A Study on the Cultural Differences between China and Brazil based on Expatriate Strategy

陳柯羽

Abstract：Both as members of the "BRICS", China and Brazil have built mutual trade and cooperation relationships for years. The multinational companies of the two countries also have frequent business contacts, and the employees of both countries also work in other parts country frequently. This article takes China as the home country and Brazil as the host country. It will analyze what specific cultural differences that Chinese expatriated managers would encounter, how these cultural differences would impact the managerial practices, and how to use feasible precautions to avoid cultural conflicts and resolve intercultural misunderstanding.

Key words：China；Brazil；expatriate； cultural differences

1. Introduction and background

The globalization pattern has provided the impetus for the development of the company, with a diverse workforce and access to the other part of region (Malek & Budhwar, 2013). In this moment, the need arises for companies to send employees to manage the enterprise abroad, disseminate their managerial practices, their technology, and other aspects. Expatriates are committed to achieving the desired level of performance for the companies. In this scenario, the usual characteristics and capabilities required for domestic business are not sufficient.

Therefore, the purpose of this article is first to identify the cultural differences between China and Brazil and do some basic analysis based on these differences. In addition, on the topic of cultural differences, how these differences influence business procedures, such as human resource management, negotiation, and motivation would be taken into further consideration. Finally, certain strategies would be listed to cope with some specific situations for the Chinese expatriate.

2. Cultural differences between China and Brazil

Hofstede's cultural dimension theory is a well-known framework theory for analyzing cross-cultural differences and a tool for studying cross-cultural interaction and communication. It consists of six distinguished dimensions that show the different influences on the people in a specific society. The included dimensions are as followed.

2.1 Power Distance

This dimension refers to the degree of concentration of power in an institution or organization and the degree of inequality acceptance of such authority in a society. China's index is 80, while Brazils is 69.[7] It shows that China and Brazil are both countries with high power distances, but with China being more power-centralized than Brazil. In China, people normally accept the hierarchy of power in the company showing the result of high index of power distance. Brazilian enterprises do stress superior decision-making and inferior execution and authority has great influence in the organization, but in the execution of decision-making, Brazilian are more team-oriented people then Chinese.

2.2 Collectivism versus individualism

The definition of collectivism is ones cultural dependence degree of in his or her society. In a society with a high collectivism index, people commonly assess their own needs or standards relied on the group achievements over their own personal interests. However, a high individualism society indicates that its members are often prize their own benefits instead of united collective.

Both Brazil and China has low scores in this dimension, and they each have the score of 38 and 20 respectively. China has an individualism index of 20, meaning that the home country is more inclined to collectivism, which is also in line with the dominant values of Chinese society. Brazil's individualism index is also low, because Brazil has a certain degree of collectivism as well, which is attributed to Brazil's strong national cohesion. However, Brazil still has stronger concept of individualism than China, and it tends to lay more stress on the development of personal abilities that related to professional requisites and creativeness that could bring profits to the company.

2.3 Masculinity versus femininity

The highly masculine society usually regards the remarkable achievements in a field as the prime requirement. This kind of interpretation of success is vividly expressed by the way of pursuing the champion position in the career. While members in a society with high femininity often underlines the importance of care and considerations of others.

With an index of 66, China is a masculine society. In order to achieve the success in business, many Chinese will sacrifice the time of entertainment or enjoyment with the family or friends, and give great priority to profession. In many Chinese companies, especially those with high degree of dictation, people would work for extra hours to attain a promising future, leaving no time for relax or free time for personal life. Relatively speaking, with a score of 49, Brazil is more of femininity, which means that Brazilian employees would value more the life quality of amusement and enjoy life.

2.4 Long-term versus short-term

Countries with low scores in this aspect, like Brazil, often keep traditional customs and conservative practices when encountering the unpredictable change in life, while in a culture with high degree of long-term index, such as China, people tend to promote realism and advocate husbandry. Chinese people believe that the final result depend highly on your present proper choice, which could be different situations in different times when facing various conditions.

2.5 Uncertainty Avoidance

This aspect reflects the extent to which societys residents feel threatened by unidentified and ambiguous situations in the future. In this index, China scores 30 while Brazil scores 76. China has a considerably low score in this dimension, which is attributed to orthodox entrepreneurial ideas. China is more inclined to participate in high-risk business activities to obtain its own long-term interests. On the contrary, Brazil has higher scores in uncertainty avoidance index, and so is the case in most Latin American countries. These Latin American societies show a committed need for elaborate legal systems and regulations to build a solid and sound living environment.

2.6 Indulgence versus restraint

This index of indulgence defines the degree of which people could control their nature desires, which could be affected by their early educational and parental backgrounds. According to the strength of this control, a culture can be divided into "indulgence culture" or "restraint culture".

China's indulgence index is 24, indicating that Chinese frequently believe that controlling their nature emotions and feelings to establish superior conditions for themselves is better for them to succeed. For another case, Brazil scores 59, making it a more indulgent society.

3.Potential influences on managerial practices

3.1 Human resources management

The human resources system consists of recruitment and selection, training and development, performance appraisal, and compensation. These parts construct the principal part of the human resources management theory. Therefore, the following mainly discusses these aspects of recruitment, performance appraisal and compensation incentive system.

