Business Culture In Putin S Russia

This book examines how Russia’s entrepreneurs operate in a business environment beset with risk and uncertainty. The challenges they may encounter include an unreliable judicial system, insecure property rights, arbitrary interference from officials, as well as corruption, harassment, suspicion and violence. Based on extensive original research, including fieldwork within three businesses, this book explores how entrepreneurs survive and some thrive. It focuses on the kind of obstacles they face from day to day, details their motivations, rationale and methods, and describes the actual relationship between ordinary entrepreneurs and the state, providing new insights into business-state relations.

Seminar paper from the year 2006 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: 1,5, Reutlingen University (Production Management), language: English, abstract: The globalization of the economy and the constantly growing cooperation across national and cultural borders in education, business, science and technology foster increasing de-pendencies among nations. Furthermore, it necessitates a heightened awareness for inter-cultural issues and a substantial competence to deal with intercultural problems in political, educational, business and science organizations for the individuals involved. Political devel-opments like the unification process in Europe call into questions long established features and boundaries of national identity. Especially, the fall of the Iron curtain suddenly enabled close neighbors who had been separated for roughly two generations and who lost their knowledge of each other, if not, under the influence of the long ideological confrontation, even developed negative stereotypes of each other. The mentioned dramatic political changes in Eastern Europe make Russia an interesting point of interest. Therefore, this paper is intended to introduce and examine the historical, economical, political, societal, cultural and business developments that Russia encountered before and after this radical transition. Although, this paper provides a country overview to some extend, the main emphasis is on cross-cultural management where it is crucial to recognize and understand the covered areas besides business development, for they influence and, in the end, determine the basis of a country’s value and belief system. Finally, this paper provides a cross-cultural study by Geert Hofestede that should showcase the impact of cultural differences on management comparing Russia to other countries in the world on various cultural dimensions.

Seminar paper from the year 2003 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: Distinction, Bond University Australia, language: English, abstract: Abstract "Communism was based on everyone being the same. Being different was a threat. Right now, Russian society is going through the painful process of reforming itself, and ridding itself of old ways of thinking. Although differences are officially allowed by the authorities great animosity still exists towards anything or anybody that is not average." Marina Tyanhelkova, International Republican Institute Background to the Russian people The Czarist and Communist regimes have suppressed people’s desire to work individually under personal initiative. During the restructuring period (perestroika), the Soviet Communist value system was redefined, but the pace of the restructuring has been very slow. Western values of individualism and profit maximisation are adapted to gradually, however many Russians, especially older Russians, have difficulty in adapting to a Western outlook on life. The older generation is generally pessimistic and does not have faith in a better future life, whereas younger urban Russians are more open to a Western lifestyle. Currently, Russia is going through a profound period of change to replace the values of Communism with those of democracy and a free-market economy. Visitors to Russia may find that many Russians are still unfamiliar with, or misinformed about, concepts that form the basis of Western business culture. It may be necessary to explain and persuade Russian counterparts to accept ideas such as motivation, fair play, individual accountability and reward, profit and loss, turnover, proprietary rights, good will, or public relations. However, these terms should only be used with tact and caution. One consideration to keep in mind is the widespread ‘assumption’ by Westerners that Russia is a very ‘European’ country. Discussions with several Russians have indicated that there is an affinity with Asia, and this should be kept in mind when assuming that Russia will converge to act more like North Americans or Europeans over time. Russians themselves often distinguish between Russia as a country and Moscow and Saint Petersburg as the most technologically and economically advanced cities in Russia. These two cities are relatively modern, meeting Western standards, and have experienced large-scale foreign direct investment in the past decade.

This book addresses one of the fundamental problems in Russian society, and in Russia's relations with the rest of the world. Why do Russians tend to react differently from ?us? in given diplomatic or business situations? Why do they find the notion of a contract difficult to grasp? Why do they seem hostile to the principle of the level playing field? How do they see Russia's position within the globalised economy? In order to probe these issues, the author begins with a historical analysis, looking at the pattern of political and economic development since Tsarist times, always asking the questions: What is unique to Russia in all this, and which unique features tend to recur in different periods? In seeking to illuminate the interface between Russia and the world, the author also examines Russia's attitude to itself, and to its own resources ? natural and human ? to land as an agricultural resource, and later oil and gas; and to people ? as cheap labour and as highly trained scientific personnel. This book is firmly based on scholarly sources, in English, French and Russian, but aims to go beyond the academic audience to address the concerns of people encountering Russians and Russian organizations in their everyday lives.

An international collection of papers focused on media, culture and society in postcommunist Russia. Contributors deploy a wealth of primary data in examining the kinds of issues that are central to our understanding of the kind of system that has been established in the world's largest country after a period of far-reaching change.

During the Soviet era, blat—the use of personal networks for obtaining goods and services in short supply and for circumventing formal procedures—was necessary to compensate for the inefficiencies of socialism. The collapse of the Soviet Union produced a new generation of informal practices. In How Russia Really Works, Alena V. Ledeneva explores practices in politics, business, media, and the legal sphere in Russia in the 1990s—from the hiring of firms to create negative publicity about one's competitors, to inventing novel schemes of tax evasion and engaging in "alternative" techniques of contract and law enforcement. She discovers ingenuity, wit, and vigor in these activities and argues that they simultaneously support and subvert formal institutions. They enable corporations, the media, politicians, and businessmen to operate in the post-Soviet labyrinth of legal and practical constraints but consistently undermine the spirit, if not the letter, of the law. The "know-how" Ledeneva describes in this book continues to operate today and is crucial to understanding contemporary Russia. On December 6, 2009, Alena Ledeneva discussed her book on the BBC Radio program Forum. Here's the link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00551mg#synopsis.

This book examines the extent to which Russia’s strategic behavior is the product of its imperial strategic culture and Putin’s own operational code. The work argues that, by conflating personalistic regime survival with national security, Putin ensures that contemporary Russian national interest, as expressed through strategic behavior, is the synthesis of a peculiar troika: a long-standing imperial strategic culture, rooted in a partially imagined past; the operational code of a counter-intelligence president and decision-making elite; and the realities of Russia as a hybrid state. The book first examines the role of structure and agency in shaping contemporary Russian strategic behavior. It then provides a conceptual understanding of strategic culture, and applies this to Tsarist and Soviet historical developments. The book’s analysis of the operational code, however, demonstrates that Putinism is more than the sum of the past. At the end, the book assesses Putin’s statecraft and stress-tests our assumptions about the exercise of contemporary power in Russia and the structure of Putin’s agency. This book will be of interest to students of Russian politics and foreign policy, strategic studies and international relations.

As shopping has been transformed from a chore into a major source of hedonistic pleasure, a specifically Russian consumer culture has begun to emerge that is unlike any other. This book examines the many different facets of consumption in today’s Russia, including retailing, advertising and social networking. Throughout, emphasis is placed on the inherently visual - not to say spectacular - nature both of consumption generally, and of Russian consumer culture in particular. Particular attention is paid to the ways in which brands, both Russian and foreign, construct categories of identity in order to claim legitimacy for themselves. What emerges is a fascinating picture of how consumer culture is being reinvented in Russia today, in a society which has one, nostalgic eye turned towards the past, and the other, utopian eye, set firmly on the future. Borrowing concepts from both marketing and cultural studies, the approach throughout is interdisciplinary, and will be of considerable interest, to researchers, students and practitioners wishing to gain invaluable insights into one of the most lucrative, and exciting, of today’s emerging markets.