Risk and national culture analysis You have interviewed InnoTech’s Americas Region Vice-President of Finance regarding national differences and risks.

What insights do you gain from this interview excerpt about risk taking and national culture?

Are these insights reliable, in your opinion?

We do have differences across countries, which impact the services, and so on. There is a big difference in terms of respect for authority. For example, in Brazil we are not so much respectful of authority compared to Chile, where they have much more respect for authority.
Then you go to Argentina, and again they don’t have much respect for authority, and the same thing happens all over. If you go to India, they have more respect than they would have in the Netherlands. And so on. When you come with global standards or global projects, and so on, in some countries, they are immediately accepted and implemented, but in other countries they resist, and they challenge much more. So it does make a big difference. Willingness to take risks is also a big difference. If you take, for example, in Brazil, because of our economic and social and political history, we know life is unpredictable. So we’re used to taking risks.
Just the fact that I leave my house and I come to work, I’m taking risks. The traffic jams are awful; there can be violence on the way; so I’m taking risks all the time. You’re exposed, and you need to find mechanisms to survive. So a big difference in culture makes a big difference in willingness to take risks. When you take a big part of the organisation, and you give it to someone else and you expect that it’s going to be delivered, you are taking risks. It is your face as a professional that is visible. Your regional or line manager is coming to you and saying that the relationship is not working. Yes, outsourcing is risky, but so is failing to improve efficiency.