These concepts are power, uncertainty avoidance, individualism/collectivism, context and time orientation as defined by Greert Hosfstede (1980) and Edward T. Hall (1959).

The power orientation refers to the manner in which people in culture defer to legitimate authority in familial, societal, and organizational authority structures. Uncertainty Avoidance refers to the extent to which culture relies upon, and expects, information to accomplish a task. Individualism/Collectivism refers to the degree to which a culture or subculture emphasizes the well being of a group over the benefit of an individual. Context, refers to the pattern of physical cues, environmental stimuli and implicit understanding that convey meaning between two members of the same culture, finally Time Orientation refers to a cultures attitudes toward time as distinctive cultural aspects.

In others words the Latin American culture is mostly opposite to U.S culture , a clear example is while the American are monochronistic, because are people who value punctuality, the Latin America people are polychronistic, time is flexible for them. Briefly the Latin American culture is highly relationship oriented, in favor of long deliberations before engaging in business; people usually ask personal questions about family before going deeper in business chat.

In other hand, Latin America culture is consider as a high context culture, where the words interpreted according to the situation and nonverbal factors, also a high masculine cultures where men hold authority.

On the hand, the Latin American culture can be understood and known another point of view who gives us bigger insight into Latin American communication patterns. These concepts are Simpatia (kindness) which is a cultural norm which requires individuals to be friendly, even if there are strong conflicts between two people. The other one is Confianza (trust) refers to the importance of having a personal relationship between interactants and typically implies the expectation of mutual interpersonal reciprocity. The other two concepts are Respeto (respect) and Personalismo (interpersonal warmth), the respect refers to the expectation that people should be treated with dignity and interpersonal warmth refers to the degree of warmth of a personal relationship. Different from other cultures, here it’s grounded on the based that people are worth more than material possessions.

Understanding the concepts mentioned before can be useful to anyone who decides or want to make a successfully approach to Latin American society. Somehow, these cultural aspects seem a little bit odd to Anglo Saxon society, who makes things quite different from us.  A great example could be delivering “bad new” letter, where accordance with Latin American culture will highly differ from the normal standards in U.S society.

Generally this letter will have four basic parts, the buffer, reason for decision, presentation of bad news and Alternative/Goodwill but in Latin American context will be really ineffective because it does not take account some of the most important values and concepts of this culture such as simpatia, personalismo, confianza and respeto.  In this case the letter should be like this: first greeting to reader; expression of goodwill for family and associates, reasons for decision, alternatives and future action and finally the reiterated goodwill.

The differences between each letter are enormous for a cultural well known person but in this case, let’s pointed out, in the second model personalismo (interpersonal warmth) is exhibit by relaying formal and polite greetings, different from the US model where the greeting are minimize. This model is trying to build confianza (trust) by expressing goodwill to the reader’s family, opposite to the other model where this is not used. The Latin American model try to protects the readers feeling of potential embarrassment by avoiding a clear statement of bad news, something that is not use or required as a social standard in U.S. finally the at the end of the letter its maintains the relational confianza by reiterating personal goodwill at the end.  These little changes are needed in order to not affect the link between the people affect or between company and employee.

In other to create business or personal relationship in Latin America, you may know these kinds of social convections to avoid troubles and misunderstandings. As a suggestion when trying to make initial contact, you may offer polite self introduction, when refer to an unknown or older person refers as Señor o Señora, avoid first name in early contact. It’s also important to show respect and knowledge of cultures, in this case you may use at least some of reader’s language; show interest in reader’s country. Something that is highly value from Latin American people is inquiring about family; communicate frequently; visit country or offer to host. In the case its need to deliver bad news, it’s highly recommended to present new implicitly and with high regards for readers feeling and reputation. By the way in personal chat, it’s important to frequently use pronouns, express formal, yet personal, goodwill for family and friends.

Talking about business culture, it may result important to know, legal attention should be given to any contractual implications before correspondence is finalized. People are open mind  but in Latin American different from Asia, everything should be written, as layers says “what is not written doesn’t exist” .

As a conclusion, it’s important to understand and know how importance is the culture to create long term business relationships and how to communicate properly and effective in this high context environment.