Changes in perception of leadership in Russian context through generations

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Размещено на http://www.Allbest.Ru/

Federal state autonomous educational institution for higher professional education

National research university higher school of economics

Department of foreign languages

Degree programme: Foreign Languages and Cross-Cultural Communications

BACHELOR'S PROJECT

Field of study: Linguistics

Changes in perception of leadership in Russian context through generations

Student Anastasia A. Makulova

Supervisor Professor A.V. Shapenko,

Ph.D in Economic Sciences, Skolkovo

Moscow, 2019

Table of Contents

Introduction

1. Theoretical framework

1.1 The subject of research

1.2 Cross-cultural studies

1.3 Leadership studies

2. Study of generations

2.1 Methodology

2.2 Results

2.3 Conclusions, discussion and interpretation of the results

2.4 Limitations

Conclusion

Introduction

The modern society is now undergoing the process of globalization. The whole market and governmental systems are going through the period of constant transformations and within the changes of economy there can be noted shifts in culture. Societies are trying to adapt to current situation which leads them to reconsidering the values, norms and beliefs historically implemented into people's mindset.

During this period it is a matter of urgent need to understand which leader would be the most beneficial and more preferable in given context. A leader that will suit recent state of affairs, help people to adjust and lead them to the future. Besides other facts, it is highly important to observe the impact that culture has on leadership. There exist many theories and research works that would combine culture and leadership to understand how the leadership system is formed in a chosen context within one culture in compartment to others. However, mostly cultural studies are held synchronically, without considering one's culture own experience and historical transformation. There exist few research works that views development or transformation of leadership on the basis of diverse age group, for example, “Leadership Orientations of Russian Working Adults: Do Age, Gender, Education, and Government Work Experience Make a Difference?” by am D. Nguyen, Natalia Ermasova, Victoria Geyfman and Bahaudin G. Mujtaba (2015), although mainly leadership studies do not take into account the factor of age. That can be an omission because better understanding of evolution process can help to create more factual and objective cross-cultural overview.

This paper is aimed to analyse the changes in concept of leadership in Russian culture through generations in order to understand what type of leader will be the most suitable for a recent Russian community. Each country has its own unique process of change that tackled every sphere of life, though its is possible to say that Russia has undergone such transformations in last decades, that this experience hardly can be compared to any of the Western societies, that is why it is important to observe the situation on the site. After the Soviet-period, Russia has gone through great transformations in governmental and economical systems. This period included completely reassurance of cultural values and beliefs. The whole period of Russian history was called perestroika, the term itself is pointing out that the culture was rebuilding itself starting from the core basic issues to the attitude towards other countries. Russia is usually compared to the Western cultures to propose more differences than similarities.

During the major part of 20th century Russia was a rather closed country, in the sense that it faced a period of Iron Curtain, when the contacts with other countries were minimalized. Russia faces specific difficulties on the edge of the beginning of 21th century; it entered the process of globalization later than Western countries. For Europe that was not so challenging first because during history Western countries had many shared affairs, whereas Russia always stand quite separately. Even now in the era of millennials Russian culture has remnants of the collectivistic period supplemented by strong hierarchal system, people got used to the fact that they has less for they own and there is always someone powerful to lead them and to give direct orders. While the Western societies, to which Russia is usually compared - so as the USA, the UK or Scandinavia's countries - currently is mostly aimed to the individualism, for the Russian society it is still the post Soviet-era managerial style that continues to predominate in business generally. There widely exists an image of an autocratic leader as a an empowering one who provides clear vision, gives meaning and a great aim to work, fosters a sense of ownership, team wok and complete openness. But moreover such leader should establish discipline and control by creating strong boundaries and giving a sense of security (McCarthy et al, 2010). However, looking at the modern Russian society, it can be noted that such leader will not be seen as the most preferable one for the millennials (Gen Y) and a younger generation (Gen Z), who began to be a major part of working-community. People nowadays are eager to express their individuality in their working place that is why the focus should be shifted to more people-oriented leadership. Young generations are tended to have different requests toward a person they want to see as their leader which draws us to the necessity of reassuring the whole leadership system existing in Russia. It is needed to examine Russian culture diachronically to understand the underlying reasons for existing leadership system how does it changes and which shifts are already done forward to globalization. Different generations seek for different traits and behaviour presented by a leader and it is an issue of an ultimate importance that a leader fits current requests.

