page_title: Ignacio Hernando de Larramendi y Montiano
section_title: MAPFRE: corporate success factors
hierarchical_section_title: Ignacio Hernando de Larramendi y Montiano / MAPFRE: corporate success factors
caption_attribution_description: Español: Barcelona - Torre Mapfre
context_page_description: Ignacio Hernando de Larramendi y Montiano was a Spanish entrepreneur, Carlist militant and author. Larramendi was as a longtime head of MAPFRE and is often counted among 100 most influential Spanish businessmen of the 20th century. He is recognized as sponsor and organizer of multifold initiatives related to Hispanic culture, mostly in Latin America. He briefly rose to Carlist executive, but is better known as engaged in promotion of Traditionalist heritage.
context_section_description: Larramendi is counted among the 100 most influential Spanish managers of the 20th century. When inquired about his success as a manager, Larramendi usually pointed to HR-related factors, principally the internal code of conduct he introduced, at that time unheard of in corporative business and responsible for emergence of a new breed of employees, called mafristas. The code was supposed to reflect moral values he adhered to, first of all mutual respect, transparency and integrity. He also emphasized the importance of delegating, de-centralised management and responsiveness to what he called an anarchist realm of individual initiatives and ideas, the model now firmly incorporated in change management manuals as "emergent change" and opposed to "planned change".
  Indeed, business historians agree that Larramendi's approach to human factor was key; importing mechanisms he learnt in Britain and the US, he introduced modern HR management with career paths, training plans, supervision, mentoring and other techniques, apart from preference for recruiting university graduates. That was part of his general mindset, default in case of present-day managers though absent at that time, focused at holistic realm of stakeholders – employees, owners, customers, suppliers, everyone affected – instead of merely shareholders. It is also confirmed that decentralized management with regional direcciones generales instead of delegados provinciales  and full managerial accountability with little cross-subsidizing contributed to internal efficiency of operations. He is credited for developing a business model dubbed "specialized diversification", allowing customer focus, reduced back-office and increased economics of scale by taking advantage of numerous shared services. 
  Larramendi is also deemed responsible for introducing to Spain a number of features specific for insurance and financial markets, be it new products like travel assistance plans for motorists or home assistance programs for home owners, new corporative techniques like risk management, broadening scope of activities to entirely new areas and a new strategic customer interface concept of "one-stop financial shopping". His focus on accessible and accurate information, bordering obsession, led to leadership in terms of technology; MAPFRE was the second company in Spain to introduce telex and among the first ones to embrace broad-scale digital data storage techniques.
  MAPFRE success in Latin America is deemed perfect illustration of John Duning's "eclectic paradigm" theory, with ownership advantages, location advantages and internalization advantages all combined and exploited to the utmost. Another concept referred to is Richard Caves' "intangible assets theory"; in case of Larramendi it would be selection of risks (with focus on re-insurance, direct insurance and assistance), HR management and especially banking on cultural proximity, which allowed MAPFRE to outpace other, especially US-based competitors. He was acknowledged with a number of national and international corporate honors, e.g. Golden Medal of International Insurance Seminar Founder's Award (1986) and Medalla de Oro del Seguro Español (1987).
caption: Torre Mapfre, Barcelona
exif: {}