Crossing cultural boundaries : transfer of management knowledge and skills between organisational cultures

Abstract

The subject of this thesis is the knowledge transfer process through the lens of cultural diversity and cultural awareness, bi-directional transfers between and inside Russian and European organisations, leading to the sustainable creation of values. It is aimed at explaining a variance of functions, which affect the knowledge transfer system and reacting to the research question: “How can management consultants overcome the gaps, barriers and stumbling blocks in the daily operations of the transfer of managerial knowledge and skills in intercultural contexts, in order to provide ensured, sustainable value creation for clients and on behalf of the transmitter organisation”? The study of the literature from Western and Russian perspectives was conducted for revealing the positions of scholars in the related areas, such as the national culture and its dimensions, social environment, organisational culture, roles and styles of the actors in the knowledge transfer process, organisational learning and absorptive capacity. Knowledge management and knowledge transfer processes are designed to manage the generation of knowledge from external and internal resources. For the research an Action Research Methodology and a Mixed Method Research approach was employed. An online survey was conducted to collect and exchange primary data from managers and organisations in Russia, intertwined with a focus group session and in-depth interviews with managers and employees randomly selected from the online survey’s sample. The results of the online surveys were processed by SPSS. For the focus group and in-depth interviews qualitative analyses was conducted. The findings reveal that organisational culture is a dominant factor in the transfer of knowledge and that the Russian national culture has a determinant role in organisations, specifically in the process of knowledge transfer and sustainable creation of values, in both directions.