From West-East Knowledge Transfer to Effective Working Relationships: Lessons From Commercial Capital S.A.

Zusammenfassung

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In the process of investing and managing in former Soviet-bloc transition countries, Westerners are exposed to important gaps that must be bridged. Over the last fifteen years and partly through trial and error, CC has developed a comprehensive approach for planning, establishing and managing their investments in these countries by linking mission, goals, organizational structure and organizational culture as components of their overall investment strategy.

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Auszug

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From West-East Knowledge Transfer to Effective Working Relationships: Lessons From Commercial Capital S.A.

The last decade has been politically, socially and economically turbulent for many post-socialist transition countries. Despite the fact that many western investors have failed in these countries, often due to their failure to interact effectively with Locals1, there are promising opportunities to be explored successfully by those who can master the art of dealing with numerous dilemmas, including the one of whether to impose one's own business and management principles and practices in the host environment or to adapt to local ways of doing and managing business. Difficulties in solving this dilemma are not merely related to the legacy of past adversary relations between East and West. Important differences in business values, processes and practices have acquired a new importance today, when the two sides need to work together for the realization of common projects. The major challenge is to engage in longterm relationships that facilitate learning on both sides, Westerners as well as Locals, rather than simply to transfer all the western firms' practices to their local investments. This is hard to achieve as it requires of both sides to question and readjust many deeply ingrained working habits and asks both sides to quickly learn new ways of thinking and acting (Su /Richelieu 1999; Wright et al. 2002; Vlachoutsicos/Lawrence 1996).

In recent years, there has been a growing body of research into the differences that Westerners come up against in their interaction with transition countriesbased Locals. Such research has tended to focus on structures of authority (Bollinger 1994; Elenkov 1997; Kelemen 1995; Kossov/Gurkov 1995; Lawrence/Vlachoutsicos 1990), leadership beliefs and styles (Puffer 1996; Shekshnia 1998; Suutari 1997), modes of empowerment (Michailova 2002; Welsh et al. 1993) and performance appraisal (Fey/Bjorkman 2001) and has generated valuable knowledge about how to transfer western know-how and implement particular requirements for success in a competitive market economy (Kelemen 1999; McCarthy/Puffer 1995; Michailova 2000). In this research, analysis and recommendations have tended to focus on aspects of the local business culture on a one-at-a-time basis. In this paper we adopt a holistic approach by linking mission, goals, organizational structure and organizational culture as components of an overall strategy for investing in post-socialist countries and suggest, contrary to prevalent thinking, that western investors should use the same planning elements as would ...

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