The decision-making process in Brazilian organizations: communicative behaviors

Abstract

Brazilian organizations have an authoritarian and centralized pattern of decision-making rooted in the sugarcane plantation tradition of the country’s Northeastern region. The "old" way of doing things clashes with "new" methods and technologies from developed nations, making organizational life in Brazil quite peculiar and full of its own idiosyncrasies. In this scenery, communication is a key element without which decision processes would not happen at all. This article describes and analyzes decision-making communication behaviors in two Brazilian organizations such behaviors involve scanning and sharing information, defining problems, evaluating alternatives and reaching the decision.

Each one of these categories of communication behaviors were fully described and analyzed with examples drawn from both organizations. Although the description of the decision-making process presents one category at a time, the process is interactive and dynamic. Different behaviors occur in a simultaneous, continuous, and complex way.

Comparing Brazilian public and private organizations, the first were quite bureaucratic and norm oriented. However, in many cases, political decisions bypassed bureaucracy, norms and policies. In private organizations, norms and policies were not so clear, and the amount of uncertainty in the environment led to a tense, stressed, ambiguous, and arbitrary decision-making culture.