Page 20 - Crossing Cultural Boundaries - Cees den Teuling

awareness, lean cost structure, an advanced distribution network, intellectual and
emotional capacity and customer orientation (adapted from investpedia.com).
• Comparative advantage: Organisations should always look at the results of competing organisations to determine the “comparative advantage” as this can provide a “defense line” and a benchmark, to be compared with competitors.
(researcher’s definition, adapted from businessdictionary.com).
• Familyism: The promotion of familial relations, inside the organisation, with
connections to “nepotism” and “clientism” (researcher’s definition).
• Knowledge hoarding: Knowledge acquired during someone’s employment is the property of the organisation, rather than the employee. However, some employees perceive the developed knowledge as their individual intellectual property and are not intended to share with co-workers in the organisation. The phenomenon of not sharing or hiding information, is defined as “knowledge hoarding” (researcher’s
definition).
• Knowledge management: Strategies and processes designed to identify, capture,
structure, value, leverage, and share an organisation’s intellectual assets to enhance its performance and competiveness. It is based on the critical activities: (i) capture and documentation of individual explicit and tacit knowledge, and (ii) its dissemination within the organisation (adopted from businessdictionary.com).
• Knowledge transfer processes: The ability to transfer knowledge from one unit to another has been found to contribute to the performance of organisations in both the manufacturing and service sectors. Although the benefits of knowledge transfer have been documented in many settings, the effectiveness of knowledge transfer varies considerably among organisations (Argote, 1999; Szulanski, 1996).
• Recipient: represents the organisations and enterprises, owners, managers and employees which are a subject to receive knowledge from transmitters.
• Russia: represents the Russian Federation, including the autonomic republics and regions.
• Transmitter: represents the management-business consultants, trainers and advisors, which are distributing knowledge to recipients.
• Westerner/Western: (i) A native or inhabitants of the western hemisphere especially of Western Europe or North America. (ii) Originated from Western Europe or North America, a culture, based on liberal and democratic values (oxford dictionary.com).
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