Characteristics of russian personality traits: comparative analysis of russian and western approacches

Interestingly, Lewis' findings also prove Hofstede's data. The author claims that conformist behaviour is integral characteristic of Russian culture due to the fact that people feel safe because of it. Thus Russians consider group membership to be something where they can feel secure and safe. Besides, an expert is an essential element of every negotiation process. This person is like a connoisseur who is more experienced in the area of the discussion and is almost the most important person during the negotiation process. This is certainly the characteristic of a collectivistic culture.

The next dimension that is mentioned by Hofstede is Masculinity. The main difference between masculine and feminine cultures is that masculinity stands for the idea which is the best out of all while femininity is about being content with what you do. Russia scores 36 on this dimension which confirms that it has a feminine culture. It also proves the idea that personal relationships consider to be of the utmost significance for Russians. Quality of life and caring for others are things that are more valuable for people from Russia than having some kind of differences or standing out from others. The femininity of Russian culture is also reflected in the fact that modesty is one of the main characteristics of it. Russian people are not likely to “scream” about their achievements everywhere. It can mostly be seen while analyzing the standard of living of a scientist or a doctor in Russia. Also, in organizations it is not appropriate for a person with lower position to communicate in a dominant way between their peers; only the boss can be the one who has an authority to act in a way like this.

In the same way Lewis describes Russia in his book. For him Russia seems to be a country full of heart-warming people who always treat people with kindness. Russian people are likely to show their emotions during negotiations and personal relationships are not prohibited in the workplace. Lewis calls Russian culture a people-oriented one thus he claims that it is crucial to make a good impression on a Russian to be sure that these relationships are going to last long. Also, according to Lewis, Russians do not care that much about financial gain or financial growth when it comes to the negotiation process. What important for them is personal relationships which they will try to maintain no matter what. Another factor which proves that Russia has a feminine culture is concentrated around the fact that personal recommendations for Russians have more weight than an official document. It means that they are more likely to listen to other person's opinion about something and act in a way that they have been recommended to act instead of following what is written.

For Russians it is essential to be on good terms with people with whom they are communicating or are going to have business deals. In order to build a truthful connection with people from Russia, people should not be scared of being sincere and open because Russians are believed to be soul-searching. Another advice that can help people from other cultures to get along with Russians is concerned with sharing personal information with them. Family for Russian people is something that they put above everything else in their lives. Thus it would be great for a person to talk a little bit about their family and even show some photographs from person's life or even childhood.

However, Lewis also finds out one characteristic of Russian culture which does not belong to feminine cultures. Russians are very concerned of their status. Therefore, it is crucial to treat Russian people as equals in order to avoid the increase of conflicts and misunderstandings as they are very sensitive of their status and can be offended easily. Despite this fact, Russia seems to have a strong feminine culture with only 36 score on Masculinity dimension where the only masculine feature of it is concerned with being fairly and equally to others.

The fourth dimension is Uncertainty Avoidance. It is related to the level of people being afraid of unexpected things and situations. High level of UA means that people are very anxious about situations that they cannot control or predict. Russia scores 95 on this dimension which means that Russian people hate when the situation is ambiguous and uncertain because they do not know how to act and what the result will be for them. Consequently, Russians prepare everything in advance whether it is a project, speech, presentation, etc. It makes them feel comfortable when they know information before some event or meeting; or when something is described in details.

“Caution” is a trait that Russian culture has and that Lewis emphasizes in his research. He explains it by claiming that it is hard for Russian people to accept immediate change and new ideas scare them. Lewis compares this Russian style with playing chess: every step is planned beforehand. Nevertheless, they might be thinking of adding some changes to their plans when they are convinced that it will not affect them or their life severely.

Lewis also mentions the fact that Russians are very persistent when it comes to their work or learning process. They can spend a great amount of time dedicating to studying and learning new things in order to achieve their goal or a desired result.

In general, the Long-Term Orientation dimension is about the impact that the past experience of the country has on the present and future challenges. Such cultures that are for keeping traditions and averse to changes Hofstede calls “normative” cultures. Also, he identifies cultures with more pragmatic mindset which lean towards new technologies, innovations, and changes. With the score of 81, Russian culture can be described as a pragmatic one. Having a pragmatic view, Russians can adapt to the new realities of life without having serious problems while doing it.

