Managerial Styles in Privately Owned Domestic Organizations in Russia: Heterogeneity, Antecedents, and Organizational Implications

Abstract

ABSTRACTDrawing on a dataset consisting of 344 personal interviews, participant observations, and internal documents collected in 26 privately owned business organizations in Russia, the study aims at complementing existing research on Russian indigenous management in three ways. First, it examines the managerial styles of key individuals (i.e. owners and/or CEOs) in the case organizations. Hence, it taps into the existing heterogeneity of managerial styles, the so-called groupvergence, found in contemporary Russian organizations, and documents their idiosyncratic features, such as the transformational nature of authoritarian leadership. Second, the study explores the antecedents of the identified styles to establish what factors contribute to their emergence and thus sheds light on how the heterogeneous managerial styles in Russian organizations come into existence. Finally, the study investigates how the identified styles manifest themselves in organizations by influencing organizational goals and strategies, organizational structures, supporting mechanisms, relationships between organizational members, and reward systems. It therefore elaborates on the organizational implications of the styles and highlights the mechanisms of their sustainable diffusion to lower organizational levels in Russian organizations.