Modern Russian business culture: “special” path of development or borrowing “other people’s” management practices?

Abstract

In recent years, scientific discussions have intensified about the "special" way of development of Russia, the need to preserve the national identity and the harm of reckless copying and borrowing of "alien" practices in the political, economic, cultural spheres, about the need to return to traditional spiritual and moral values. The Russian business culture has an interesting history of formation: the pre-revolutionary period with a special business code and reliance on the values of Orthodoxy; the Soviet period with the values of collectivism, the priority of the common over the private, strict hierarchical order; the early post-Soviet period with non-systematic attempts to raise "western" companies from Soviet enterprises, "blind" copying Western business experience, privatization and the destruction of the "old order" and paternalistic system of relations with power; finally, the current period of development of Russian business culture, when as a result of the first rapid intensification of international activity and the strengthening of contacts with foreign organizations, and then forced break of business ties with "unfriendly" organizations a rather distinctive business culture with a number of specific features and characteristic "ambiguity" (at the same time collectivism and individualism, masculinity and femininity, task and human orientation, monoactivity and polyactivity, polysynchronous organization of working time, long-term and short-term orientation, combination of centralization and decentralization, orientation on individual achievement and status). Characteristic features of modern Russian business culture are high distance of authority and acceptance by individuals of the established hierarchical order, respect for status, dependence of business on power, negative attitude to risk and change on the part of the staff and calm perception of uncertainty by managers, active use of informal ties and reliance on interpersonal relations in business interaction, high context of culture, particularism, etc.