Page 51 - Crossing Cultural Boundaries - Cees den Teuling

future, while maintaining the connections with the history of the country, Russian culture, in general, prioritises the existential believe that truth depends really much on situation, context and time. Russian citizens learned from their experiences in the past decades and adjust themselves to changing conditions with no voiced opposition in the public sphere and, at the same time, keep maintaining and cherishing traditions. There is a thriftiness and perseverance in achieving results and a strong direction to acquire short-term benefits but, rather in contrast, also in saving and investing.
Russia scores rather low (20) on the Indulgence-Restraint dimension (Germany 40, the Netherlands 68). Societies with a low score in this dimension tend to cynicism, pessimism and negativism, in contrast with indulgent societies and cultures. People with a restraint culture orientation have the perception that their activities and actions are restrained by social norms and don’t feel comfortable while indulging themselves. No much emphasis is put on the control of gratification for themselves and on the pleasure of enjoying leisure time.
In the underlying study, the option is to formulate recommendations for the effective and efficient transfer of managerial knowledge, among other approaches, based on the dimension’s scores of Hofstede applied to Russia.
However, it should be taken into consideration that despite the fact that ethnic Russians are the majority of the population and the Russian language is the “Lingua Franca” of the Russian territory, the Russian nation is a multi-cultural construct, consisting out of in total 89 republics and autonomous regions. There are nearly one hundred officially registered ethnic and indigenous communities and tribes. Hofstede, with his approach to study culture on the national level only, neglects this fact. Additionally, despite the predominant position of the Orthodox Christianity in Russia and the intertwined relationship with the government and state institutions, a variety of religious dominations are allowed and present in Russia. In reaction to Hofstede’s position, the researcher of the underlying study shares the opinion of Bergelson (2003), Beugelsdijk, Mazeland, Onrust, van Hoorn and Slangen (2015), McSweeney (2002) and other authors, according to which Russia should be partially or fully valued by the assumption that there is not a unified Russian NC, but rather a multi-ethnic, multi- religion, tribal and clan-oriented assembly of variances of cultures, despite the fact that the Russian State institutions use the dominant position, e.g. through the media, to promote all-Russian heritage, traditions and way-of-life. In this study, all efforts are made to specify regional cultural effects and their influences on the trans-boundary KT process by conducting research on organisational level with involvement of recipients
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