19/09/11 - 12h33

Érika Winter

Erica Winter is a business ethics consultant and social media strategist, founder of the Brazilian American Business Solutions, a firm dedicated to delivering corporate ethics training and investigating allegations of workplace wrongdoing.

Background

• Ethics in business
• Brazilian and foreign codes of conduct
• Ethical behavior in Brazil
• Brazilian, American, European and Asian administration models

Interview

Tom Reaoch:

Today we’re going to talk about ethics in business and ethics in Brazil and I’m happy to have with us Erica Winter, one of my LinkedIn connections. Erica Winter is an International business ethics consultant and social media strategist. Erica worked for the World Bank in Washington, DC for over 13 years, and for more than five years working in the World Bank's Office of Ethics and Business Conduct.

Erica is a dual Brazilian-US national originally from Washington, DC. She earned her MBA in HR Management at the Universidad del Salvador in Buenos Aires, Argentina and a BA in Political Science from Dickinson College in Pennsylvania. Erica relocated to São Paulo in 2010 and established the Brazilian American Business Solutions, a firm dedicated to delivering corporate ethics training, developing outreach strategies and investigating allegations of workplace wrongdoing. So with that I’d like to welcome you to Talk2Brazil Erica.

Erica Winter:

Thank you so much and thank you for having me on your show.

Tom Reaoch:

Now welcome and it’s always interesting ever since we did hookup on LinkedIn to have followed you, to follow your number of updates on the topic of ethics, but before we get into ethics I’d like you to discuss with us your transition to Brazil; you are Brazilian, you’re American, you’ve lived most of your life I take it in the United States and now is Brazil, is this your homecoming?

Erica Winter:

Well, it’s a fun homecoming. I actually was born in Washington DC. My mother is Brazilian and my father’s from Kansas and I’ve lived in the US pretty much all of my life except for a couple of years in Argentina so I’m not you know, your typical Brazilian, but Portuguese was my first language. I’ve always been in a Brazilian circle in Washington so this is a homecoming. It’s been really interesting because I’m a repatriated expat.

Tom Reaoch:

[laughs] How was this homecoming? How is coming back to Brazil from someone who has lived and studied in the States? Do you actually look at it as an American, do you look at it as a Brazilian, how do you see Brazil?

Erica Winter:

I definitely look at Brazil as an American because I lack some cultural insight. I like to think of it as, you know having lived far away from the US for a while, maybe you haven’t watched too much Seinfeld, but if you, most people that are my age have seen a few episodes of Seinfeld and if you make a joke about it there’s recognition. In Brazil there’s some more cultural things from the TV or popular radio; I don’t have any of that. I don’t have all of those references I haven’t read the right authors and I haven’t watched very much TV, so I’ve spent a lot of time [here] trying to catch up on soap operas [inaudible], trying to learn a little bit more about culture because when I speak Portuguese I’m very serious in the way I speak, I don’t have a lot of the, you know the more familiar expressions.

Tom Reaoch:

The local slang, what have you, okay.

Erica Winter:

Exactly, exactly.

Tom Reaoch:

But do you think that helps or hurts or how do Brazilians perceive you?

Erica Winter:

Well lots of them think I’m from another area, they don’t immediately see that I’m American, I do have an accent but it’s not recognized as an American accent right away. Usually they think I’ve lived abroad for a while. Sometimes they ask if I’m from Brasilia or from Rio or even from Pernambuco, and then when I say I’m from Washington they’re surprised and they can’t get that, you know it means that I’m actually someone who lived away from here a long time ago.

Tom Reaoch:

Or a diplomat naturally, right? They probably think you’re a diplomat.

Erica Winter :

Yeah. It’s a funny thing because I speak appropriately, I, you know speak Portuguese well but I lack some of the cues. I don’t know when to give one kiss or give two kisses and I know it’s regional but I always get caught kind of in the middle.

Tom Reaoch:

Well what I do, I just keep kissing until somebody asks me to stop.

Erica Winter: [laughs] That’s probably a good rule.

Tom Reaoch:

Yeah, that’s probably the best way because I’m the same thing; if it’s one if it’s two or three of whatever so those are some of the things that I think really the culture adaptation obviously come natural to Brazilians and not natural for us, even though from my side being here for a number of years but some of those things just don’t come natural, even the kissing and hugging, if you talk about the kissing and the hugging and all the body contact here, for many foreigners coming that’s obviously not natural.