There is a part in Lewis' book in which he analyzes how Russians feel about their past traditions and history of their country. It seems that historical background affected a lot the way people from Russia communicate with others. Firstly, he related it to the fact that at the time when his research was carried out there was no democracy in Russia. Thus Russians, as Lewis writes, have problems with having a straightforward debate and acting in egalitarian way (Skvortsova, 2019). Moreover, for Russians the topic of World War II seems to be still a deeply painful one thus by involving this topic in a conversation a person can cause a conflict without having any intentions to do it. Therefore, it proves the phenomenon that Russians are still pretty hurt because of all the political and economic consequences that happened due to the events of the 20^th century and that they cannot just let it go.

Moving to the peculiarities of Russian negotiation style, it can be said that it has been impacted a lot by Soviet times. For example, at that time everything was very hard to get thus nowadays Russian people seem to be very careful and do not trust things easily if they have been got without any difficulties. This fact demonstrates that there is a similarity with Hofstede's Uncertainty Avoidance and Long-Term Orientation dimensions as it illustrates the phenomenon of Russian people hating sudden changes and instead trying to adjust past experiences to new realities. As it has already been mentioned, new ideas are not likely to be accepted with great enthusiasm. However, despite the fact that Russia was a conservative country during the time when Lewis was working on his book, he still was sure that some changes were to come in a societal, political, and economic structures of the country which would help people learn how to accept changes and not to stuck in the past.

Last but not least, the sixth dimension that Hofstede came up with is Indulgence. This dimension is closely related to people's upbringing and childhood. It is about people having a try of controlling their wishes and impulses. In Indulgence Hofstede also subdivides cultures as it is in the Long-Term Orientation dimension. Thus, Restrained cultures are the ones which have weak control whereas Indulgent ones have a strong control. Scoring only 20 on this dimension, Russian culture becomes a Restrained one. Hofstede claims that Restrained cultures stand out from Indulgent ones by having people who are very pessimistic and cynic. Unlike people in Indulgent cultures, Russian people tend to believe that being indulgent is completely wrong, so they perceive their own behaviour as one that is restrained by social norms, nevertheless they accept it. (paraphrase it!!) People in Restrained cultures also do not pay a lot of attention to themselves and do not think of their own desires and leisure time.

Some contradictions with Hofstede's Masculinity - Femininity dimension can be thought of while analyzing the Indulgence one. However, there is a major difference between them. While Indulgence is all about being a pessimist, a cynic person, and not paying enough attention to the satisfaction of your own wishes, Femininity is related to the idea of taking care about others and spending time and trying to earn money by doing things that you love. Actually, these two dimensions do not contradict each other. A great example can be a doctor in Russia who spends their time by doing what they love, however, who does not have a lot of desire to think about their own wants and who just maintains a modest lifestyle.

Lewis' research proves Hofstede's findings about Russians being pessimistic people. He claims that these characteristics were taken from Soviet times and maybe even from the Czarist period. The government at Soviet times controlled every aspect of people's lives making social norms affect the behavior of Russian people. The enormous number of regulations which had to be followed was the reason for the increase of collectivism and pessimism among other characteristics. Also, Lewis mentions two extremely important factors that had a great impact on the formation of Russian culture: its climate and the vastness of the Russian land. Due to these factors people who did not have power in the society experienced the lack of education and resources making them the victims which were very easy to manipulate. People who had high social status used bullying as a way of communicating with the ones who had lower position in the society. These people had to adjust to the pressure they were under in order to be able to survive. Lewis claims that such a cruel behavior were the reasons for the creation of the negative characteristics that Russian people have, for example, corruption, extreme concealment, etc. This phenomenon can be a support of the Russian low score on the Indulgence dimension. The fact that people were not living in a democratic society made them learn how to ignore their own wishes and desires and to have a control over everything that they had in life at that time.

Apart from everything that has been mentioned, Lewis also adds that in order to have a successful communication with Russians it is important to treat their pride respectfully and to be more low-key in the behavior without bragging about your strengths. The researcher has an interest in analyzing the pressure that Russian people can take without being offended.

Methods

Before writing about methods, it is important to point out that the primary data is the results achieved in the works by Russian and foreign scholars whereas the secondary data is the results that are going to be collected in the course of this bachelor's degree thesis with the help of Schwartz' value survey.

The next chapter of the bachelor's degree thesis will be dedicated to the analysis of the works written by foreign and Russian scientists about Russian values, to the analysis of the results of the present study's survey, and to the comparison of the all studies' results. Thus, it is crucial to highlight the methods that were used in order to collect the information and data relevant for this chapter.

