University of Economics, Prague Faculty of International Relations
Doing Business in Russia: a cross cultural approach
Authors: Daniel Suwandhi, Davyd Gromenko
Course: Doing Business in Russia
Scholar year: Winter Semester 2017
About Authors 3
Friends or acquaintances? 4
Don’t worry I’ll pay 5
Any Ideas? 6
Refusing a favor. 8
Hello there 9
About Authors
I’m Daniel. I am from Jakarta, Indonesia and I am a full-time student in the University of Economics Prague. I am currently in the International Business program and in my last semester. I took the intensive course “Doing Business in Russia” because I think that Russia has some business opportunities such as: pharmaceuticals, retailing, tourism, financial services and others that could potentially be exploited.
My name is Davyd and I come from Ukraine. I’m student of International Business Bachelor, who would like to bring my own experience dealing with other cultures in different fields. Having gone through “Doing business in Russia” course I will use cross-cultural management tools to make a proper analysis of the below mentioned cases from real life.
Friends or acquaintances?
Cross-cultural analysis:
As my 18th Birthday was coming up I had to organize it. Having chosen the people, I wanted to invite I sent the invitations. Nevertheless, there was person from Germany, who I played tennis with and managed to invite in person. To my surprise, he was astonished that I invited him, despite us not being that close to each other from his perspective. Coming from mu cultural background, people tend to invite their acquaintances from various parts of their life (work, family, school, hobbies/interests). In case of friend of mine, who came from Germany it was that step/move was considered generous, but odd.
Cross-cultural analysis:
As we can see, there is an obvious difference in space perception in relationships. This situation depicts how western European culture belongs to specific societies, when my culture (eastern European) belongs to diffuse country. People from Ukraine establish quick connection with the person and if this connection is positive, person is considered your friend and is not restrained by 1 field of possible interaction. This person is then usually let in majority of other person’s life parts (family, work, hobbies/interests). Besides, huge difference in individualism indicator according to Hofstede has a lot to say. Ukraine has low level of individualism, what indicates high degree of interdependence within the society, meaning people are more united. That explains why people at some point feel necessity to invite (or guilt when they actually don’t). German level individualism is much higher that is why it’s difficult to break in private life, as culture keeps specific way of behavior.