One this point we are moving to the hypothesis of this paper. The Russian culture is a complex model that has gone through huge transformations for the last decades so to understand it clearly it has to be observed not only in current period of time but also compared to previous results made by scholars. The main question of the paper is “Does age affects leadership? And to what extend?”. It is still a controversial issue in modern social studies, although in the Russian context it becomes evident that within the changes of governmental system appears demand for a new type of leader. It is necessary to observe the most important changes that need to occur for firms in Russia to be more successful o the global arena. Even though Russian managers are acquired as fast-adaptive there are some core aspects that should be changed in a perception of a leader in the country. Lack of understanding of leadership issues is a key problem contributing to this lack of preparation for Russian managers to acquire better leadership skills. (Feya, Adaeva, Vitkovskaia, 2001) Cultures as well as leadership are not usually overviewed in terms of transformations within time, though I suggest it to be a crucial point for the in-depth analysis. Thus the hypothesis of the paper is “Leadership does undergo transformation within generations”. People of younger age tend to have different requests from those who are older and adapted to another system governmental or economical. For people of Gen X (1965-1980) it would be more evident to have a great distance between them and a leader, and wait for direct orders than piece of advice, whereas the youngest Gen Z (1995-20..) such approach will be not suitable as they are more accustomed with Western approach to leadership and individualism rather collectivism.

The research methodology and research itself can be divided to three steps. First step is collecting theoretical materials on the topics “cross-cultural studies” and “leadership studies”. There are observed general theories and scales for cross-cultural analysis including Hofstede's Cultural Dimensions Theory and GLOBE project scale as a central ones in the first part. Then there will be made an analysis of leadership theories combined with the literature review on the topic in the second part of theoretical chapter of the paper. Theoretical observation is needed to create a framework of the research. By analysing Hofstede's and GLOBE's cultural scales (Figures 1 and 2) it becomes possible to suggest which types of leaders are and/or were preferable for Russian Society. In literature review major part will be dedicated to articles which contain research previously made on the similar topic and more in-depth observation of the leadership approaches mentioned in given articles. Therefore, it becomes possible to theoretically prove or disapprove the stated hypothesis. The next step is creating a questionnaire to prove the hypothesis. There will be conducted a simple random sampling research made in a form of online questionnaire aimed to observe people of three generations e. g. Gen X people born during 1965-1980, Gen Y (or millennials) 1981-1995 and Gen Z 1995 and forward. These people will be asked to fill the poll of approximately 15 questions where they have to match the scale according to their opinion and answer multiple-choice or short open questions. The survey is focused on observing key points in understanding the phenomenon of leadership and revealing general trends for different age groups. The respondents for the questionnaire are chosen randomly without any additional criteria. Though, the first two questions are aimed to divide them to different groups - the principal so as generation's, according to their age, and further accordingly with the respondents' work position to observe if work experience and attitude towards leader or knowledge about concept of leadership depends also on that factor. Other questions are focused on understanding the concept of leadership and people's attitude towards a leader, including their thoughts in terms of leader's transformation. Later on the results will be collected and analysed, in order to reveal trends in given responses. And the last step is to combine theoretical and empirical research parts to conclude the research and finally state an answer to the question: “Does leadership changes within the time, depending on different generations' mindset or not?”

Depending on the results collected from questionnaire there expected to be seen two possible ways solutions. First, the approving, which will state that the hypothesis is true, what leads us to the fact that the concept of leadership undergoes certain transformations within the passage of time. Driven by questions in the survey the respondents are expected to be separated to several groups connected by approximate similarities in opinions, although we expect people from one age groups show closer attitude to similar questions. For example, for the question “What should be the main focus for a good leader?” the youngest generation coordination of the group in order to help them to adapt and integrate into the work environment, so as people-orientation, should be appreciated more, than focus on the maximum efficiency, as expected for the older generations. People of older generation are tend to be more concern in their attitude/prefer more distance with the group leader/do not show or show strong will to be a leader. Millennials or Gen Y is expected to perform the most flexible answers. That tendency is not surprising because people from Gen Y as a middle generation were born and raised in completely different background on the edge of transformations where the situation changed within less than a decade. So as senior millennials, those who were born before 1980, tend to be closer in their world views to the Gen X, junior millennials are respectively should be closer to Gen Z or fluctuate in their opinion without choosing anything in particular. The youngest of the observed generations - Gen Z - is expected to show more individualistic features, but in the meantime to have more specific view on a person they prefer to see as their leader. The youngest generation is more acquainted with the current world situation and combined with the knowledge from older colleges they should have a better understanding of what is needed to effective globalization process for their country.