Erica Winter :

Exactly, and for me it’s not natural. I have definitely made an effort to be more affectionate with others and I’ve gone outside of my comfort level in the touching and you know, being more affectionate because Brazilians and very warm affectionate people, but having been raised in the U.S. I am not comfortable with that, but I’m, you know I’m getting used to it.

Tom Reaoch:

Well even in the States, this is the other side when I speak to Brazilians going to the States it’s one of the things that I recommend that they pay attention to because in a business environment in the States and in some countries in Europe the distance between people is important and the hugging and the hand holding or patting on the back, some people, and in the States specifically, take offense to that.

Erica Winter:

Exactly.

Tom Reaoch:

It could be harassment actually [laughs] in some of your areas you know, so how should Brazilians, I don’t know if you can help us with that, how do people not be perceived as the kissing hugging harassment types when they want to show, let’s say even business affection, because even business atmosphere, it’s common here for people to, even men you know, to hug each other after a business agreement or when they’re meeting, when they’re leaving; how do you see that from a business and an ethical harassment standpoint?

Erica Winter:

I think that we all have to be aware of how other people perceive us and when you’re greeting people, if you’re not familiar with the culture you should take the cue from the other person. If, you know, if bowing, bow at the same level sort of idea. But always have that rule in mind, if someone asks you to stop, you should stop and I’ve never, I’ve not heard of any Brazilians getting in trouble for being too affectionate outside of Brazil; I’ve never experienced that or had complaints about that. I have seen people from other cultures too much [inaudible] touchy-feely and you know, once told that they were making someone uncomfortable they stopped which is the correct response.

Tom Reaoch:

So really what you’re saying is, once you see the yellow light or the red light then that’s it, stop.

Erica Winter:

Yeah, you notice people’s body language and if you’re huggy-kissy with someone and they physically take a step back because they are uncomfortable, you know make a note to yourself, “Maybe I shouldn’t touch that person” or what’s even better is ask them, “I’m sorry, did I make you uncomfortable? I’m Brazilian, I’m used to giving people two kisses, I didn’t mean to cause offense.” Always verbalizing these things lays (ph) them down, you know, people are not as concerned anymore.

Tom Reaoch:

But is that something you see now in your business here in Brazil, in your training are these some of the things that you cover in your training with companies and the cross-cultural training eventually how different people should – yeah, in the harassment area?

Erica Winter:

Sexual harassment is something I do cover and we talk a lot about cultural differences between Brazilians and foreigners coming into Brazil. There are different ways of communicating, you know and of course as we’ve been talking about how physical one can be and there are other, you know, social norms. A lot of companies coming into Brazil bring with them their own codes of conduct, their own staff rules and how their employees should behave and lots of times they don’t exactly mesh with the way Brazilians actually conduct business.

Tom Reaoch:

You’re talking about now multi-national foreign companies coming. Do Brazilian companies, do you find, do they have codes of conduct?

Erica Winter:

Yeah, most Brazilian companies do have codes of conduct, the ones I have seen. I have seen many websites with codes of conduct and many websites where the codes have been translated from another language, so if it’s a multi-national.

Tom Reaoch:

Okay, but in their training for the personnel in Brazil then that would be something covered for, employees, new employees coming in that’s something that you see happening, talking about compliance, codes of conduct and following rules basically?

Erica Winter:

Well I don’t really see that as something that’s covered carefully, I don’t necessarily see it as an area that is taken seriously, as seriously as I believe it should be. I think that lots of staff here in Brazil see the rules and they see the codes of conduct that the multi-nationals and international organizations bring with them and that they don’t necessarily know that this is intended to be followed here in Brazil.

Tom Reaoch:

Okay, they think it’s something that’s followed back home. That’s something either Americans do or Germans do but not necessarily...

Erica Winter:

What Canadians do, yeah and I’ve heard people in different events and different venues say to me, “Well, you know that’s the way it is in your country but here in Brazil it’s different”. If you were to look at the story of the chambermaid in New York with the IMF head, you know I was told recently here, you know, that situation never would have happened here, and not, you know the allegation of rape but that the chambermaid would have been fired upon making complaint. I don’t know that that’s true but I was told that by a couple different people that sexual harassment is not something that’s taken seriously here and that you’re expected to be quiet and that the straw always breaks up the weakest link, or the chain always breaks at the weakest link, an expression in Portuguese which comes out more or less like that.