Several methods were utilized in this bachelor's degree thesis. Firstly, qualitative approach which is aimed at collecting non-numerical information is chosen to gather the information about Russian values and culture found in the works of the researchers from Russia and from foreign countries.

Besides, Schwartz's value survey (SVS) was applied in order to find out what values Russian students have nowadays. Schwartz's model implies that individual and cultural level of values are interconnected as a person has to take into consideration the values of social institutions; otherwise it would be impossible for people to function in a society and fulfil their needs. Moreover, as people socialize, they internalize the values of the society. Furthermore, cultural values exist on a social level, therefore people have individual background in terms of compatibility of these values. Schwartz suggests that these two levels match, but they do not overlap each other. For this reason, his model is considered to be the most complex in modern psychology as it involves more sophisticated system. Rokeach, on the other hand, examines values both on micro and macro levels using the same method which does not allow the cultural and individual levels to be independent. This suggests that Rokeach's approach is more interested in national values rather than individual ones.

With the help of SurveyMonkey the questionnaire was sent to the people who are eligible for the research. The sample was limited to the students of various Moscow universities with the intensity of getting the most accurate results as possible. I took the Russian version of SVS because, according to Schwartz, the survey should be filled out in respondents' native language in order to avoid misunderstandings that may occur while using the English version of SVS.

57 students aged 18-23 participated in the survey where 40 of the respondents were women and 17 were men. SVS included 57 value items where respondents had to evaluate each item on the scale of -1 “opposed to my values” to 7 “of supreme importance”.

After collecting the data, quantitative research was implemented. Microsoft Excel was used for the purpose of analyzing the secondary data and assessing the values of Russian students. The mean score for each value was calculated according to the SVS manual.

Last but not least, comparative analysis was chosen to compare the results that foreign researchers, Russian scholars, and I gathered about Russian values and to figure out the differences and similarities that exist between them.

Chapter 2. Empirical part

2.1 Foreign scholars

2.1.1 Measuring Russian Culture using Hofstede's Dimensions

In the area of cross-cultural communication a lot of practical research were carried out as well as theoretical ones. A great variety of foreign scientists and cross-cultural researchers dedicated a part of their lives analyzing Russian culture and Russian values. One of such works was made by two scientists: Alexander Naumov and Sheila Puffer. Naumov is a professor in Moscow State University, Russia while Puffer works in Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA. They decided to conduct this research in order to understand how Hofstede's dimensions can be put into use in Russia. According to Hofstede, dimension is an ability to identify and define how certain behavioural patterns of a culture tackle an issue and how these patterns correspond with the ones of other counties. As for the background, although Hofstede's dimensions have been applied in more than 50 countries, the authors state that there have not been any studies with large samples conducted in Russia. This study used a 29-item questionnaire to measure the following dimensions: uncertainty avoidance, individualism-collectivism, power distance, paternalism, and masculinity-femininity. For this research, which was held from October 1995 to June 1996, 250 Russians respondents - students and employees related to business realm - were gathered from various business schools and faculties and were required to complete this questionnaire based on Hofstede's model. Table 1 illustrates the resultd of the study. As this article uses other research on cultural dimensions in Russia (including Hofstede's estimates) to point out the differences in the results, responses gathered from the participants were converted to Hofstede's 100-point scale.

Uncertainty Avoidance

The Uncertainty Avoidance dimension deals with the degree of people's aversion to unexpected and unknown situations. The subjects scored 68 points which is considered to be a high level of uncertainty avoidance. Hofstede (1980) collected approximately the same results in Austria, Taiwan, the Arab countries, Ecuador, and Germany. The authors compared this result with the scores in Hofstede's (1993) and Bollinger's (1994) studies and pointed out that it had altered significantly since that time. Naumov and Puffer claimed that the numbers had changed dramatically after Russia began an era of market-oriented economy.

The score of 68 means that during business meetings Russians averse to unknown and uncertain situations. Also, sudden changes that can be made during the negotiation process can make them feel uncomfortable. This is closely connected with Lewis' study where he points out that the main feature of negotiation style in Russia is “caution”. Apart from that, Russian people enjoy moving forward and being the best, however, when they are under pressure and they know that the other party has a stronger position, Russians are likely to take a step back in order to analyze the situation in more details and not to make rash decisions and not to run the risk of making a mistake.

The researchers point out that the results of the research were not affected by such factors as age, work experience, number of subordinates, and geographic region. The one in which some differences can be noticed is occupation. According to the research, students have lower level of Uncertainty Avoidance than people who work, for example, as managers, business administrators, or, in simpler words, people whose occupation is related to the business sphere. It can be explained by paying attention to the fact that the ambience and environment at universities do not bring too much attention to work rules or instructions.

