Brazilians Working with Americans/Brasileiros Que Trabalham Com Americanos: Cultural Case Studies/Estudos de Casos Culturais

Doing business internationally requires understanding not only other languages, but even more so the business practices and cultures of other countries. In the case of Brazilians working with Americans, a fundamental difference for all parties to understand is that Brazilian business culture is based on developing personal relationships between business partners, while American businesspeople often prefer to get down to hard "facts and figures" quickly, with fewer personal preliminaries. Negotiating such differences is crucial to creating successful business relationships between the two countries, and this book is designed to help businesspeople do just that. Brazilians Working With Americans presents ten short case studies that effectively illustrate many of the cultural factors that come into play when North American business professionals work in Brazil. The authors summarize each case and the aspects of culture it involves, and American and Brazilian executives comment on the cultural differences highlighted by that case. A list of topics and questions for discussion also help draw out the lessons of each business situation. To make the book equally useful to Brazilians and Americans (whether businesspeople or language students), the entire text is presented in both English and Portuguese. In addition, Apple QuickTime movies of the executives' comments, which allow viewers to see and hear native speakers of both languages, are available on the Internet at www.laits.utexas.edu/orkelm/casos/intro.html.

Author: Orlando R. Kelm, Mary E. Risner
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Published: 01/15/2007
Pages: 218
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.68lbs
Size: 9.12h x 6.04w x 0.52d
ISBN: 9780292714731

Review Citation(s):
Multicultural Review 12/01/2008 pg. 70

About the Author
ORLANDO R. KELM is Associate Director of Business Language Education at UT CIBER, the Center for International Business Education and Research at the University of Texas at Austin, where he also teaches in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese.MARY E