The world is constantly changing; there are invented new principles, changed the core values, rephrased old theories, so it becomes a topic of paramount importance to understand the request made by a modern society. Considering this fact it is important to conduct the diachronic research that would take into account preferences and request stated by more than one generation. Such studies can stimulate the development of leadership resulting in reconsideration of already established leader's behavioral pattern among with the reviewing the concept of leadership. Diachronic approaches may benefit it terms of determining roots of existing leadership system and proposing the best leadership style which will to a greater extend suit to the modern world.

1. Theoretical framework

1.1 The subject of research

There exist many articles that explain the correlation between national culture and leadership. Each nation has its own specific norms, values and beliefs that are responding in favourable leadership style. However, such traits transform through the time leading further transformations in the existing approaches and behaviors. Through the diverse historical development there appear new requests towards those who manage and such demands might be slightly different, though usually correspond to each other in different spheres such as government system, economy and business. Nevertheless, to predict or observe the emerging leadership styles it is a matter of paramount importance to take into account the relationship between age and leadership style. Each generation is living in diverse conditions from those from the past, so the demand toward leader undergoes specific transformations. The studies held on the topic of leadership usually view it only in one given period, so there is a lack of diachronic researches that would help to analyse the changes in leadership approaches. Diachronic studies can result better in case of analysing the change itself and can be more useful in respect of observing the tendencies for the change. People of different ages seek for different in their leaders and those demands can be better seen through the comparable researches of different generation.

Though, to analyse the correlation between generations and leadership it is needed to understand what leadership is and who the leader is. The following definitions will be the key terms for this paper, especially for the research part.

Leadership has several definitions presented by scholars or existing in dictionaries, for example, Oxford Dictionary defines leadership as “The action of leading a group of people or an organization” or as “The state or position of being a leader”. For this paper the connotation of a term “leadership” more corresponds with the first statement. The concept of leadership itself can be traced back to its ethimology, the term was formed from the Anglo-Saxon word “lad” or “leaden” which means a path or way if taken as noun, or to lead and give the sense of direction. On that basis, the term leadership can be defined as: an ability to show the way to others.

Leadership - is actions taken by a person (so as manager or executive) to help people reach the stated goals and organize their performance. Further on during the analysis there will be analysed different types of leadership, those focused on task achievements or those which are more aimed on establishing relationships, and others. In all of these cases leadership will be understand as a pack of specific actions, including values and beliefs transferred by a leaders to his followers. Driven from this, it is important also to define a leader. Usually leader is associated with someone related to the government or at least a person who is taken the higher job positions like the CEO of an organization. However, for this paper leader is not strictly required to have specific job position. In context of the study leader is perceived as a manager of working group or a project team. Surely, some of described leaders, especially in theoretical part, will be referred to as managers of different levels, entrepreneurs, and executives. However, the job position is not marked as valuable, excepting the analysis of the studies where such point has its practical importance for the research. Accordingly, leadership is an action aimed to the benefit of the following group taken by a person who is eager to implement his ideas to followers, to find the most efficient way to encourage them manages change and takes control of risks.

According to different both practical and theoretical studies of the phenomenon, there can be marked several conditions for the leadership. First of all, leadership cannot exist without involving other people - there can be no leader without the followers - it is a social influence relationship, where the leader is affected by his followers at the same extent as the followers are affected by the leader. Secondly, it is an on-going, continuous process that causes changes and/or improvements in the environment, including changes in status quo of people's relationships.

As it is stated that leadership requires and sometimes even influences changes in the process of evolution, it is suggested that different leadership styles tend to succeed each other throughout the time periods. Based on this statement, the focus of this paper is drawn to the Contingency theory of leadership.

“Contingency theory - leadership occurs in a context. Leadership style must be exercised depending on each situation”; Fiedler (1964; 1967).

This work is mostly focused on the Contingence theory as it is hypothesized that leadership is influenced by different generations. This statement implements that within the changes of generations there goes parallel change in the context. New factors in the business, economy or society require new leaders and leadership behaviors that will fully correspond to the moment. Thus, leadership is viewed as a phenomenon that appears in context and jointly transforms through the time.