Tom Reaoch:

Well, that’s an interesting point because as I look at Brazil from a cultural standpoint and you look back in its history where you had the, as they referred to it as the colonels, the wealthy farm owners saying, even after slavery, whatever the boss said, you did, basically in that and so many times in a business situation and I would say specially in a hotel people just maybe just put their head down and want to keep working and don’t want a hassle and even if something happens, not the point rape but even lesser things I get the feeling that they probably wouldn’t be brought up.

Erica Winter:

I was told also when I arrived that if you have a housekeeper and you want her to tell you if she breaks things, you need to tell her upfront,”I’m not going to fire you if you break things, please tell me” and it’s because they’re so afraid of being fired for making mistakes that they won’t report the mistake.

Tom Reaoch:

I think that’s true within companies, we’re talking about it as, you know housekeepers but I think that’s the same thing throughout business here; the fear of being fired, the fear of losing a job or the value placed on having a job, does that interfere with ethics and in ethical behavior?

Erica Winter:

Well, that definitely interferes with ethics and respectful behavior if people are afraid to stand up for themselves and accept being treated disrespectfully. If you have managers who are verbally abusive to staff or take other liberties with their staff and in situations with many, I’ve seen a of of interns in Brazil, a lot of young people thrown into the workforce who get paid very little or earn experience here and they don’t think they have any recourse to make a complaint because there are so many others behind them.

Tom Reaoch:

I see, so they literally don’t want to rock the boat?

Erica Winter:

Nobody wants to rock the boat.

Tom Reaoch:

Okay, so that would be another point, I think, you look at the United States and after the Enron situation where my perception is that the whistle blower is basically becoming institutionalized and whistle blowing in the States in not perceived negatively from my point of view so we’re saying here that Brazilians aren’t whistle blowers.

Erica Winter:

I don’t think they’re whistle blowers, I saw a headline today that Folha de São Paulo the local newspaper here in São Paulo is starting a Wiki leaks type site, I didn’t get a chance to read into that but I’d be interested in seeing if you can make, you know, if you can report on problems anonymously, are you going to, will people do that? I suspect they will.

Tom Reaoch:

Do you see that in companies? Do companies have an anonymous way of reporting things; the companies that you’ve had business transactions with?

Erica Winter:

In the U.S. they do and you know, in Germany and France it’s against the law to anonymously make allegations but some companies, some organizations I’ve seen here have 800 numbers like in the US to make allegations anonymously. A lot of national companies, the multi-national and international organizations actually have mechanisms in place where staff all over the world can call in a complaint and it’s investigated.

I know there’s a company in the U.S. called Global Compliance that does that for a lot of companies and provides different ways of doing it, a lot of the UN organizations have this, like the World Bank did and several of the others but what I’ve also seen is that staff don’t believe that that really works, they don’t see those people, you know, they’re on an island far, far away from their headquarters and they don’t necessarily believe that it’s going to help anything to make a complaint, you know, things never change is what I was told recently by someone and I was told by someone, ”You know I don’t want to make a complaint because I know that I’m the one that’s going to get fired,” I’ve seen people fired in the past and people don’t want to make those complaints, even if they’re anonymous if their serious in nature and if they can be traced back in some way.

Tom Reaoch:

Yeah, I think one of the things that Wiki Leaks actually did was really, everyone is a firm believer that nothing can be kept secret anymore and so that even from the person wanting to register a complaint he or she feels that sooner or later it will come out that they were the person making that complaint.

Erica Winter:

Yeah, even if the websites that you can sign into, your IP address is somehow going to be traceable, you have to really be you’re anonymous to file an anonymous complaint.

Tom Reaoch:

That’s the same here even, you referred to the newspaper but the police departments and the security departments here have had these anonymous numbers that you can dial in, you can make a complaint, make reports on drug trafficking, whatever and from what I’ve seen here in Brazil these things have been kept undercover and the person’s identity has been respected so, that has been working to a certain extent, but information of that happening in companies and in business I really haven’t seen much evidence because it is also, I’m sure one of the things that companies don’t like to talk about I guess. If they have internal problems, if they’re carrying on an internal investigation, is that something they don’t want to make public or do they have a code against going public? What do you see on that?

