Latin American Business Cultures

This concise, practical book was written to better understand the business cultures in eleven Latin American countries, while providing students with a historical perspective to cultural differences. To deal with what is an inherently vague and as yet ill-defined subject―the cross-cultural relations of Latin America―this book uses a series of filters to detect the illusive cultural factors in Latin American life.

Dr. Robert Crane. Having worked in the field of management education for over twenty years, Dr. Robert Crane has built a solid reputation for competence in the areas of international development, cross-cultural business applications and institutional entrepreneurship in eastern and western Europe and North America. Throughout his career he has been involved with such management institutions as the J. L. Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University near Chicago, EM-Lyon in France and the International Management Center (now the Business School of the Central European University) in Budapest. He has developed and/or run customized programs for executives for such firms as Baker & McKensie (one of the world's largest law firms), McKinsey and Company, Societe Generate (now SoGen) and others.

Thanks to his wide travels and long-term residence in both Europe and North America, Dr. Crane possesses a privileged viewpoint on cultural issues. This perspective has allowed him to create customized cross-cultural business programs for multinational firms such as Royal Ten Cate (NL) and publish a series of books on cross-cultural business with publishing houses in the United Kingdom and the United States.

His breadth of vision has also led him to create consortia both of universities offering joint degrees he helped design and of researchers working on collective publications. His long experience in advising companies has allowed him to facilitate idea sharing among firms as well as internal brainstorming for single companies. Finally, he has had the entrepreneurial vision and audacity to develop or enhance the global dimension of institutions (IMC, IGS) and companies (Baker & McKensie, Royal Ten Cate).

As an entrepreneur, he created the first global executive education program in 1992; the first globally televised MBA program (through the National Technological University); and The Peace School, the first primary school to teach peace making to small children through a knowledge of cultures and religions.

Dr. Crane holds degrees in French literature (B.A., M.A., Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) and translation (maitrise or M.A. from the University of Lyon, France). He also studied management (Young Managers' Programme or Executive MBA at Cranfield University in the U.K.).

Dr. Carlos G. Rizowy holds degrees in international relations (B.A. from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago), political science (Ph.D. from the University of Chicago) and law (J.D. Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago Kent College of Law).

Dr. Rizowy was born in Uruguay, South America. In demand as a public speaker and media commentator, Dr. Rizowy routinely addresses over seventy audiences each year. Groups addressed include the Council on Foreign Relations, Rotary International, Latin American Chamber of Commerce and many major universities. In addition, he has spoken with and/or given interviews to a large number of trade, business and civic organizations, including The Executive Committee ("TEC," a national organization of chief executives of significant, privately held companies), NPR, BBC, ABC, CBS and NBC. Topics include foreign policy, security, political violence, terrorism, doing business in Latin America, foreign trade and international issues.

Dr. Rizowy's law practice has focused on corporations, government relations and international transactions. He is of counsel to the firm of Sonnenschein, Nath and Rosenthal, LLP with offices in Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York and Washington, D.C. His international business consulting focuses on goyernment relations. He has counseled governmental as well as non-governmental organizations. He has authored articles in professional and popular journals on topics in law, business and international relations.

As former chairman of the political science department at Roosevelt University in Chicago, he inspired a generation of students and faculty.

Dr. Rizowy is listed in the 11^th Edition of Who's Who in America and the 54^th Edition of Who's Who in American Law. He is also listed in the Who's Who in the Midwest and Who's Who of the Emerging Leaders of America.