Individualism - Collectivism

Individualism is characterised by weaker relationship between people as they mostly care about themselves and their close relatives, while collectivism means tights connections within the group. According to Naumov and Puffer's study, Russian respondents scored 41 points which put it next to Iran, Jamaica, Greece, and Spain (Hoftede, 1980). This result also does not differ much from the Hofstede's estimate of 50 points (1993). Altogether, on the scale of Individualism Russia is placed between developed and developing counties. These results show that Russian people are likely to work in groups rather than individually. Most people in Russia do not identify themselves apart from the group which they belong to.

Lewis' study highlights that during negotiations Russian people not only represent themselves but also the government of the country which is a factor of a collectivistic culture. He also mentions that some serious problems and conflicts can happen if a person tries to separate another person from their group. Showing camaraderie is one advice that he gives to people from other cultures in order for them to build trustful relationships with Russians.

The researchers of the group point out that collectivistic characteristics of the culture do not depend on age, geographical region, occupation, etc. It means that there are not many differences in results among the subgroups through which the authors analyzed Russian culture.

Power Distance

This dimension refers to the extent to which people with less power accept and anticipate inequality among the society. While Naumov and Puffer have the score of 40 points, Hofstede's estimate for Russia is 90 (1993), and in the research of Bollinger (1994) Russia has 76 points. On this dimension Russian culture is set on behind some of developed countries - Canada, the USA, the Netherlands (Hofstede,1980).

High-level of power distance in Russian culture means that people in this country tend to have a strict barrier between people who have the authority and the ones who are following them. People with high status in the society have more respect from others and have more power in their hands. For example, in an organization a person who is in charge of everything rules all processes that exist in this organization and controls everything that happens there. It means that all final decisions are made by this particular person and there is no one who can disagree with the decision which this person had just made as they do not have enough power for that.

Naumov and Puffer have a score of 40 points on this dimension which means that in their study Russian culture belongs to those with low-level of Power Distance. It can be suggested that people who are related to the business domain do not give much importance for a status of a person. However, there is still a huge difference in the results between this study, Hofstede's one (1993), and Bollinger (1994) research. In addition to what other researchers (Veiga et al.) also mention, the authors propose that the decline in Power Distance may be caused by the processes of economic and political decentralisation as authority in these realms was transformed from central to local government.

Similarly to the previous dimension, the data for this one seems not to have a great difference among subgroups of the research.

Paternalism

This dimension is associated with the extent to which people transfer their protectiveness from their family to the whole society and the state. In this study paternalism matches long-term and short-term dimension that was presented by Hofstede and Bond (1988). The score on this dimension in Naumov and Puffer's research reached 59 points which presents a slight difference comparing it to the one that of Hofstede (1993) with the score of 49. Interestingly, in Hofstede's work that was written 8 years later the number increased from 49 to 81 meaning that people became more adaptive to the new environment and more flexible towards changes that were happening in their lives. Also, such a moderate result in the earlier works might give an impression that business sphere cannot be thoroughly analyzed through this dimension. As there is a small variance in the points of such subgroups as age and occupation, it might be suggested that a moderate result appeared as at that time young people had already started to accept turnarounds much easier than older generations.

As for the significant differences in subgroups, the older the participant was, the higher score on paternalism they showed, whereas young students of business faculties scored lower. Moreover, having subordinates was also a significant variable as people with subordinates had higher scores. Naumov and Puffer associate such score on this dimension with the fact of long history political and social crises, instabilities, and persecution.

Lewis, however, is sure that Russians take a lot of influence from Soviet Union times while negotiating. Naumov and Puffer agree with the researcher on this point and point out that all paternalistic features that Russian culture have might have come from the history of the country. Despite this fact, Richard Lewis still believes that Russian people do not have severe problems with adjusting to the new environment, ambience, and circumstances.

Masculinity - Femininity

The respondents scored moderate result of 55 points on this dimension which is characterized by the level of rigidness of social roles for men and women. In feminine cultures social roles are not strictly defined and both sexed can focus on more than material wealth. The score found in the given study puts Russia on the same level as Greece, Argentina, and Belgium, and it appeared to be higher than Hofstede's estimate of 40 points (1993). Bollinger (1994) and Veiga et al. (1995) also had results of lower scores. As it has already been mentioned, the one main masculine characteristic that Russian culture has is being cautious about status. Russians can easily become offended if they are treated disrespecting their status. As it is a new trend when people are able to be leaders of a group, it is important for them to show it and to be sure that they are treated in accordance with their status and position in the society.

