The paradox and change of Russian cultural values

Abstract

Existing studies on Russian culture using the dominant dimensional theory of culture (e.g., Hofstede’s), in general, offer “stereotypical” characterization of that country’s societal culture but fail to capture the dynamics of cultural values that exist in Russian business and society. We argue that this weakness stems from the either/or logic associated with such an approach. We echo the call for improving the quality of cross-cultural research by going beyond Hofstede (Tung & Verbeke, 2010) through studying cultural paradoxes and their embedded contexts (e.g., Osland & Bird, 2000) in historical and contemporary Russia. To this end, we have applied Faure & Fang’s (2008) framework which builds on the holistic, dynamic, and paradoxical Yin Yang thinking to unravel the paradox inherent and changes to Russian cultural values over time. We find that underlying paradoxical values that traditionally coexisted in Russian culture during the Communist regime have been further reinforced as a consequence of Russia’s interactions with the rest of the world. In post-Communist Russia, traditional values have not disappeared; rather, they coexist and interact with new values as a result of cultural learning and knowledge transfer in global economy. We discuss the implications of these findings for future research.