Readers of Macunaíma and Martin Fierro are like two ships passing in the night: Bad for business

• Published date: 01 July 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/tie.21952
• Author: Alfredo Behrens,Ernesto R. Gantman
• Date: 01 July 2018

VIEW FROM PRACTICE

Readers of Macunaíma and Martin Fierro are like two ships

passing in the night: Bad for business

Alfredo Behrens

1

| Ernesto R. Gantman

2

1

Winvest Management Consulting and FIA

Business School, São Paulo, Brazil

2

Facultad de Ciencias Económicas,

Universidad de Buenos Aires, and Escuela de

Posgrado en Negocios, Universidad de

Belgrano, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Correspondence

Alfredo Behrens, Winvest Management

Consulting, Rua João Gomes Xavier, 192.

05005-020 São Paulo, SP, Brazil.

Email: ab@alfredobehrens.com

This is an exploratory studyabout the knowledge of Brazilian managers about Argentina and vice

versa. Expressing a deeper knowledge of the partner's culture corresponds to greater familiarity,

which facilitates the construction of the confidence necessary to do business. We analyzed the

academic literatureon familiarity and trust, and suggestthat the interrelationships of these coun-

tries' economies could be enhanced by encouraging greater familiarity among business actors in

the countries. The empirical data comes from surveys of MBA students from bothcountries, car-

ried out in 2008, 2014, and 2015. The results suggest a significant lack of knowledge of the

other and a relative stability of expressions of distrust over time, in the case of Brazilians. We

conclude that it is advisable to encourage a greater intercultural understanding among business

executives of both nations because this could accelerate mutually beneficial business and

empower the executives'careers in the region. We also suggest that the demandfor this type of

intercultural skills should arise at corporations because the demand by executives is not suffi-

ciently informed as to garner the necessary change and because the pay-as-you-go income

model of business schoolsresponds to clients' needs rather than to what shouldbe done.

KEYWORDS

Argentina, Brazil, business, cross-border, familiarity, trust

1|INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this exploratory article is to reveal the knowledge

that Argentine and Brazilian managers have about each other's coun-

tries. The underlying assumption is that deeper knowledge is a proxy

for familiarity, which reveals a smaller cultural distance, which in its

turn could help improve the international business climate between

both countries.

There is an ample supply of studies on the internationalization

styles of companies (Blomstermo & Dharma, 2003; Bürgel, 2000; Van

Lente & Goey, 2008), but it is mostly offered by academics from

developed countries. The present study focuses on Brazilian man-

agers' knowledge about Argentina and vice versa. We chose this dyad

because to businesspeople of both countries, the other offers a low-

cost chance to test the waters when internationalizing.

Developed countries, even on account of even their imperial

phases, have more information about the outside world. This infor-

mation is both official (agencies or ministries that obtain data on busi-

ness opportunities abroad) and academic, as its main universities

have a greater degree of international openness than its Latin Ameri-

can counterparts.

In addition, countries with more advanced economies have greater

political, economic, and military power to defend their interests. Thus,

companies headquartered in these countries have a lower perception of

the risk of internationalization than do Brazilian or Argentine companies.

The greater the perception of risk the less propensity to internationalize

the business. This would be one of the reasons why large Brazilian com-

panies such as Votorantim, Itaú, and Bradesco took so long to develop

competencies to internationalize (Fleury & Fleury, 2012).

In the next section, we will present a brief review of the litera-

ture and some specific examples that support our argument, that

familiarity with the other's culture nurtures trust and that the latter is

conducive to more rapid growth in business interaction. We will then

develop some considerations about the level of economic relationship

between Brazil and Argentina, suggesting that a greater level of eco-

nomic interaction should prove mutually beneficial. Subsequently, we

present the methodology used and the results of the study. Finally,

and by way of conclusion, we offer some recommendations for

DOI: 10.1002/tie.21952

Thunderbird Int. Bus. Rev. 2018;60:489–496. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/tie © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 489