First, recruitment for enterprises means new blood, in other words, the vitality for companies. In addition to the professional qualities, family situation, motivational personality and other externalities that must be possessed by Chinese expatriates, in order to be more integrated into the Brazilian local culture, they should better be more enthusiastic and cheerful, highly keen on Latin culture (Fernandez-Sanz & Misra, 2012).

Secondly, Pauluzzo (2010) stated that because Brazil is more of individualism than China, it may lead to the use of traditional Chinese compensation systems in the event of disputes between managers and employees. If the Chinese expatriate over-emphasizes the interests of the team and neglect Brazilian employees personal interests, they may find it difficult to accept a suitable job status, resulting in lower efficiency.

In addition, due to the short-term orientation of Brazil, the long-term incentives such as equity in the compensation system given by the organization will not play a particularly effective incentive role (Meyer et al., 2016). Furthermore, considering the cultural Brazils characteristic of femininity, Chinese expatriate focusing on work and ignoring entertainment and rest will also cause local employees to complain and reduce their positive attitude towards work.

3.2 Cross-cultural communication

Cross-cultural communication refers to the process of expressing thoughts, transmitting information, exchanging feelings, and promoting useful interactions between two people or groups with different cultural backgrounds (Xiao & Huang, 2015). The differences lying in values ??and ways of thinking between China and Brazil are likely to create obstacles to cross-cultural communication.

What is more, a sense of cultural superiority could also cause cultural blunders. The sense of superiority that people display as a particular member of a particular culture is often unintentional and is always reflected at the level of consciousness. This kind of prejudice shown by expatriated managers would greatly dampen the enthusiasm of Brazilian employees and disrupt the cooperation process.

3.3 Negotiation

Every country has its own cultural uniqueness and its own negotiating style. If you are in a single cultural environment, the negotiation uses the same way of thinking and behavior, so the negotiation is very easy, but if the cultural background is different, the negotiation will be influenced by factors such as thinking mode differences.

Collectivism and individualism is an important difference between the Chinese and Latin American countries. In the process of negotiation, China has stronger collectivism than Brazil, and if this cultural difference is applied to the negotiation process, it will make the negotiation hard to meet agreements.

Besides, different nations often ??speak different languages, and mistranslation or missing information may occur during negotiating translation. In Chinese culture, people use more implicit language. Therefore, non-verbal language is very important in negotiation. Non-verbal language mainly has body language, gestures and communication between eyes.

4. Solutions to avoiding cultural disputes

The multinational business model has created a great potential market and profitable opportunities for enterprises, but it also puts forward requirements for the cross-cultural management level of enterprises (Earley & Mosakowski, 2004).

First, the Chinese expatriate should correctly treat cultural differences, identify and analyze cultural differences. The problems and challenges brought by cultural differences are inevitable. If the expatriated manager wants to deal with cultural differences, he or she must first recognize the rationality of their differences and respect the Brazilian native culture.

Second, the Chinese expatriate could create common values ??and integrate culture with the Brazilian employees. People's sense of superiority over their own cultural values is hard to change. Therefore, establishing a novel and creative type of multinational company culture based on the mother company and its subsidiary ones is important and could help shape the corporate culture of the mother company effectively integrating with the local culture of the foreign affiliates, and promote reciprocal understanding through various channels.

Finally, the Chinese expatriate could conduct cross-cultural training among the local employees. Conducting this certain training can improve mutual understanding and communication skills and cross-cultural communication results among members from different cultural backgrounds. The Training can include aspects like language, cultural adaptation, ethnic customs and habits. Through this method, the expatriated manager can deepen the needs of Brazilian employees, and can better understand their own requirements, greatly reduce cultural misunderstanding, increase internal cohesion and improve work efficiency.

5. Conclusion

In recent years, Brazil's contacts with China have become more frequent, but due to the differences in culture between the two countries, the experience of sending from China to Brazil may encounter many problems and cultural conflicts in the management process. The important point that should be borne in mind is that eliminating the blunders caused by defective intercultural communication may be difficult. However, only with the proper solution can we reduce cultural misunderstandings and improve work efficiency, then eventually make a multinational corporation stay competitive and develop more advanced.

References

[1]Earley, P. C. , & Mosakowski, E. (2004). Toward culture intelligence: turning cultural differences into a workplace advantage. Academy of Management Executive, 18(3), 151-157.

[2]Fernandez-Sanz, L. , & Misra, S. (2012). Analysis of cultural and gender influences on teamwork performance for software requirements analysis in multinational environments. IET Software, 6(3), 167-175.

[3]Malek, M. A., & Budhwar, P. (2013). Cultural intelligence as a predictor of expatriate adjustment and performance in malaysia. Journal of World Business, 48(2), 222-231.

[4]Meyer, B., Meyer, J. V., De Silva, K.V., & Mallmann, L. (2016). Managing expatriates: analyzing the experience of an internationalized Brazilian company. Journal of Management Sciences, 18(46), 134-147.

[5]Pauluzzo, R. (2010). How cultural determinants may affect HRM: the case of Italian companies in china. Social Science Electronic Publishing, 18(1), 78-95.

[6]Xiao, L. , & Huang, D. (2015). Between-team communication in the intercultural context. Information, Communication & Society, 1-16.

[7]Data from https://www.hofstede-insights.com/country-comparison/brazil,china/