Russians are people-oriented rather than deal-oriented which is considered to be one of the main factors that feminine societies have. In his book Lewis also notices that after long day at work or a two or three hour meeting with Russian people it would be great to go to a restaurant or a pub together in order to establish good relationships with them.

According to the study, the results varied significantly within subgroups for work experience as employees with up to five years of work experience showed the greatest number of points on Masculinity.

In their paper, Naumov and Puffer conclude that during the middle of the 1990s Russia had moderate scores in Individualism, Masculinity, and Power Distance but rather high ones in Paternalism and Uncertainty Avoidance. The researchers point out that high level of masculinity and low level of paternalism were observed amongst younger people as from their early ages they have been oriented more towards Western market and values.

They also highlight some limitations. Firstly, the research was conducted only among Russian people with college degrees who were related to the business area thus the results cannot be generalized towards all Russian people. Secondly, Russia is a large country with more than 100 national groups, thus, again, the results may be different between them. Thirdly, the changes in the market system could also affect the results of the study.

In the end Naumov and Puffer add that due to the fact that Russia has been isolated for a long time in the past from other countries, it is different from other cultures and has unique position among other cultures. They suggest that if Russia decides to turn its economy to a fully market one, the results may shift into being more similar to the ones that Western cultures have, however, with a small hint of Russian uniqueness.

2.1.2 Russian culture in business negotiations

Another researcher who analyzed Russian culture is Tatiana Louneva from University of Pennsylvania. She conducted her research in 2010 and it describes how Russian and American people behave during business meetings. Her aim was to identify the differences that exist between the negotiation process between two American parties and Russian party and an American one. Only the results that are connected to Russian people will be used in the bachelor's degree thesis.

Two various methods were utilized by the researcher to collect results for the research: a descriptive study to understand what negotiation type Russians have and a comparative study to compare the negotiation process between Americans and Americans with the similar process between Americans and Russians. Also, in a descriptive study two measures were used: quantitative and qualitative. This method was established on a base of a paper written by Jeswald Salacuse (1998) where the author recognized ten factors through which a culture of a person can influence the negotiation process. The scientist singled out these factors with the help of the research which he conducted among 310 people from 12 countries. The aim of the descriptive study was to find out which of these ten factors affect the way Russian people negotiate. Louneva selected the same methodology that Salacuse used in 1998 for his research but with the application of the new technologies. The author created an online survey applying Qualtrics and sent it to people who were related to business: business professionals and students who studied business. The respondents had to evaluate their attitudes without revealing themselves “toward each of the ten negotiating traits on a five-point scale” (Louneva, 2010). In order to have the data only from people who were Russians the questions concerning their cultural identity, the level of education, their working experience in Russia, their knowledge of Russian language, and gender were asked. Louneva removed 33 responses out of 77 as she needed people who were native Russian speakers and who graduated college starting from May 2010. The results of the research can be seen in Table 2.1 and Table 2.2.

The second part of the descriptive study will not be analyzed and used in this bachelor's degree thesis as well as the comparative study because of the fact that it does not contain any exact data.

The “risk-taking” factor is about people being ready to take risks if it is needed. This factor showed 42% for Russian people. It means that in the process of negotiation Russians tend to think about everything in advance rather than making any rash decisions that have not been analyzed enough as it might negatively affect themselves, their business, and anything else that they care about. Venturing is scary for Russians as they do not like uncertainty around them and they always hesitate about taking any risks and run into things that are not well-analyzed beforehand. The same pattern has already been noticed in the Hofstede's research (2017) and Lewis' work (2006).

The next factor is called “communication” and it analyzes whether people are more likely to reply with clear and direct answers or they also keen on using gestures, facial expressions, and their body language to support your speech. Scoring 38% on this factor, Russian people are likely to make their point using mostly verbal attributes such as words while negotiating rather than non-verbal ones. Again, it may stem from the fact that they do not like to be uncertain in things around them and sometimes some gestures and body language may be understood in a completely wrong way causing misunderstanding between parties and even conflicts.

