International Strategy, Cultural Distance and Management Policies in Brazilian Multinational Companies

Abstract

Cultural distance is a dimension of psychic distance, a term used to explain the multinational’s preferences in terms of location to expand their operations. This study explores how cultural distance is taken into consideration when multinational companies choose their markets and its influence on their organizational policies. We present six cases of Brazilian multinational companies. Results show these companies do not always choose their markets taking the cultural distance as the most important factor. Also, companies from emerging economies tend to adapt easily to other cultures because of their history of the country having being colonized in the past.