Erica Winter:

Well, as an investigator, you know I always sign confidentiality agreements that I won’t talk about what I investigate and every investigation I’ve ever turned out it’s been that way where we cannot talk about what we investigate, you know, you file your report about the investigation and they handle it as they see fit; they handle it according to their administrative manual, they have to do some sort of internal process. Of course some companies will involve the police if it becomes a matter that you know, needs to be referred to the police.

Tom Reaoch:

We’re talking of theft, fraud thing of that nature.

Erica Winter:

Yeah, things that are illegal, even rape you know, that sort of thing. If there’s an allegation, if I were to carry out an investigation and I have reason to believe that someone was raped and it’s against the law in that country I would be required to report it depending on, you know, some of the companies actually have these sort of things in writing that are very specific that they will refer a case to the police if something is illegal. In other organizations, they say the opposite; they will not refer cases to the police.

Tom Reaoch:

How do you handle that then when you’re coming into an agreement even to investigate with a company, is that part of your pre-agreement or is that the fine line or is that something you have to have defined up front?

Erica Winter:

I like to read of that stuff up front and know what sort of thing I’m investigating. I’ve not been faced with anything like that but in an organization that does not report to the police something of that serious nature, so I feel lucky but at the same time you know, it’s a risk but I think that when you’re called to investigate something you know how far it’s going to go; you know if you’re investigating sexual harassment that’s different from investigating a rape.

Tom Reaoch:

But other types of investigation, not only sexual harassment or rape, fraud other illicit activities is the type of thing that you do, that you look into?

Erica Winter:

I’ve not been involved in investigations of serious fraud or corruption, in my previous work it was a very large department with 20,000 staff so we actually have a separate department that handles fraud and corruption but minor things were covered, you know, determined by our ethics department.

Tom Reaoch:

You’ve mentioned now your investigation is that, because my impression here in Brazil is that, that generally call for help when the building’s on fire. From your training side of your business do you see companies interested in training and trying to avoid problems by better training their staff here in Brazil? Can we compare training methods in Brazil to training in the United States for example?

Erica Winter:

What I have seen is that a lot of the ethics and compliance programs for multi-nationals and international organizations are exported here and I see that there are a lot of, there is compliance training here but it is a minimum required training, it’s not necessarily to avoid problems but it’s because they are required to fulfill an obligation.

Tom Reaoch:

So it’s to sign-off saying that they were trained. It’s like being part of the fire brigade.

Erica Winter:

Exactly, it’s a compliance program. Yeah, you have to sign the paper, you have to sign it every year, you have to do the mandatory training and then the company has a certificate saying 100% of their staff were trained in ethics this year and they want to have that certificate on the wall and what I see is a need to go a step further, I see a need to talk about the ethics, talk about why they go through these compliance programs, why it’s mandatory, and…

Tom Reaoch:

When you say talk, is that talk internally, talk more to the employees, talk more to clients, to the community?

Erica Winter:

All of the above, I think that with any organizations here there’s a need for management to make clear how they expect their employees to conduct themselves on a day-to-day basis, how they should carry out their business, and explain that they expect them to abide by local laws, not to bribe policemen, not to bribe counterparts in any way or suppliers and tell the truth if that’s the way they want to do their business and it’s not necessarily clear to staff that that is the way business should be done here even if they work for an international organization, you know, even if they work for multi-national, it’s not clear that they’re expected to follow the code of conduct, to follow the rules.

Tom Reaoch:

Yeah, because that gets back to, I’ve mentioned with other interviewees and also I mentioned with you off-line, the Brazilian [inaudible] they could always find a way, and one of the things you mentioned that the Brazilians, you mentioned about bending the rules you know, they’re not very strict in the rules, if there is a way that it could be bent, they’ll bend it. Is that true; is that your feeling?

Erica Winter:

My feeling is that if you have a need to get something done, you’re going to get it done any possible way, by any means necessary as you say…

Tom Reaoch:

So the goal, you’ve got to get the ball in the goal, how you do it doesn’t really matter.

