Page 58 - Crossing Cultural Boundaries - Cees den Teuling

knowledge recipient in one or multiple advisory processes, involving (foreign) consultants, in the recent decades.
Developments, presently visible in Russian society are not new and are largely rooted in the traditional ancient culture. For example, back in the 18th century Peter the Great (1672-1725) used to tell his ministers that “everything, what seems new or is new, even if it is good or necessary, will not be accepted by the people unless they are forced to do so” (Massie, 1982, p. 656).
Without considering the background of the historical and current developments, tensions and clashing cultures, (foreign) advisors, consultants and professionals in their “métier” are in danger of finding themselves in "cross-cultural" minefields. They frequently face the existence of double agendas and situations where their motives are considered doubtful. The existence of such pitfalls and minefields makes it necessary to discuss two issues. The first is, that when originated from foreign countries, the consultants’ awareness and knowledge about Russian Management is limited and fragmented. The peculiarities of its rapid development in the growing free market (neo- capitalist) conditions existing in the Russian Federation are predominantly unknown. The second issue is, that the transfer (translation) of managerial and business oriented knowledge is not a one-way process anymore, as it was a common practice in the 1990’s. It can be predicted, that exchange of knowledge, information and understanding will be the “buzzword” in the relationship between the outside world and Russia in the upcoming years, despite political frictions and the lack of mutual cultural awareness.
More ingrained and detailed research is requested, especially with regard to the mutual behaviour, assumptions and motivations of the actors in the KT process. It can be concluded that clear understanding of the causes of existing obstacles and misapprehensions will raise the opportunity to position (foreign) consultants better and significantly enhance the effectiveness of interactions with the Russian managers (Holden et al., 1998; Gurkov, 1999).
Since the current research is focused on the for-profit organisations in the Russian Federation, it should be acknowledged that, despite the growing interactions in the past decades, there still is a distant captivity, even though it mainly exists in the minds of people. There is still an invisible obstacle resulted by the mind-sets, which is separating Russians and the representatives of the free-market economies. As far as this research is focused on Russia, the multi-ethnic culture is taken in consideration. In the following section the specifics of OC in connection with the process of transferring managerial knowledge is addressed (Hill, Frimston & Sitco-Lutek, 2003).
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