Page 174 - Crossing Cultural Boundaries - Cees den Teuling

5.2.1 The effect of Consultants’ style on the Knowledge Transfer
The participants of the in-depth interviews and the focus group sessions in majority stressed the importance for the foreign consultants to be acquainted with the Russian culture and its peculiarities and the internal environment of the Russian organisations to be prepared and to be able to a successful transfer of knowledge, For example, as stated by a Head of Department of an educational institution stated: “There is a need for twofold understanding of the differences in culture and an open mind to accept these differences”. A Director of a Garment producing company declared that “Differences in the mentality and the bureaucratic system among others, between the Russian reality and the expectations of the probable Western partner, hampered the creation of a joint- venture for production. Difference in organisational culture was enormous, though I don’t know whether experts knew the local conditions and mentality, but they were comfortable with local businessmen who were all self-made people”.
Relationship between the docent and participant of the Presidential Programme
The collaboration between the participants in the training and advisory programmes with the instructors and supervisors was studied in both surveys.
The fact that the docents and the respondents agreed on what was important had a statistically significant impact on the fact that respondents improved their knowledge about business as a result of their participation in the Presidential Programme (p = .000). B-coefficient equal to 0.306 suggested that the relationship was positive, meaning that the increase in the degree of such agreement brought about the increase in the degree of improvement of respondents’ business knowledge and vice versa. High F- ratio (18.943) suggested that observed variances were not incidental. The abovementioned fact had a statistically significant effect also on the ability of respondents to develop the necessary skills to implement new business knowledge to their home-organisation in Russia during their internship at the foreign host-company (p = .003). Positive relationship with b-coefficient equal to 0.349 suggested that the higher was such an agreement the higher was ability to develop the necessary skills to implement new business knowledge. F-ration was equal to 9.309 indicating that observed variances were very likely to be not incidental. At the same time, the fact that the docents and the respondents agreed on what was important had no statistically significant impact on the change of the way of “doing things” as a result of respondents’ participation in the Presidential Programme (p = .281).
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