Icelandic and Spanish employees 9
teaching and training in Iceland. The break turned out to be 20-23 minutes as the participants
just left and came back one by one, so he eventually decided to skip the breaks altogether.
In terms of decision-making and planning, the Icelandic interviewees expressed
dissatisfaction with the Spaniards because they were not sticking to previously-agreed decisions
and they believed that the Spaniards were purposely keeping ends open and deliberately causing
delays so they could make changes as they found necessary. Moreover, the Icelanders
complained that the Spaniards didn’t seem to plan ahead of time, and if they did, the plan would
probably change. The Icelanders were uncertain how to react in these kinds of situations as they
did not want to appear too pushy or too eager to make decisions, and they did not know if the
Spaniards had changed their mind or if they were not interested in the issue any more.
The scholarly research documents that Spaniards work sometimes at a slower pace than
Icelanders in that they take a two hour lunch break to catch up on the personal news of their
coworkers, read the newspaper and run errands (Wattley-Ames, 1999). On the other hand,
Icelanders have this so-called “fisherman mentality.” A typical fisherman, as Eyjolfsdottir and
Smith explain, goes fishing hoping for fast results…”he is flexible and will work hard when the
fishing season is good” (p. 69-70). Thus, they are eager to get the work done and tend to be
impatient when they sense that people are beating around the bush instead of focusing on the
project until it is completed. Both the Icelanders and the Spaniards plan meetings in advance, but
the latter do not necessarily start the meetings on time. In contrast to the Spaniards expectations,
the Icelanders expect the goals set for the meeting to be kept, not expecting any changes. On the
other hand, Spaniards expect some changes to be made to the original plan, at least for the first
meeting where they want to develop trust and good friendship which can take some time and
thus the meeting can start and end later than anticipated (Cultural Advice-Spain, 2006).
Convention