Page 163 - Crossing Cultural Boundaries - Cees den Teuling

culture on the organisation’s culture (p = .641 and p = .596); the influence of the male/female staff composition on the organisation’s culture (p = .641 and p=.596); the influence of foreign (non-Russian) workers on the organisation’s culture (p=0.491 and p = .760); the influence of the connections/cooperation with global (Western and Asian) business partners on the organisation’s culture (p= .323 and p = .524)).
The participants of the in-depth interviews and the focus group session stressed that in general, management styles in organisations, existing attitudes, norms and behaviours are severely influenced by the Russian NC and contain totalitarian elements as prevalent in the overall Russian society. Direction and development strategy and the style of communication with and between the employees depend mainly on the Director.
A Manager of an educational institute declared that “The style of management depends on circumstances, but I believe that sometimes it is necessary to be tough”.
The Director of an agricultural cooperative mentioned that “The director decides everything, the whole strategy and the direction of development. As the things are in Russia, the style of management is totalitarian”.
According to the owner/director of a transport services stated: “Every manager in Russia chooses an individual management style, but it is primarily based on respect and discipline”.
The managers of a chain of drugstores declared that “A formalised style of management is implemented based on Russian values with no freedom implied for the sales personnel and with only some freedom of decision making for managers”.
The Proposition 2.1a is accepted and 2.1b is rejected.
As a conclusion, it can be said that there are more or less equal amounts of progressive and non-progressive, supportive and non-supportive organisations. In the meantime, stable, non-disruptive, non-laisser-faire and non-chaotic environments are more common in Russian Organisations than non-stable, disruptive, laisser-faire and chaotic respectively. Negative phenomena common for transition economies also exist in Russian organisations, but based on the literature review, found less frequent than argued. A little more than a half of the studied organisations had consultative and participative style of management, while in another large group it was directive and top- down. In the majority of cases the level of trust and knowledge sharing between employee from the same department was high. In contrast, the trust and openness between employees and managers was rated as moderate by more than a half of the survey participants.
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