1.2 Cross-cultural studies

From the very beginning of the 20th century the scholars around the world started to analyze different aspects of the cultures and societies creating a global image of the world. By observation made on people's behavioral patterns, socio-cultural aspects, their traits and believes the scientists could come up with the idea that it is possible to differentiate cultures. There appeared theories and systems that latter on helped to make more qualified and profound research on the topic of cultural diversity. Proven through historic observations it was obvious that cultures may be compared due to the existence of the several patterns in ruling e.g. governmental system and types of the societies. The cultures were analyzed on the basis of its nationality so as country, dissolving general trends from ways how people act and what they think. So the most well-known Hofstede's Theory of Cultural Dimensions first appeared at 1960. It was combined work of the scholars from various fields such as sociologists, psychologists, anthropologists etc. Firstly, the theory seamed to be quite ambiguous; however, it still remains one of the most widely used practices to study aspects of culture in one given country according to features its residents possess. Geert Hofstede with the group of scholars around the world made a huge research between 1967 and 1973 first focused his research on the 40 largest countries, and then extended it to more than 50 countries and 3 regions. Hofstede conducted a large survey study revising national values' differences across countries all over the world and created a scale of six dimensions which represented the main aspects of the culture: Power Distance, Individualism/Collectivism, Masculinity/Feminity, Long/Short-Term Orientation, Uncertainty Avoidance, and Indulgence/Restrain. According to these dimensions it is possible to record, for instance, which attitude people have towards a ruling party and people of power, or how they prefer to organize their time, what value more business or personal relationship, whereas they tend to appreciate group work or prefer individual tasks.

Taking into consideration model presented by Hofstede it is possible to come up with several suggestions of a leadership style that would be more preferable for Russian society. As it was said before some dimensions evaluate people's attitude towards those who lead them and work-related relationships. Such dimensions as Power Distance, Individualism and Masculinity become the key points for given observation. Stated the fact that, according to Hofstede's model (Figure 1), Russians tend to have a huge gap between different position levels that result from the strong hierarchy of power, and low Individualism so as Collectivism, it can be stated that the preferable leader is expected to keep the distance from his subordinates, though, engage them into collective work. At the same time, the low Masculinity level or the Feminity results in more Human-oriented leadership. However, such suggestions cannot be fully correspondent to the current situation, as it is admitted by many scholars that Hofstede's study is rather outdated. Naumov and Puffer Measuring Russian Culture using Hofstede's Dimensions - Alexander Naumov, Sheila Puffer, 2000 in 2000 conducted an observation of Russian culture using cultural dimensions presented by Hofstede. The provided insights have proved that Russian culture is developing through the years, so the previous results cannot be fully suitable for the more contemporary society. For instance, the Power Distance level in Hofstede's study resulted to be higher in comparison to the modern research by Naumov and Puffer (93 to 68). The same situation exists within Uncertainty Avoidance (95-68) and Collectivism (39-45), those scores appeared to be lower than stated before. Though, the change for Collectivism is not significant, whereas the lower score for the Uncertainty Avoidance means that Russians now are more willing to take risks. Moreover, according to Naumov and Puffer the higher rate for Masculinity (36-55) means that Russians become more secure in taking individual actions and standing for their individuality. Finally, the authors mark that the differences made by the research mostly steam from the various age of the respondents. So as the younger ones, for example, reported the higher Masculinity and lower Power Distance levels, when responses provided by older almost correlated to the Hofstede's scale. And that is the reason why culture and other aspect of society should be studied diachronically; there is need new data that will better represent current situation on practice, not only in theory.

Figure 1

The Hofstede's model of cultural dimensions successfully became the basis for many further cultural comparative studies, in addition, it laid the ground work for the societal cultural research works (Eric Van Genderen, 2011). However, Hofstede's study has been highly criticized for have many limitations, and now it became rather outdated for the consistent research. Based on Hofstede's model of cross-cultural diversity there appeared several other theories and projects which focused on different aspects of cultural diversity, making more detailed and in-depth research works adapting the given system to a new era. Within the permanently developing society it should be mentioned that, even though the previously suggested dimensions still represent general cultural trends, there emerge new cultural features that have to be analyzed. The GLOBE foundation - Global Leadership & Organizational Behavior Effectiveness - in 2004 presented results for 10-years research “Culture, Leadership, and Organizations: The GLOBE Study of 62 Societies” (2004) held upon more than 50 countries which represents a cross-level integration theory of the relationship between culture and societal, organizational, and leadership effectiveness. In this book was firstly described and represented a new cultural dimensions division that displaced Hofstede's division. Providing more up-to-date survey data based on the cultural values of different societies GLOBE project managed to create more realistic view to various culture which corresponds with the current period of time. Moreover, by analyzing cultural traits the scholars working for GLOBE project managed to visualize and observe the issue of leadership among cultures. Definition of culture formulated by GLOBE: “Shared motives, values, beliefs, identities, and interpretations or meanings of significant events that result from common experiences of members of collectives that are transmitted across generations”. Measuring Russian Culture using Hofstede's Dimensions - Alexander Naumov, Sheila Puffer, 2000 (House et al, 2004). The GLOBE project successfully created a huge theoretical base for the comparative cultural studies. Though, some scholars as, for example, Eric Van Genderen Russian Business Leadership: A Study of Managers Working within MNCs - Eric Van Genderen, 2011 tend to criticize GLOBE scholars for the inaccuracy of their research