On the strength of the factor analyzed above it may seem that Russians are averse to add emotions to the meetings. However, the factor which is called “emotionality” says that with a score of 80% Russians tend to show their emotions during the negotiation process. This difference in the results may be rooted in the fact that Russian culture cannot be fully referred to a multi-active type of cultures as it also has some characteristics that are proper to linear-active cultures (Lewis, 2006). People in linear-active cultures do not tend to use their body language to express their emotions or to make their point. This type of culture is characterized by showing “limited body language” (Lewis, 2006, p. 34) which can be seen in Russian culture as well. Otherwise, in multi-active cultures people are not afraid to show their emotions to others. As some may think that emotions during negotiations can be shown only through the body language of a person, it may also be demonstrated through a smile, laugh, or maybe even through tears. It means that despite the fact that Russian people are not likely to use non-verbal means of communication such as gestures or facial expressions during a meeting like people in linear-cultures do, they are not ashamed of displaying their emotions using other ways of doing it such as laughing or crying, for example, reflecting their multi-active characteristic.

Another factor which shows that Russian culture is not only a multi-active one but also linear-active is “time sensitivity”. Scoring 58% on this factor, Russian people are seemed to be cautious about time that they spend on negotiations because “time is money” and they are not likely to come late for a meeting. Probably, they are not going to leave the negotiation table if there is no concrete decision yet in order not to ruin the relationships with the other party. However, they may plan everything in advance and put more time on the meeting than needed to be sure that they are on time in every aspect of their lives.

The next two factors that were touched upon in this study are “agreement form” and “agreement building” that are focused on the structure of the negotiation process. Russian people have 28% and 77% respectively meaning that they prefer start the process with the general ideas and wide arguments, then they turn to the more exact ideas, and end the meeting with the concrete and detailed contracts. It proves that Russian people have holistic thinking as in the process of negotiation they also go from macro to micro. However, it may contradict a little bit with the “time sensitivity” result as it reflects that Russians consider time being money and with this structure of negotiations, meetings may take more time to participate in than when a party starts with a precise idea. Nevertheless, it has already been mentioned that they may put more time on the meeting beforehand without stressing out that they fall behind their schedule.

It has already been mentioned several times that Russian culture is people-oriented. Such factors as “negotiating goal”, “personal styles”, and “attitudes” all evaluate how it is important for one party to preserve good relationships with the other one. Scoring 60%, 57%, and 69% respectively, Russian people proved again that for them personal relationships are out of the most importance. From these results it may be understood that the main goal for Russian people is to save their relationships with their partners. The high result for “attitudes” factor means that Russian people will be trying to make both parties the winners at the end of the negotiation process. Lewis (2006) also writes about it. He says that Russians may even take a step back during negotiations in order to not to damage their relationships with other people. If one party does that, in the end both of them may end up as the winners. “Personal styles” factor reflects the idea that during negations Russians are more likely to be less formal. They may joke, laugh, and express their emotions in order to create positive environment for their partners during the process of negotiation. Also, “negotiating goal” factor is totally related to the idea of Russians caring about relationships with others more than about completing the deal.

The last factor is called “team organization”. This factor reveals whether during group meetings or team negotiations there is one leader that makes all decisions and their words are the last ones or everyone in the group has control over the process. With 60% Russian people are more leading towards having one leader rather than involving everyone in the decision making process. It may stem from the history of the country when every decision was made by the leaders of the country without giving nation the opportunity to decide whether they agree with that or not. Besides, Russian people are very status-conscious, thus it is important for them to let other people see who is a leader of the group.

2.1.3 Changes in Russian managerial values: a test of the convergence hypothesis?

John Blenkinsopp from University of Newcastle upon Tyne Business School and Yuri Alexashin from JSC Severstal, St Petersburg conducted the research concerning Russian managerial values and how much the changes in the Russian economy affected them. The researchers believe that managerial values and management styles are dependent upon cultural values that exist in different countries. It means that every culture is likely to have its own special characteristics that have an impact on managerial values of a person. Thus, it is of the outmost importance to be aware of these cultural differences to be able to communicate effectively on a global level without experiencing any misunderstandings with people from other cultures.

The authors had analyzed several qualitative research and the five key quantitative studies which explored Russian culture through the lens of Hofstede's theory before they decided to carry out their own work. It suggests the idea that the researchers can trace any changes that happened in values of Russian people and in Russian culture as a result of the transformation of many spheres of people's lives and make a comparison with the present research. Alexashin and Blenkisnopp made their investigation on Russian political, economic, and societal systems and their special characteristics that existed during a particular era of the country. It was done to better understand the areas that they should focus on while analyzing the results and making their comparison.

