ABSTRACT
As a multinational corporation manager, have you ever put yourself in the position of the multiple civil servants and government agencies with whom you will be dealing upon arrival in the host developing country? It is a useful exercise. They are often incredibly poor, surrounded by (and involved in) corruption, operating in a severely dysfunctional bureaucracy, and with very low levels of autonomy (we have been to places where the government minister allocated the car parking spaces because no one below him was willing or able to make the decision). More often than not (and certainly at the more senior levels), they will be well-intentioned and capable people, simply captured by the structures within which they find themselves. Some of them will have a sense of perspective of their own situation and some will have no other reference points.