The scale presented below (Figure 2) shows GLOBE's cultural visualization model, more exactly the score for Russia. Accordingly to the study, GLOBE scholars collected and analyzed information about nine dimensions (House et al, 2002). Two of them are the same as presented in Hofstede's model so as Power Distance rate and level of Uncertainty Avoidance; the Individualism vs Collectivism was transformed to the Institutional Collectivism (extent to which organizations value and encourage collective work) and In-group Collectivism (how individuals express cohesiveness and loyalty towards organizations or other groups); Masculinity vs Feminity was transformed into Gender Egalitarianism. In addition, model was extended by four dimensions: Assertiveness (shows to which the extent individuals are confrontational and assertive), Future orientation, and Performance and Humane orientation. The value scores show how and to what extent people value given traits, whereas the practice scores represent the behaviors toward these dimensions.

As it can be seen from the scale (Figure 2) there is a great differentiation between practice and value scores. During the research it appeared that people experience several difficulties in differentiating values and beliefs. They had explained their preferences towards how they see their country, sometimes even stereotyping themselves, whereas the asked values were rather hard to define (Vas Taras, Piers Steel and Bradley L. Kirkman, 2010). Though Taras et al states that the reason of this negative correlation are more deep than flaws into the research, it might result from the fact that people usually tend to see things a bit differently that they are. Moreover, for Russian context it is possible to explain gap between values and practices by the period when research was held. At the edge of 21th century, Russian society has partly released norm and values implemented during the Soviet era, so it can be seen from the GLOBE's results that the mentality of the nation has changed. People become more future-oriented, they highly value performance - and human-orientation, the level of assertiveness as well as institutional collectivism diminished, showing that the culture does undergo transformations. Regrettably, practical part of the question still requires more time to overcome the process of change, because the gap for some dimensions is rather high. For example, future orientation gap in scores can be explained by the fact that during the Soviet and post-Soviet era people were mostly focused on short-term, whereas now they are starting to think long-term, even if it is hard to change the behaviour. The same situation stands for the Power Distance - people prefer to see and value it as rather low, when in fact the strong hierarchal system still exist in Russia and seem to be quite tough to change.

Figure 2

1.3 Leadership studies

Within the development of cross-cultural and anthropological studies among others there appeared theories about managerial systems and a phenomenon of leadership. Social scientist examined how the phenomenon developed historically, which conceptual parts undergo any changes, and how does it differ through various cultures. It is obvious that the phenomenon itself appeared much earlier than the first theory was formulated, however only from the end of the 19th century there can be found any written acknowledgments of the concept of leadership. In Leadership Literature Review Leadership Theories and Styles: A Literature Review - Zakeer Ahmed Khan, Dr. Allah Nawaz, Irfanullah Khan, 2016 (2016) it is admitted that, even though the theories were modified and rephrased within the passage of time they have not lost their relevance. The relevance itself is highly dependent on a context: time period, political situation in given society, the level of live and technological development. Societies are continuously developing so the leadership required to fit the current period is transforming therefore some leadership theories might be quite outdated for one society, but still be relevant for others. The growing variety of leadership theory has helped to create an academic agenda for leadership research, although it is maintained that several challenges accompany the emergence of new theoretical perspectives. The established leadership theories are still viewed as the more valued once compared to the newly published. The scholars continue to argue, whereas the system of leadership styles requires new theories instead of reformulating already existing to adapt them for the current situation, leadership scholars have more often focused on the isolated effects of leaders or followers at one or another level of analysis and within short time intervals. (Dinh, 2014)

Scholarly research on the topic of leadership theories was held by Jessica Dinh (2014) and other social culturologists. Over the last decade it has been witnessed a dramatic increase of the scientific interest in the field, resulting in the development of diverse leadership theories. Dinh with the group of scholars has conducted a multiple-level review of across 10 top-tier academic publishing outlets that included The Leadership Quarterly, Administrative Science Quarterly, American Psychologist, Journal of Management, Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Journal of Applied Psychology, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Organizational Science, and Personnel Psychology, creating a framework for existing and emerging leadership theories. There have been analyzed more than 400 articles where any of leadership theories was mentioned. The review by Leadership Quartery (LQ) demonstrates that the number of new leadership theories has increased in last decades. The scholars like Kaiser, Hogan, & Craig, (2008) viewed leadership depending on the hierarchical level. Whereas, there were also reviewed other processes which dynamically affect the leader & followers system: micro processes, such as perceptions, emotions, and cognitions; and macro processes, such as the social-relational context.

