Improvisation and the Spanish Manager

Questionnaire-based studies of comparative management contribute important information to our understanding of national differences in attitudes and values but they often overlook country-specific ways in which managers transform attitudes and values into leadership behaviors or styles. In a plea to learn more about the influence of culture on management practice, Hofstede (1993) recently called for more country-specific research in order to internationalize management theory. This paper explores the ideas and comments of Spanish managers about the behavior of leaders and members of Spanish organizations. The Spaniards' preference for informal and spontaneous decision making a managerial style of improvisation emerged as a consistent theme in the interviews. For example, one respondent in this study commented: