In the course “Understanding Russians: Contexts of Intercultural Communications": we will: 1) Build skills in the analysis of the intercultural communication process using Russian-Western communication as an example. 2) Apply the knowledge of interrelations between different contexts of communication (cultural, institutional, professional, social, interpersonal, etc.) to the cultural history and national psychology of Russians. The purpose of the course is to provide the students with a broad overview of the basic principles governing the past, the present and the future interactions between Russia and the West, with a focus on the culture and national psychology of Russians and Western Europeans. For example, we will look at the cases when basic cultural values of Russians show up through the linguistic choices shaping language production which is consequently misattributed by Western partners. No matter what the language of intercultural communication is – Russian, or English – the meaning of many linguistic expressions may be reconstructed wrongly by the representatives of another culture. Some of the basic questions we will tackle are: • What are the concepts of culture that have the strongest influence on communication? • What are Russian basic cultural values and how they shape modern Russian consciousness? • What are the specific communication patterns of modern Russians, including those of public and electronic discourse? • What is important to know about communication with Russians in organizational contexts? Importantly, this course is NOT just a list of practical instructions of dos and don’ts of dealing with Russians. The course contains a substantial academic component introducing the key notions and concepts of the Theory of Communication, which will be extensively introduced throughout the first few modules of the course. These theoretical grounds will be further on used as a tool for analyzing the intercultural communications with Russians.
5.3. Russian Management Culture
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来自 National Research University Higher School of Economics 的课程
Understanding Russians: Contexts of Intercultural Communication
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National Research University Higher School of Economics
39 个评分
从本节课中
Communication in Organizational Contexts
This week of the course is devoted to Russian communication in organizational contexts. Organizations are crucial: they shape culture and are shaped by culture. You will learn how Russian organizational culture developed throughout Russian history and how it influenced the way today's Russians behave in organizational and buziness environment. Our guests Michael Johnston and Ilya Gnoensky will add to the discussion by sharing their impressions on the Russian corporate culture and management styles.
与讲师见面
Mira BergelsonProfessor
Philological Faculty
[MUSIC]
Let's now move on from the concept of organizational
culture to what we understand as culture of management.
Why this, is the case, why we need this?
Probably because the culture of management and
changes in the Russian management culture, are one of those most demanded
applications of the fear of intercultural communication that was visible,
was obvious for the last 20 years since the new Russia started.
Also we will be discussing this in a way to say dynamically.
I will always use the tape in the early period.
Later on now because this 20-something years that are called the newest or
the modern Russian history where Russia emerged after the collapse
of the Soviet Union really are characterized with dramatic changes and
tremendous revolutionary changes in all aspects of Russian life.
As I said, the first practical aspect of the interest to
inter-culture communication with Russians would normally emerge as an application of
this knowledge, of this information, to simple things.
How to do business with Russians.
Because that's how, what started when the iron curtain was
lifted or destroyed and Russia
started to be integrated into the global world.
Much of what I will be saying now is taken, is based on,
a wonderful book, Dealing With the New Russia: Management Cultures
in Collision by Nigel Holden, Cooper and Carr.
It was published in 1998, and it describes this early period of
the most dynamic, and where most tectonic changes were taking place.
This dynamic period of Russia opening its markets, its
workforce, to the absolutely new world of modern capitalism,
modern global world and so on and so forth, and,
a lot of what's been written, then at that time, is very characteristic,
not only of the process happening within Russia, but also it's characteristic of
the stereotypes and views that those who are writing about Russia had at that time.
I will point to some of these statements
that we need to look at them not only from the point of view of what they describe,
but also from the prospective of those who describe them.
So starting, basing our discussion on this book, we can say that what happened
in the last 20 something years in Russia are transformations which no
country in the history of the humanity had ever embarked on before.
Because it happened on all possible levels of societal structure, societal life.
It was a transformation, and when we say transformation, we understand radical
change, not just changes, but something that really changed it completely.
It was at first, transformation of a political system.
That this transformation was meant to eventually lead to a pluralist society.
Second, from command to market economy.
Again with virtually 100% state ownership of the means of production
to a market economy with a substantial private sector.
Not many people in the West know that,
overnight, citizens of Russian federation, for instance,
got the right to become the owners of the places where they lived before.