It is crucial to point out the reason for Russia not having any apparent signs to prove is convergence because managers from this country have had to adjust to the developing events that the business world was experiencing much quicker than the representatives from other countries and cultures. Russia was lack of business environment and business sphere at that time due to the maintenance of the centralized economy and one ruling party for almost seven decades. Thus, the country did not show any sign of convergence with the prospering of the capitalism, unlike many other countries. Russia came into the world of market-driven economy after the Soviet Union collapse making Western managerial values and practices have an influence on the Russian management's development.

The researchers make a hypothesis that managerial values of Russian people will be convergent towards American ones that have already been found in the previous research using Schwartz Value Survey (SVS). The results (Table 3) were gathered from people who were senior, middle, or operational managers and who worked in companies in Moscow, St Petersburg, and Cherepovets. The results from the previous studies and the result of the present study are shown in the table below.

Because this bachelor's degree thesis concentrates on values of Russian people, the results concerning American values will not be analyzed in the research.

Talking about Security, if the result is high, it means that people are worried when things around them are not stable and safe; they look for balance, calmness, and safety in every aspect of their life: relationships with other people, work, and the world. Russian people scored an unexpected result on this value in the presented study. The result declined in the comparison with the previous research. It may have happened due to the fact that Russia experienced the shift in the society, economy, and political structure causing people's value system to change as well. In the Soviet Union times security and stability were one of the several things that Russians valued the most. However, the alterations that happened in many spheres of people's lives made Russians be less scared of unstable situations that may happen with them or of risks that they should take.

The Stimulation value is opposed the Security one implying that people have new stimuli that provoke various challenges and novel experiences. Stimulation stems from the pursuit of the desirable level of activation that implies a variety of choice. The present results show that Russian managers seek for the elements that are included in Stimulation and that they do not afraid of challenges that life is going to bring them. It may have happened because the country was still recovering from the transformation of the society making people's values and beliefs change as well, thus, Russian managers started to adapt to the new managerial behavioral model.

Schwartz's value which is called Power includes caring about one's social status, loving having control, dominance, and power over other people. Russian managers scored high result on this value meaning that managers from this country care a lot about their status and it is important for them not to lose their face in front of others. This score became even higher than in the previous research because the transformation that happened caused a lot of people losing their jobs, thus, after that people with high job positions became even more focused on their status and even more scared of losing it they saw how quickly everything can change. The authors also discovered the difference in the results between males and females and, also, between managers of different authority level. Managers of middle level and male people showed higher results on this value.

High level of the Conformity value implies the fact that people are likely to follow all social norms that exist in the society without violating them and to prevent themselves from acting against societal rules. In the previous research analyzed in this study it is seen that the score on this value is quite high making Russian a conformist country. It implies that people at that time, for example, were trying to keep their thoughts and opinions to themselves if they were different from everyone else's. However, it seems that, within the flow of time, Russian managers started to feel themselves freer in the new economic and political environment as the score on this value is higher than it was before.

Another value that can also be corresponded with this dimension is called Self-Direction. It expresses self-dependence and the fact that people prefer working individually and rely on themselves instead of being dependent on a group of people. This value stems from the desire of self-governing actions being the value that perfectly reflects Hofstede's Individuality dimension. Scoring high on Self-Direction, Russian managers showed that they prefer independence in their actions and ideas; they are likely to make decisions by themselves and work alone rather than in a group.

In accordance with Schwartz's theory, Benevolence and Universalism are values that concentrate on the welfare of people. The difference between them is that Benevolence is about people being protective and caring about their families and friends while Universalism is about taking care of all humans and nature. These two values are closely connected with Hofstede's Femininity pole. As the scores are quite high for both of these values, Russia's people-oriented culture does not disappear even in a managerial sphere. People of this position are still trying to help others and to make their lives better.

The Achievement value shows a high result in this study. As this work is about managerial values, the result on Achievement is high because people in a business area are always very concerned about achieving all of their goals and they always strive for having the bests result. Besides, they may be concern a lot about their status and may be afraid of losing their face in front of other people.

As it has already been discussed above, Tradition focuses on holding to the past, preserving traditions and customs, and respecting them. Despite the fact that in the research conducted by Hofstede and the study written by Lewis Russian people are very conservative and they value traditions the most, this study presents a different result. It shows the increase in the results that happened since Holt et al. (1994) carried out their research, however, it is still pretty low. The authors explain it with the fact that Russian managers were respectful and were trying to adjust to new values and traditions that came to them from another managerial culture. This result presents that this value may be understood differently in various situations as Hofstede and Lewis described just people, without sticking to a concrete sphere, whereas Blenkisnopp and Alexashin got their result concerning people from a managerial area.

