Page 172 - Crossing Cultural Boundaries - Cees den Teuling

improving the respondents’ knowledge during the Presidential Programme (p = .003). The impact was positive (b = .192) and particularly high F-ratio (9.435) suggested that the model was good and observed variances are not incidental.
The participants of the in-depth interviews and the focus group session stressed the view that the insights learned from the KT processes, whether by the visiting advisor at the home organisation or by the involvement in the education and the traineeship in a host-company in a foreign country were affected by their own attitudes, norms and behaviours, stemming from the environment and the OC in the Russian home- organisation. In general, they experienced smaller to larger gaps between their own positions and the positions of the consultant/advisor, in the approach to and implementation of the KT processes.
The vice-president of a Czech-Russian joint venture declared: “Organisational culture is mixed with influences of both Western and Russian elements (flexibility and at the same time good knowledge of Russian mentality and local peculiarities). Western elements have been successfully adapted to Russian conditions. There is structure what allows to control the employees, however self-development is encouraged and in terms of matters of personal responsibility, everyone is left on his own; i.e. if someone is in charge of a particular task, he/she decides how to best handle it. The company promotes business-thinking and sets the goals. Results are important, no so much the way that they are achieved”.
The Propositions 3a and 3b are accepted.
5.2 The effect of the management and communication styles on the Knowledge Transfer in Russian organisations
Participants in the Presidential Programme are supposedly affected by specific factors in the home-organisation’s culture in their attempts to inform the management of the home-organisation about their experiences in the Programme and the host- organisations.
The ability of the respondents to inform the management of their organisation about their experiences in the Presidential Programme was not determined in statistically significant manner by dominant style of management and communication in the organisation (p = .689 and 0.346 respectively), as well as states of being partly open in terms of innovations to other employees and other departments (p = .459), sharing innovations with suppliers and distributors (p = .406), sharing innovations with the business sector and through media (p = .723), preferring the way the respondents use to
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