Until that moment, they didn't own anything but
when they woke up in the morning, they had an opportunity for
free, to become house owners, apartment owners.
That was a good thing.
But there were also things that were happening overnight that were not so good.
For instance, they would wake up one morning and find out everything that been
put aside for their pensions, all their savings were just annihilated.
So that was another side of it.
The third aspect of this transformation, I said there were four of them.
New federal relations between the center and the hundred and
more sizable ethnic groups and nationalities.
And this meant that it was also
new federal relations to be built in the country.
It was to build from scratch.
Yet another transformation was the transformation of foreign policy.
Partly by a desire to improve relations with the west and
partly out of recognition of the fact that the USSR that was
collapsing at that moment could no longer afford it's huge military expenditure.
So these on top of this there were significant dramatic cultural changes
because the loss of the ideology that held together Soviet Union robbed people of,
many people, of something that they believed in the whole of their lives.
And that created the cultural climate important for
an individual not to feel lonely in the world.
None of these changes,
none of this dramatic tectonic changes went entirely well.
Some of the problems have deeply cultural reasons.
So that the history the culture of the receding events were,
Were designed in such a way that there was no other way out.
It couldn't end well so to say,
but others, of this problem, others are temporal.
And we want to look at what could be done and couldn't and
wasn't and what couldn't be done and developed in the way it developed.
The question is then, how temporal,
how temporal are the problems that Russian society, Russian people, Russian nation,
Russian government understand as problems that have to be overcome?
And they say okay, just give us time, give us time.
So the question is how much time we need?
How temporal are the problems?
And what else will be needed to overcome them,
in order to become a prosperous nation that is happy.
I'm not saying anything about affluence, about political influence.
We're talking in purely cultural terms.
So for a culture to feel self sufficient.
To feel quiet because it's members understand who they are, what they want,
why they live in this world, what they would pass on to their children.
This feeling of self-assuredness that comes also from economic well-being,
a feeling of political security, and most important is this feeling,
again I will repeat this word of self-assuredness,
of probably actualization and
realization itself as a culture, it means also ideology in many other things.
So, how temporal?
How much time we need to do this?
Our leader say well, give Russia another 20 years.
Well we already had 20 years maybe we should speak in terms of generations
another generation, but this is not an easy question because these are typical
Russian questions coming from the 19th century.
For instance in the 19th century two important
Russian novels were called What to Do and and Who is to Blame.
And it's a Russian joke that whenever anything happens we start
with who is to blame and only then decide what to do.
As I said the titles of the important novels by Herzen and
Chernyshevsky respectively.
So Russian development started in these
tectonic changes, in these revolutionary changes, we can say.
Though we are happy the development was more or less evolutionary.
This development was taking place between two extremes.
Between trying to get back to what it was and how it was because,
okay, past was better, and between another extreme, let's go fast as possible,
let's forget our past as fast as possible because this is the way to the future.
So between these past and future orientations,
we could say in a cultural sense.
And the question that also arises here, when you discuss these issues.
And these discussions are very topical for the Russian society for
the Russian culture because as I said, the national ideology,
the communist ideology was destroyed and people found themselves
robbed of you know, this cloud of ideas,
this clothing of ideas and thoughts and
beliefs that actually makes you feel cozy in your life, because when all of this
is sort of taken off from you, you feel naked in the wind.
The question was, what heritage we look back at even if
we want to build on this heritage because we have to start building on something.
So what heritage, Soviet or Russian?
And then this heritage is here to blame or it is here to praise.
So these are the questions that Russian society has not completely solved for
itself even now, but especially in the 90s it was a very acute question.
I would like to quote, you'll see this quote here on the slide,
a quote from Nigel, Holden, Carr, a book that I'm using here.
Because it really reflects what most,
the major part of Russian society felt.
So, I'm quoting, the world
never paid enough tribute to the enormity of what has been done and suffered.
As a Russian citizen, I feel this is very true.
This is one of the feelings that underlie the Russian
negative attitude towards how the West sees Russia.
Like they don't know how much we actually did and
how much we suffered while doing this.
Partly if we remember the word perestroika,
I'm not sure that all of you know what it means.