During the analysis the LQ has digested three forms of emergent process of leadership: global, compositional and compilational. The global process is the most static of all three; it is more specific in nature and do not depend on the sub-levels such as group size or demographic diversity. The global process does not require an overview of individual to compose the correlation between societal units. Other theories are proven to be more individual-focused. Compositional form represents the process of emergency as an isomorphic situation where the similar parts (groups of individuals) undergo the same process of transformation, but the fundamental aspect or quality is not affected by these changes due to the result of aggregation (Kozlowski & Klein, 2000). The functions of different levels remain the same. On the contrary, compilational forms or leadership emergence considers crucial changes of qualities and functions on the all levels; the aggregation goes from lower to higher levels changing the core features. The compilation form of leadership transformation is the core for this paper viewing the generation groups as framing time periods when the general shifts take place.

Within the last decades different scholars observed the situation in Russia analysing the main trends in leadership styles singularly or compared to other cultures. It does not require reaffirmation that Russian culture has its own unique history which cannot be fully compared to Western culture, so the leadership style needed is also quite unique. Most scholars came to an agreement that Russian culture is mostly identified by high Power Distance and Collectivism, on the contrary with, for example, USA mostly viewed as highly individualistic culture. Russian history is filled with the examples of great, though authoritarian leaders that managed to lead the country to an international success. Thus, Russian companies have traditionally searched for leaders who were strong and who also addressed Russians' other national culture values. However, in an increasingly globalized marketplace, the identification of cultural similarities may be just as important as that of the differences, since members of different societies need to build on common morality and beliefs when working together (When does national identity matter? Convergence and divergence in international business ethics. Wendy Bailey, Andrew Spicer. 2007). Westerners and Russians differ not merely in terms of national culture, but also in the economic, political, ideological, religious, and social systems (Contrasts in culture: Russian and Western perspectives on organizational change, Snejina Michailova. 2000). By comparing five Russian companies with Western participants S. Michailova managed to prove that even with implemented Western mentality Russians still tend to have some concerns about it. The main difficulty is that major part of employees has been influenced by country's socialist past, and some of them still rely heavily on these experiences. The very first obstacle in this research appeared at the Planning Change process. Major part of the sample group has demonstrated difficulties in perception of Western representors in Russian society. Russia tends to be quite egocentric society where implementation of Western practices is viewed as something unpredictable - an uncertainty that is better to be avoided (UAI). Western expatriates had to prove their reliability to make the change possible by convincing CEOs to work for the change. The Russians claimed that they would know whom to blame if the transformation did not work, which was in line with the centralization approach and the one-man authority style. In cases when the CEO was from the Western culture, it was marked that the Power Distance Level (GLOBE, 2004) quality which illustrates that Russians are acquainted to powerful leaders who delegate little power. That factor resembled, for example, in placing the CEOs office far from the employees work place. Russians are eager to avoid uncertainty, which can be a national feature rooted to the proclaimed security of the communist system and the surprises dealt to Russia in the past. The authoritarian leader is seen as somebody who can take the hit excepting the necessity for others to think about anything than work they are told to do.

Leadership has also been viewed by different scholars, for example, Carl F. Feya, Margarita Adaeva, and Anastasia Vitkovskaia (2001) as: a positional attribute; a personal characteristics; and a category of behavior. This paper views all three concepts including them in the survey presented forward. Though C. Feya et al for their research view it mostly as a behavioral approach studying how leadership style affects leader's effectiveness. Through the multi-step research they created an extreme model featuring four maximums for leadership in Russia: Authoritarian vs Democratic leadership, as well with Relation- vs Task- oriented.

The authoritarian leadership is mostly described as the one presenting high control level, the leader is eager to delegate tasks to lower level subordinates. Leader takes the controlling role exaggerating it to all spheres from task to relationship between people. While the main goal for authoritarian leader is to be informed about everything, the democratic leader believes that people are able to do the task and conduct relations on their own without it being delegated, fully controlled or delegated. Democratic leadership mostly is focused on encouraging subordinates and work facilitation. The research results demonstrated that authoritarian leadership tends to present higher productivity, although people in Russia are more satisfied with democratic leaders. As for the task or relations orientation these leadership types are both claimed to be reasonably effective. However, here it goes for the situational leadership (Hersey, Blanchard, Reddin, Zigarmi & Nelson, 1960) where a leader is able to analyze the situation and choose the right style. On one extent he should focus more on task: setting the objectives, creating frame works, stating goals, ensuring that everyone is aware of what has to be done and how. On the other extent the main task for leader is to coordinate the relations between people. Leader should be aware of how people feel, what do they think about task, what is the atmosphere in working groups and subordinates' personal lives.