Hedonism is about oneself enjoyment, pleasure, and satisfaction. The increased score of this study in the comparison with others that are presented in the work shows that people started to care more about themselves and to do more for their own gratification. The low score in the previous studies may stem from the fact that in the past Russian managers did not have control over things as everything had already been made by people of higher rank and opportunity to express and propose their own ideas. It seems that over time they created some kind of a manner, or a defence mechanism, restraining their wants and desires as they were tired of always being unsatisfied. However, due to the alteration, Russian managers started to feel themselves freer in their action and desires, and Russia became “less Restrained country and more Hedonistic country” (Skvortsova, 2019, p. 30).

2.2 Russian scholars

2.2.1 Basic Values in Russia: Their Dynamics, Ethnocultural Differences, and Relation to Economic Attitudes

This paper was written by two Russian scholars Nadezhda Lebedeva and Alexander Tatarko. In this research two different studies are presented. The first study is about Russian people's values and changes in them within 10 years period, from 2006 to 2016. The researchers used data of 2006, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2016 years from the European Social Survey (ESS) the questionnaire of which has a shortened variant of Schwartz's Portrait Values Questionnaire (PVQ) containing 21 items for 10 values. The sample consists of approximately 2500 respondents. The second study will not be used and examined in this bachelor's degree thesis as it is related to the analysis of the relationships between Christian and Muslim values and economic attitudes of these religious groups in Russia which is out of the scope of the research.

Lebedeva and Tatarko look at values as personal mechanisms that can explain the reasons for economic behaviour. This research is aimed at understanding the changes that happened in values of Russian people within 10 year period and at identifying what the connection is between values of religious groups and their predispositions to economic behaviour.

According to the results (Figure 2) that the authors took from ESS and put in the histogram, such values as Hedonism and Stimulation are considered to be the least common values for Russian people with Hedonism having the most drastic change from the year of 2012 to 2016 and with Stimulation experiencing almost equal alteration between 2008 and 2010 and between 2012 and 2016. The results on Hedonism show that Russians are slowly starting to satisfy themselves more with things that they enjoy while Stimulation shows that Russians are more and more trying to be used to novelty in their lives. It also can be seemed from the fact that the results on the Security value are decreasing with every year. Remaining the first priority in people's lives, this value experiences decline with every year presented in the research meaning that Russian people easily accept changes and they are becoming less scared of taking risks. With the increasing gratification for oneself, such values as benevolence and universalism, which are aimed to care about others, almost evenly bear the decline as the outcome. Again, because people start to think more about satisfying their own desires, they may begin to less attention to the needs of others. Other values do not show such dramatic changes in the results remaining almost the same from year to year; only Conformity has some fluctuations in 2008 and 2012, however, still staying in the negative area.

For the further research the data from 2016 from this study will be used to compare it with the other results relating to Russian values.

2.2.2 Russian students' values

Russian scholar from Tomsk and Associate Professor of TSPU, Natalia A. Buravleva, conducted the research in 2010 about values of Russian students from Tomsk State Pedagogical University. 94 students from the faculties of psychology, public relations, and PR took part in this research aged 18 to 23 years old. The researcher decided to learn about students' values as this group of people can be considered as the indicator of all changes that are happening in the society and it defines the potential development of the society. The author suggests that the socio-economic transformations of modern Russian society will have an impact on young people and it will be reflected in their values. Buravleva used Schwartz's survey in order to collect the data. She used both surveys: Schwartz's Value Survey (SVS) which studies values that exist on a cultural level and Portrait Value Questionnaire which gives the information about individual values of a person. Having gathered and analyzed the results, Buravleva decided to arrange them from the most important value to the respondents to the least important one. She highlighted that values from 1 to 3 show the highest significance for young people while a rank from 8 to 10 indicates a low importance of the corresponding values. Only the data from SVS will be further analyzed as it is more relevant for the bachelor's degree thesis.

According to the results (Table 4), students value Self-Direction the most. It means that they are zealous for independence of thought and act, for creating something new, and, as the author highlights, for taking part in a research activity. Despite that, Self-Direction also means that young people have a need for self-control and self-government as well as being autonomous and independent from the older generation.

The second value that is still of high importance for young people is Security. This result shows that they want the environment around them to be stable and safe. It is important for them to know that all of the members of their family and friends are safe; that there is the stability of the society that they live in, thus, they do not have a need to worry about unexpected turnovers that may harm them. Also, it signifies that students pay great attention to their health and to staying clean.