Erica Winter:

Exactly, if you were in sales and you want to make a sale or you want to make your numbers or a certain amount sales you’re going to do whatever’s necessary to make those sales even if it means selling a lie, selling something that you know that you don’t have to sell [laughs].

Tom Reaoch:

[laughs] Right, right.

Erica Winter:

And I’ve seen this you know I’ve seen people selling lies and you know, they win the bid, you know and they cannot deliver, the company cannot deliver and what some multi-nationals have seen is that when it comes to delivery they can’t meet these goals, they can’t deliver on their product in a way that the client is expecting them to. The description may have been written one way but the salesman may have said something else and led them to believe that they were getting something completely different and the salesman made the sale and the client isn’t happy, the company ends up losing money trying to catch up and give them what they want.

Tom Reaoch:

So really from the sales side the objective is you just get the order, bring it in and somebody else will either make it, or fix it or deliver it then it’s somebody else’s problem.

Erica Winter:

It’s somebody else’s problem, it’s always somebody else’s problem. You know I sound pessimistic and I’m not you know, I love Brazil and I’m seeing big changes here and this is a very exciting time to be doing business in Brazil. Things are changing here. You see it every day, there’s progress here. There’s a lot of money in Brazil and, as you know and we’re seeing the changes in the government which you know, if you look at ethics, you know, you always think of ethics as something that needs to go from the top down, we always want the manager to voice, you know, the principles and how they want to do business and how they want their organization to be. If we were to look at Brazil as a business you’re looking at the president as the head of the organization and I’m seeing the current president Dilma…

Tom Reaoch:

Rousseff?

Erica Winter:

Yeah, Rousseff, making clear that she does not want corruption, that she won’t stand for it and I’m not, you know, I’m not involved in politics here, I don’t have a party and even though I’m Brazilian I’ve never voted [laughs] because I’ve never lived in the country before. I will vote in the next election you know, by requirement, so I’ll have to develop an opinion by then, but I see you know, I see the stand that she’s taking on corruption as a really good one or the country and…

Tom Reaoch:

No literally and that’s the impression that she is cleaning house. Five ministers have basically been fired over the last what, last six to eight months and continuing, and most of them for either specific allegations of corruption or conflicts of interests, everything really revolving around what we were talking about of what is right and what is wrong and what is truth, saying bending the rules and then what is right and correct for political leaders is perceived as being different for what is right and correct for the working class person.

Erica Winter:

Yeah, and I see this as very exciting from the ethics perspective and I’m very impressed with her from this perspective.

Tom Reaoch:

Well, today in Newsweek they came out with an article about her and the title is “Don’t mess with Dilma”…

Erica Winter:

I loved it.

Tom Reaoch:

And the author is Mac Margolis saying “A woman is president in booming macho brazil and she’s calling all the shots” so a very interesting article and I think in her own way, because obviously for any political leader politics is not easy and change is not easy and even more so in Brazil where you have all of these different coalitions and all of the endless numbers of political parties really to try to get things done politically you have to be an orchestra leader actually, so you really have to know and I think, my perception too is that she’s handling herself in a different way, I don’t want to say it’s better or worse but the results are showing up and the perception is that she is cleaning house.

Erica Winter:

Yes, and that’s going to be tough for those in business who are used to [inaudible] paying their bribes and getting things done but was it the World Bank listed Brazil as, in their doing business, it was number 127 out of 175 countries in terms of even starting a business. That’s pretty bad, and in my experience of starting in micro, [inaudible], a micro business here in Brazil it took a while, I arrived last August and I had people wanting to give me work and I couldn’t do it, I did some work pro bono because I didn’t want to say no to people but there was no way I could get paid legally and I didn’t want to get paid illegally, so it took a while to get all the appropriate paperwork from August to March so that I could start working. [laughs] It took a little while. As a Brazilian I didn’t have all the right documents that other Brazilians have because I’ve never lived here, so I needed the national registry, I needed a, you know, worker’s card, I needed a CPS which is like the Social Security number…

Tom Reaoch:

So it’s just the time of getting all of these documents and many of these things you have to do in person.