The extents to which leaders are oriented can also be described by the means of cultural dimensions so as high Power Distance and Collectivism for the Authoritarian leadership, low Masculinity or Feminity for Relation-oriented or Democratic leadership, high Uncertainty Avoidance for Task-oriented leadership. Though there exist other leadership styles on the intersections of these extents which results in more preferable leadership styles. According to the research conducted by Feya, Adaeva and Vitkovskaya (2001) executives in Russia prefer to work with so called Statesman. It is a democratic task-oriented leader who is focused on achieving goals and making the best profit out of it. Such leader is open to work related discussions, he coordinate interpersonal relations in order to create the most effective working atmosphere and to obtain employees' commitment and involvement. However, the comfort zone expressed by distance between leader and subordinates is not interrupted, because discussions are not tending to cross with personal life.

Practically the same results appeared in the research made by Alexander Ardichvili, Richard N. Cardozo, and Alexander Gasparishvili in 1998. The study conducted on the basis of Hofstede's cultural dimensions was aimed to record the information about leadership styles in Russia, decision-making behaviors and human resources development. Collected information gives an opportunity to create a database about leadership in Russian community and possibility for further comparison with Western cultures. The findings indicated that people are rarely seen to identify themselves as an Authoritarian leader (approximate 11%), though it was expected to be presented in higher percentage as based on country's high Power Distance level which is usually associated with Authoritarian leadership. While the part for those who stay for Democratic leadership was over 30%, the major part went to the Situational leadership style resulting in the half of respondents' choices. It is also worth noting that those who prefer Autocratic leadership mostly were thirty-forty years old, so as from the beginning of Gen Z age group or late Gen X, whereas no one of those who were younger identified themselves as authoritarian leaders. Ardichvili, Cardozo, Gasparishvili stated that results were found unexpected for them as they made suggestions according to Hofstede's model. Nevertheless it is possible to claim that the scene for leadership has transformed - Authoritarian leadership is not seen as the most preferable even after huge communistic impact on the society and its development that resulted in authoritarian traditions. Now people are more likely to favor Democratic approach or even more - Situational which can result to be more beneficial as a leader is more adaptable to the situation and/or work conditions. This study continued in Ardichvili further work (Leadership styles of Russian entrepreneurs and managers, 2001) where he makes an overview of more modern leadership types in Russian context: Transformational, Transactional divided to Contingent Reward leadership and Management by Exception, Charisma and Laissez-faire. He compared to different groups of people - entrepreneurs and managers - to find which leadership approach is more favored in the beginning of new millennia. Focus was shifted from age groups to the current situation, the mid age, however, was about 37, again late Gen X and early Gen Z. The research resulted in demonstrating that these two chosen groups cannot be defined as homogeneous as their choice of leadership did not fully correlate. However, it was claimed that Charismatic leadership s well as Management by Exception were not favored by any of them. The Contingent Reward was excluded by managers, although this type of Transactional leadership was still counted as second of importance for entrepreneurs. This outcome can refer to previous Ardichvili et al. study at 1998 where the entrepreneurs presented high favor towards authoritarian leadership. The entrepreneurs are the driven force for the development of Russian leadership. Through the years of transition, especially starting from the 80s-90s, it was the small firm that influenced the transformations in country's leadership. Vesa Suutari in 1998 stated that Russian entrepreneurs are less active in coordination, planning and goal-setting behaviour as their Western colleagues, however, small private organizations are know to adjust better the current market place need, that's why they are eager to develop its leadership style towards higher efficiency. The end of 20th century turned out to be a highly difficult period for Russian market place. Thus, manager and entrepreneurs had to learn new practices that would benefit their work in current situation.

At this point it is important to observe the shift from Transactional to Transformational leadership. In Russia the development of market economy appeared to be highly disruptive and erratic. Soon after perestoyka there have emerged various and often chaotic environments that affected the organizations and management practices, furthermore it was followed by erratic governmental policies. Partly due to this reason Russian managers presented very limited competences in management change and on leadership perspective (Daniel J. McCarthy et al, 2005). The high need to transformation required managers, entrepreneurs and other leaders to change their main focal point from functional to process orientation. By the 95th major part of top managers realized that centralized management approach became more of a burden that an advantage. At that instant, the shift from Transactional leadership to Transformational became inevitable.

