ABSTRACT
This puzzle was brought out by a comparison of top management deci sion making in Brazil and England. Decision making at this level involves a number of individuals, sometimes just a few, sometimes many and the weighing of the interests involved, which again may be few or many (across 150 British cases reported by Hickson et al. (1986) the number of interests ranged from two to twenty, a mean of almost seven). It is a socio political process, of a kind which a priori would be thought to be highly susceptible to the influence of societal culture.