Erica Winter:

Yeah, you have to do all of this stuff in person or get a lawyer to handle it for you and to submit a bill to bill someone you need an accountant, to have a micro-business you need to have an accountant on retainer to do the billing for you to do the monto fiscal, the fiscal amount on any services rendered, so it’s a lot of work and as a consultant who had been doing work in the U.S. I was used to doing a nice little PDF invoice and sending it to people and receive a check in the mail eventually so it was…

Tom Reaoch:

Easy as that, right? [laughs]

Erica Winter:

Yeah, it was super, super easy to track my time spent and billing and to handle it all myself and here I, you know, I have someone that does all of this stuff for me even though I’m a micro-business here.

Tom Reaoch:

Well even for macro-business the thing is the same and I think one of the first things that I see business persons becoming aware of when they do come are these hurdles and many times they feel all of this bureaucracy is in place to help foment really the corruption, that’s not necessarily the case, it’s just the way it is, you just need all of this paper and all of these hand-stamps and everything and it all really takes time so and most of the public workers aren’t really interested in helping you either no matter what language you speak.

Erica Winter:

That’s true and one of my, the last hurdles that I had to, which was a surprise to me, was that my bank account, My Brazilian bank account which took a very long time to open, I billed someone and sent the bank account number and what I didn’t know was that there are two different types of bank accounts, a personal bank account and a business bank account, so my bank did not accept a transfer from a company that I had done work for because I used the wrong type of bank account, so then I had to open a [inaudible], a business account which took several more weeks, …

Tom Reaoch:

[laughs] And more paper.

Erica Winter:

The company wanted to pay me, yeah and more paper, more calls to the accountant, more stamped papers submitted and then three more weeks passed before I had this account in place.

Tom Reaoch:

All right, well just wait because in a short period of time one of the professional business associations or when we’re to call the professional sindicatos (ph) will be after you to become a member, you have to pay dues.

Erica Winter:

Yeah, I already got a bill in the mail or a few hundred [Reais] and it came as a bill to invite me and it came as a bill and saying that I owed X amount of money to them for you know, this union, which I’m not a member of, which I didn’t understand at all so of course I sent it to an accountant since he was on a retainer.

Tom Reaoch:

Well, you have to belong to some type of a company union, a business union and you have to pay, so that’s just the way it goes. Well, let me, this one point here we were talking about the president Dilma and we were talking about ethics, the questioned I asked you offline, are ethics gender oriented? Are men or women more or less ethical? Have you seen that though your experience in the World Bank?

Erica Winter:

Well that’s a great question, it takes me back to the early 1900s and the idea of the woman’s fear and women were considered to be more moral than men and they were held as higher, you know and it’s interesting so they were charged with education and teaching good to children and I don’t think that I can say either way that men or women are more moral. As again I mentioned earlier to you I thought, I see a lot more stories about men committing ethical breeches but as you, you know, rightly said, there are more men in business. So I think it’s the idea of kind of, it’s a funny idea, it’s entertaining like astrology I guess, [laughs] gender is, it’s important in business and it’s important for creativity to have diversity, I don’t think that a man is more evil than a woman or vice-versa, I have no stats to prove it…

Tom Reaoch:

But even if you look in a family situation and normally, and even today statistically there are more families being, more and more so, more families being run by women, you know, one- person households, but even through the development as children most of our orientation comes from mothers because you know, the father’s out working or doing something and normally it’s the mother that was close or is closer and really more responsible probably because of that presence of the moral orientation.

Erica Winter:

And maybe women have this biological need also to protect, to teach since these are children. There was a program, there’s a social program here where the women get their subsidies, they receive the family money, you know that’s the idea that you can trust a mother to make sure that their children will eat whereas the father is more likely to drink [inaudible] with their money.

Tom Reaoch:

Right, but again that’s something we’re going to have to talk more about in the future because even in, we’re talking about when you take morals in the situation to the sports level and soccer matches of the Brazilian football, we’re now seeing female referees and female line judges and actually calling the shots on the field against men in a football match in a soccer match and even when we look at sports as a--from the ethical standpoint or the corruption standpoint, again there are fewer women in it but I think women seem to have more respect even as a referee or as a line judge.

Erica Winter:

That’s a really interesting idea and in speaking of Brazilian soccer, you know there’s always that guy who’s drying himself down and you know feigning injury.

Tom Reaoch:

Right, feigning injury and whatever and theatrical and, that’s true.