This is a Russian word which describes the period that was immediately
before the Soviet Union collapsed, when the society, the party leaders,
the communist party leaders started the discussions about how to rebuild.
This is the word perestroika means rebuilding, reconstructing
the Russian economy, the Soviet economy at the time, the Soviet life.
So this period of life can actually might have led to another Yugoslavia.
And Russians understand that they were, in a way,
very lucky that it in fact didn't happen.
Skills that when needed to start to rebuild or to build from the scratch
this new economy based not on the command and planned economical ideas,
but of the free market which was believed at that time would fix everything.
These skills our we're not there actually because
in order to do this you need people who could start this new process, but
it's interesting that post Soviet manager
was deficient in such skills as marketing human resource management.
Generally in all soft management skills, they were, they didn't know about
business strategy, the ideas of financial management were very different from what
this free market who came into Russia with its international companies with its
means of production with its services with its marketing strategies.
They were not aware of it because this plan and
command economy the Soviet Union lived with was very different form that.
So their skills were not there.
It's funny that all these areas that I mentioned, marketing,
human resource business strategy and financial management.
All these areas actually require good planning skills.
Though we lived in the Soviet Union,
we lived in the sodis called planned economy, this planning skills,
this idea of strategic planning for future was deficient.
To understand how the so called post-Soviet
managers were actually looking at the field in which they were working,
how they approach this immense job of restructuring the economy and
getting to work together with their foreign counterparts, we need to look at
main cultural obstacles that actually prevented them from acquiring new skills.
And this cultural obstacles are actually the heritage of traditional and
Soviet cultures, not all of them, of course, but some of them
where underlying the specific business practices and management practices.
I will list some of these as they're listed in Holden Kerr and Copper book.
And try to relate to link them to those basic
values of Russian culture that we've been discussing before.
So first trait that is considered to be heritage of traditional
and/or Soviet culture is deep mistrust between the authorities and the people.
And part of it developed into the general pessimism of Russian people, so to say.
Well, we see the link here with that basic value that was called
believing that the world is not so practical, that it's so
rational that we can actually prevent things from going bad.
Or in terms of cultural orientations model that we used it's the orientation that
means constrained in the relationship between the person and the nature.
Then, lack of critical thinking and negotiation skills.
As part of something that is extremely important in the free economy and
the free society.
But that wasn't needed in the society where ideology dominated
the life when there were ideas, communist ideas,
socialist ideas, that were just dogma that didn't need any discussion,
you didn't have to have critical thinking skills
in terms of making your work, your enterprise, your organization successful,
you also didn't need much negotiation because everything was planned for you.
No respect for laws and rules, which is also often stated as characteristic of
Russians in organizational context comes from a deep rooted
practice of deceiving high authorities, to color the truth, to use roundabout ways.
Well, aren't Russians liars?
Not exactly.
It also comes from the idea that this is us, and them.
That this is the main division in Russian society.
That each person believes that this is us and this is them, the authorities,
or whoever, the opponents.
Because they represent the outer world, and
the outer world is something that creates problems, imposes constraints on us, but
not provides opportunities challenges for performing things.
And also partly because this deep mistrust of authorities,
in great part, really well-deserved prevents people from
cooperating within an organization into a single team.
It's always dividing borders that pose us and them.
Mistrust of commercial activities or relying on other systems of survival which
is yet another trait which is not very helpful and very useful in
the free market economy comes from certain deeply
rooted cultural ideas about the importance
of the spiritual world, we discussed it also already
and that's not very important aspects of material life.
Because material life was always rather hard in the history of Russians.
They lived not very well and because of that,
being really happy, being satisfied, meant the importance
of the spiritual world as opposed to the material one.
Yet another problem for
the global economy is really a problem is deep interethnic problems.
Including borders that the problem of borders that
were present in the former Soviet post former Soviet Union territory
where new states emerged.
That was also something that wouldn't allow the really nice and
fast flow influx of Western managerial culture and
Western organizations into this area.
And then, of course, to put it all together, to recall it with one word
it was basically the immensity and radical character of cultural
transformations that were taking place, that were not letting people see the,
you know, the way of life straight and understanding what they want to achieve.
It was also something that was creating
cultural obstacles preventing
an easy transition to the free world
as we were seeing it at that time.
[NOISE]
[MUSIC]
