Doing Business in Russia: A Cross-Cultural Approach

Doing Business In Russia: A Cross-Cultural Approach

Paper By: Mohammed Nabeel Hamdan and

Table of Contents

Case 1 a restaurant misunderstanding

A case took place in Italy ,while being a kid me and my family liked to travel through europe in a tour programme therefore encountering different national groups and cultures,once while being in Napoli ,Italy we decided to sit in a restaurant which was filled with people,Italians as for the national analysis can be classified as Romance,even though Italians are quite often considered to be more temperament,who prefer conservatism and like active body language in comparison with their close relatives French,Spanic. Dad thought that it is fair to compare them with Azeris,Turkic descent,indeed big mistake,while sitting and waiting for the servant to come time was passing by, in Azerbaijan it is common to engage directly in verbal communication and gestures with servants,dad didn’t know italian and decided to snap his fingers in the direction of a waiter,finally he noticed,however gazed strangely, while giving service his face expression was pretty obviously telling that he was not satisfied with something,while giving food and taking service it was visible that in communication with us he was displeased in comparison with others

Analyzing this case i can only conclude that even though italians can be considered somewhat “warm” and very social people in comparison with nordic, it is incorrect to place them with middle eastern people,in those cultures, including Azeri, hierarchy is being presented in significantly higher extent ,besides being Romanic,being part of EU also have slight cultural impact ,equality in all aspects is very important thing.It is right to assume that waiter was offended by a simple gesture and considered that as a disrespect,in Baku i myself faced countless time cases when people openly joked (not in a mocking way) and were talking with a servant they did not know.

In order to avoid this simple awareness of a cultural difference helps to solve the problem

Case 2 speaking with strangers in pubs,bars WCs

Living almost 2 years in Europe,i think besides individual characteristics unconditionally of will ,the place of living impacts you,so the interesting thing that i observed was how many people actually randomly start chating etc while being in toilets in bars,pubs,clubs standing in a queue or in a row,indeed,being drunk can impact social behavior and emancipation,but that is not always the case. When i was back in Azerbaijan on a summer holidays,it was not my intention,rather accident,that when i was in a club with friends went to wc and while standing in queue commented it to a stranger hence wanted to escalate the conversation, the guy firstly replied,but then stared at me and ask whether i need something,unfriendly,like i tried offer him something,i then stopped speaking, as a person who lived in that country i can attest that it was not a particular individual but any typical Azeri what do so

So by analyzing this it is clear that besides being turkic as a cultural identity post sovietism also influences social structure and in comparison with Europe the underlying key differences are that Azeri people are - somewhat in the middle when it comes to determine whether they are direct or indirect and definitely of a high context in terms of communication .It is hard to say what would be if Russia did not invade Azerbaijan, as some people support soviet ideas, some turkic, some even try to resemble Iranians,here is when the contrast comes

To avoid such situations diversifying your cultural analysis is only useful tool here

Case 3 Language mixing

The case took place when a couple of friends from Russia came over to Baku, while going out with them i decided to introduce them to local friends of mine,Russians later told me that they were quite surprised by the specific accent that most of friends had as well as the fact that they used several languages to communicate while speaking,it is very common however to use English,Azeri and even Turkish words sometimes while still speaking Russian among people in Baku,and this is not solely presented there,in cross cultural countries and societies mixing words of a different origin is common,i have seen that among Brits using French occasional words at times,Dutch people using German or English words as if it was Dutch,and other examples,Russians however from what i learned even if when know several languages always prefer to use single language at once and most of the time shared dissatisfaction while someone does so,sometimes even being direct,especially when it comes to Russian,although most of them do not mind using lots of european words and terms that are already part of Russian but structurally not,derived from different languages