Erica Winter:

And that’s considered part of the game here, where, you know, I don’t really respect that personally you know, you’re not supposed to do that.

Tom Reaoch:

Does that go back to business, what you’re not supposed to do and what you do are two different things and some of those things are acceptable at a business sense?

Erica Winter:

Well that’s, you know, that’s kind of, you know, we read about something today, corruption in Brazil…

Tom Reaoch:

Right, on the Brazilbusiness.com, he came out with everyday corruption in Brazil and what he mentioned was that the truth of most Brazilians are fine with corruption as he stated as long as it benefits them.

Erica Winter:

As long as they get their cut. I don’t know that that’s necessarily true, that was the argument in this article, this idea that you know, a lot of companies are just meal tickets and this is [inaudible] that they’ll buy you lunch and a lot of the labor contracts include that and so staff will go out and they’ll have lunch and they might only spend 15 [Reais] on their lunch and maybe their max benefit is 25, so there’s an agreement between the cashier and the employee having lunch that, let’s, bill me for the full max value and I’ll give you an extra nice tip. You know I haven’t seen this here but I remember from my time living in Argentina there were a lot of trading of these lunch tickets, a lot of people were trading tickets for different things and I think you see that, you know you see that in the U.S. too with the meal vouchers.

Tom Reaoch:

But that’s going to be another interview we’re going to have to have because--is there a gender bias, my question then would be are Latins more or less ethical than Anglo-Saxons or Asians? How’s that for a question?

Erica Winter:

Oh that’s a tough question there. I think that there are good people and bad people everywhere and there are also good people who do bad things everywhere for different reasons, you know people feel financial pressures to do wrong things or they fear of losing their jobs if they don’t meet certain goals or make their employers happy in one way or another or their direct supervisors and so they do wrong things for different reasons and some people do bad things because you know, they’re bad.

Tom Reaoch:

Well we’ve seen that here in the news and many times uses a reference you know is a mother, is it considered a crime or unethical for a mother to steal food to feed her children if they’re starving? So those are the types of questions that sometimes very difficult to answer, and many times in the company people feel that, “Well I’m taking or I’m doing something because I’m either feeding my children or I’m paying for their education and sort of things that things are all right because of that.

Erica Winter:

That’s the kid of question that’s more understandable when there’s a fear of losing your job or if someone’s stealing because they need to be able to feed their child or to make that rent or else their family will be on the street, it’s less understandable when you’ve stolen six Mercedes and you’ve given them to each of your relatives and they’re wearing lots of diamonds, that’s less understandable, you know, no one’s going to empathize with that kind of a criminal. It’s interesting and Brazil is reaching the place economically now where it’s no longer acceptable to steal and to commit these ethical breeches, it‘s starting--you know, Brazil is a serious country now…

Tom Reaoch:

And has to clean up its act, that’s true, I think so.

Erica Winter:

It has to clean up. You know, one thing that really shook me and this is not due to the fact some, but it speaks to society as a whole was the murder of the judge in Rio. She was a mother of three, she was cleaning up corruption and she’d passed a verdict against policemen for killing a man in a [inaudible], a young man and she was brought down by what 20 bullets or something and each one the autopsy showed that they were in fact shot from a police issued gun, so the police mowed a down judge for trying to clean up corruption and this is a huge scandal but I wish it was a bigger scandal.

Tom Reaoch:

Well I think it’s not over, I think finally, and this is probably what has come out in some of the newspapers and maybe even has lead the Folha de São Paulo as you mentioned, I do feel, even the young person in general are starting to react to this; not only the young people but sincer there’s social media, there are different actions now coming against corruption and against these types of things so I do feel a movement and really it’s that level, it’s a protest from the voting public that will help make change, so I personally feel that Brazilians are waking up to that, right? It’s school level, business level, wherever.

Erica Winter:

And they need to be held to a higher standard, judges and policemen and publically elected officials and teachers too, they all need to be held to a higher level because of the role they play in society, because if their function.

Tom Reaoch:

Well Erica I want to thank you, we’ve run out of our time again and generally happens in all of our interviews, but I do want to have you back in the future as there’s so many different things we can talk about and this is certainly an interesting topic for all of our listeners so we will have you back we want to talk about some of these other things in the future, okay?

Erica Winter:

Great, thank you so much, thank for your time.