ABSTRACT
In Chapter 8, a comparison was made between sources of influence over small business managers in the wood manufacturing industry in Chile and Sweden. The comparison suggested that the Chilean managers tend to have a less dense contact structure whereas the corresponding managers in the Swedish firms had more variety and closeness in their networks. The difference may be attributed to a variety of factors ranging from sheer chance to culture. A high score of uncertainty avoidance for Chile and other Latin American countries, which Hofstede defined as the extent to which the members of a culture feel threatened by unknown or uncertain situations, may reduce the degree of trust between business actors.
