|
East Europeans can
and often do embrace transition culture's presumptions about the superiority
of global business practices and the relative insignificance of East European
differences. One manager, for instance, said that there was nothing intrinsically
wrong with the way the parent firm does business in Eastern Europe; indeed,
she said, her firm is like any other in the rest of Europe because the
company has its own culture that cuts across national cultures. And she
also said, in her excellent English, that the language of business is
English, implying that English is not so much a national property as it
is a functional one. The only thing that was slightly wrong, she said,
was that some of the Westerners were too arrogant, talked behind people's
backs, and snickered at the East Europeans as if they were dumb. She said
that this was their greatest failing, and would recommend rather that
managers should recognize that her countrymen can learn.
Manifest appreciation
for any indulgence of national cultures runs alongside this praise for
global business practice. On the one hand, Westerners demonstrate the
universality of transition culture by demonstrating some interest in,
and especially some capacity in, the local culture. On the other hand,
East Europeans demonstrate their membership in this culture by extending
their appreciation for this, sometimes relatively limited, accomplishment.
One East European said that the Americans she worked with were "really
well prepared" because "they had classes and knew a lot of things
about my country. Some things about the history, some current things,
what's going on in the country's companies, a little of my language, some
basic words." Another American recalled "when we got out into
the streets and things, we knew a little bit of the language, and people
loved it." Indulging the local culture goes beyond the production
of collegial appreciation.
Certainly for business
to be done well, there must be some sense of the country's mentality.
The East Europeans enjoyed telling stories about the foolishness of Westerners
without the right cultural toolkit. One manager told with relish the marketing
strategy of Wash 'n Go, the combined shampoo and conditioner. They spent
a bundle on advertising, emphasizing just what a good deal it was to have
a combined shampoo and conditioner. This was ridiculous, he said, because
East European women didn't use conditioner. Another manager recalled a
second absurd commercial. When women on the commercial shout "This
detergent is great!!!", her people don't get it. The manager said,
"Our people are not like that. They don't think about things so enthusiastically."
Westerners don't
necessarily take these as examples of Western condescension or cultural
inadequacy. Instead, like the pizza marketer at the beginning of this
seminar, they will only take these examples as indicators that the marketing
office didn't do good work. East Europeans, however, can use it as a symptom
of a more general problem. East Europeans should be more in charge. Indeed,
the most 'Westernized' East European manager argued that a Western manager
couldn't be the marketing director, because 'he must understand completely
what the people need, and what the people think in that market."
But she couldn't have done the job before her training either, since she
knew "nothing about advertising, nothing about promotion, about pricing."
East Europeans can learn, however. Transition culture presumes that. It
does not presume, however, that those at the core of transition culture
need to learn how East Europeans think.
Within transition
culture, therefore, we have contests over who is best suited to manage
transition: Westerners or East Europeans. On the one hand, Westerners
will claim "ownership" of transition culture. East Europeans
can join transition culture by invoking the proper skills, but can rarely
challenge Westerners on those grounds. On the other hand, they can invoke
their knowledge of East European culture to elevate their own competence
over their Western counterparts. The dispute can rest on the relative
significance of knowing local culture for any particular task. Ironically,
three of the central skill sets associated with transition culture--human
resource management, marketing and communications--all potentially elevate
the importance of local cultural competence in ways that accounting or
writing business plans may not. Consider these examples in human resource
management. Here, one manager laughs at his Western boss:
One of our bosses
decided to implement special incentives for their sales guys. And he
announced that everybody who sells more than a certain number of products
in one month will be given Ray-Ban sunglasses. You know? Ray-Bans! Can
you imagine? Ray-Bans. And the answer was we already have glasses. For
him it was something special, you know. Completely, mm, upstanding.
The best glasses. All around the world, OK. OK, yeah, very good. But
this is not the best incentive for East European people. And the answer
was, OK, give us 100 dollars for that, and this will be better.
Sometimes it reflects
an awareness of how the delegitimated past mixes with the present, as
when one manager discussed "employee of the month" awards:
They come up with
ideas. They're happy to receive money, this reward. But when you want
to put their name and their picture on the board and say, "This
guy really did something," no. Because, it continues to be perceived
as something negative really. Because you are cooperating with authority.
Cooperation with authority is not good by definition. Because it's been--and
it's not only the communist system, it's also the, the history of our
country.... to defy authority, to fight authority was a good patriotic
deed. So now if you, all of a sudden, are recognized by authority, it
means--well, who are you? Which side are you on? Even though, you know,
we try to communicate and explain, you know, it's, it's pretty good
for all of us. They are very skeptical towards it. In fact if you--I,
I was just amazed myself--when you try to--when you take like corporate
creeds--Or mission statements. In English. And they make perfect sense,
they're sincere and all this. You translate into our language--It sounds
terrible. It sounds almost 100 per cent like communist propaganda.
Sometimes it doesn't
take a profound awareness of taste or of the past, but just a good sense
of how incentive systems work. For instance, one Westernized East European
manager complained that the parent company insisted on a certain kind
of compensation system which was completely inappropriate given the ups
and downs of sales in the market, regardless of unit productivity. Limitations
are even more dramatic when it comes to assessing resistance, and corruption.
As one manager recalled,
Well, you see,
I came one year ago. And before me, the general manager, was one guy
from the West. And it--the management was practically only Westerners.
And they did a lot of work, good work. But they didn't expect and they
didn't know how strong is the East European resistance. They thought
that they wanted to create this factory exactly on the image of the
factory in their home country. But it's, it's impossible. It is different
conditions. Different people. Everything is different. So they did a
lot of work, and later on they entered into big problems. They couldn't
move forward. And that was the reason for which they asked for, for
a local ... to be the manager.
And when we asked
what he could do that the Westerners could not, he said,
In front of the
foreigners...East Europeans behaved like good actors. They played their
roles. It's much more difficult to play the role of somebody in front
of me, or even in front of another East European. So, to have success,
you have to make the appraisal of your staff. Proper appraisal. So,
they made a lot of mistakes in, in placing people. They trusted somebody
who was not worth trusting. When I cut the possibilities of doing the,
the corruption in one workshop--reported the guy subcontracted to his
colleagues and has paid more money than was necessary, and they were
using company's materials, company's workers, and so on--when I cut
it, the guy said, "Thank you, I will not work anymore." And
despite that he was a favorite of the Westerners. They were very surprised.
I didn't touch him. I didn't have any contacts with him. But I know
that he is stealing the company's money. So I cut the possibility to
do it.
East European difference
is obviously important to transition culture, but its significance tends
to be minimized when expatriates are the managers of transition. It is
simply a difference to be transcended. It is, however, usually the East
European who transcends that difference. East European difference tends
to become more significant when it becomes a resource in a contest over
claims to competence. Under these conditions, East European difference
tends to be accentuated when the promise of transition is not being realized,
when East Europeans feel like they should be in charge and Westerners
remain in that station. One case illustrates this better than others.
|