Analyzing the historical development of Russian society it is possible to see that generally, leadership is illustrated by an image of strong leaders, who have power and a will to accomplish great affairs. Such leaders are usually percept as all-knowing, able to take control of practically everything. The Authoritarian or Autocratic leadership that takes the dominant role in Russian history further developed to be a classic example of Transactional leadership. The Transactional leadership is mainly focused on a short-term orientation, focus on task, goal and achievement; employees are valid due to their successful task fulfillment. Transactional leadership is claimed to be traditional leadership style for Russia, though the continuous implementation of it led to impasse in development. The state is the most powerful institution that affects leadership situation among country and its intrusive role creates several obstacles for transformation is Russian leadership styles. Government acts like the center of every sphere so as economy, market, and business - each of them is state-managed. Thus, Russia has and urgent need for less governmental involvement, including reconsidering the relationship between executives and subordinates. Such leadership type is itself an obstacle to change and development. Surely, it cannot be changed all at once; Russian managers have benefited and score a lot on Transactional leadership during last decades. Some Russian entrepreneurs even now continue perpetuating traditional and common leadership style. Traditional leadership style has its roots back in history and was even more actively promoted during the Soviet-era, so it might seem quite logical that Russian executives and entrepreneurs continued to exhibit Transactional style. Authoritative leaders have always been described as giving meaning to work, promoting the sense of ownership, security and team work; they transmitted clear vision, stated clear boundaries and aims (McCarthy et al. 2010). The subordinates got used to these paternalistic relations where they were kept in discipline and control, which, however, guaranteed them security. Nevertheless, such leadership style which we view as a type of Transactional leadership has several drawbacks that reveal it as an obstacle for leadership and organizational reform. Tis style is presented by short-term managerial orientation, top-down communication, using fear as a primary motivating tool. Moreover, it has little potential to be successful in long-term, although it is not surprising that sometimes it can generate long-term, given the high Power Distance level that barely reduced even during years of transactions. High Power Distance means that some subordinates continue to favor vertical power system and have distant relations with their leader (McCarthy et al. 2008). Transformational leadership style in fact is almost completely contrasting to Transactional, which is associated with exhibiting strong, commanding, authoritarian leaders that practice control and work through only top-down communication. Transformational leadership is able to engage leaders to stimulate the changes that are required for building successful organization for contemporary market. It does not depend on patronizing relations, though views each manager or employee as an important member for a team where everyone accept his/her accountability and responsibility. Such leadership style emphasizes team work and communication, leaders are assumed to be encouraging and people-oriented, so they can manage change much easier than Transactional leaders (McCarthy et al. 2010). However, given Russian historical background, the Transactional leadership style is prevailing in institutional context, within the traditional county's values the transformations in corporate leadership are likely to be evolutionary than revolutionary. The changes can be especially challenging for Russian society, since it demands high trust level between executive and subordinates, and such relationships conflict with common power distance. Russian society is known as highly conservative society, so the period of change appeared to be really challenging. (Kets et al, 2000). The organizational reform which is completely transformative requires Russian society not only huge commitment, but also to go through a period of learning and unlearning. The change itself is an Uncertainty that Russian, due to their mentality, are trying to avoid, so the managers during this period had to act like coaches in order to support change agents and help employees to use learning-by-doing approach. All members of an organization should value new knowledge and understand that it is leading them to future advantages. But whilst it is important for a Transformational leadership to favor individuality of each member, it can be difficult for many Russian employees, cause being singled-out would be felt as leaving comfort zone, so it is an important issue for a Transformational leader to establish trust with his subordinates and to encourage them to act. Russia is still not over the period of change, it might be hard for employees and managers to adapt new leadership style, so effective leadership requires balanced approach, combining rewards and punishment or so-called carrot and sticks approach. Even Transactional approaches might be beneficial at this point. For example, Contingence Reward style combined with Transformational leadership may give a sense of security, lower the level of fear and encourage taking risks which are usually avoided. Moreover, managers have to learn how to act long-term. During the Soviet and post-Soviet periods, due to the lack of information and incoherence in directives, and constant change of organizational goals, people were used to hold off their task for as long as possible and then rush into chaos. Short-term for them was the synonymy of survival, whereas the effective long-term orientation requires credibility from all team members. That is why manager should shift their focus to relation-orientation.