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I am spearheading the unearthing of Brazilian-friendly management instruments and techniques as used by local organizations.  I believe this project can benefit from collaboration by like-minded scholars, Brazilian or not, that would wish to suggest research topics and eventually team-up with our students in their research. This could render good opportunities for international comparisons.

I intend to carry this research project through graduate students working towards their dissertations. Brazilian funding sources will be tapped through a project that still needs to be developed. Masters' dissertations take about 18-24 months to be completed.

We, you and I, would need to work out suitable time-frames and joint topics. At this early stage you can suggest what you would like us to be researching into. Please consider teaming-up with funding, certainly to cover expenses on your side.

For illustration purposes, we are considering topics such as:

• People management in fishing work teams. These fishermen make 10 men fishing crews who partake in the profits of successful fishing forays that last 3 weeks at a time. How transparent are these arrangements? How are skills assessed to allocate shares of the profits? How does leadership emerge in these teams? How do they hedge against the risk of unsuccessful forays? Fieldwork to be undertaken along the Brazilian coast, probably by anthropologists.
• Principal-agent alignment in the Brazilian retail sector. When Brazilian shop attendants believe that prospective clients can be better served by the competition, they lead the prospective clients to the competition. The shop attendant waives the sales commission and the shop owner looses as well. Only the client receives a gift from the shop attendant (and the shop owner). That gifts need to be repaid seems to be a universal law. How is this gift repaid?  To whom?  What instruments could internalize a repayment of the gift into a fair process that supports this cultural trait?
• Paternalist leadership is praised in Brazilian business where the worker expects unlimited protection and the leader unbounded loyalty. How are these tacit arrangements expressed? How are they contemplated within formal employment rules? To what extent do they contribute to worker retention? To fair pay? To fair workloads? Does this vary by region? By industry? By level of schooling? How well is this Brazilian expectation met by foreign corporations doing business in Brazil?
• Who would you like to work for? Brazilians seem to favor paternalistic leaders chosen from an array of business leaders capable of delivering the same income flow. How can the leadership style by rapidly assessed by followers in order to guide hiring practices?
• Samba schools are known to deliver world class products at the Carnival parades. They do this for little pay. What is the motivation behind the effort? How are workteams assembled, led and controlled? How are the products integrated into a parade? What learning can be transferred to for-profit organizations?

This work will be coordinated by myself, possibly at IBMEC Sao Paulo, and will be seconded by colleagues at other Brazilian teaching and research institutions with a focus on business studies.

Please share with me how this initiative may help your own research or how the gist of it may be made more useful or effective. This is the time to voice your wisdom!

You may contact me as below.

Alfredo Behrens, 56, economist; holds a PhD by University of Cambridge, lectures Cross-Cultural Management at the EMBA of IBMEC São Paulo, Brazil. He has lectured at or consulted for Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School; London Business School, University of California at Berkeley; FSU and PUC-RJ. Culture and Management in the Americas; published in Portuguese by Editora Saraiva in 2007 and selected amongst the best business books of the year by Época Negócios, will appear in English by Stanford University Press by 2009. Alfredo was awarded the McNamara Fellowship by the World Bank, the Hewlett fellowship by Princeton University, The Boa Vista Bank award, and the Jean Monet  Fellowship by the European University, Fiesole, Italy.

Phone:          +55 11 38280554

Mobile:           +55 11 91339779

e-mail:           alfredobehrens@gmail.com

Skype:           Alfredo_Behrens