Idiosyncrasy, heterogeneity and evolution of managerial styles in contemporary Russia
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine managerial styles of Russian managers in the context of institutional and economic environment of contemporary Russia.
Design/methodology/approach
The study is based on a sample of 482 line and middle managers covering eight geographic regions, 14 industries and 80 organizations in Russia.
Findings
Employing factor and cluster analyses the paper identifies four distinct managerial styles: paternalistic, exploitative, performance oriented and passive. In addition, the paper analyzes a number of contingent characteristics of these typological Russian managers such as their age, career development, regional, industrial and organizational presence.
Originality/value
The analysis enriches the understanding of managerial style idiosyncrasy, heterogeneity and evolution in Russia. The identified plurality of managerial styles, differentially related to a number of contingency variables, indicates that it pays off for western companies to avoid using stereotypical ideas when dealing with their Russian counterparts and employ conscious strategies when recruiting managers to their Russian operations instead.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This research was supported by grants from the National Research University – Higher School of Economics (HSE) through the Basic Research Program. The authors would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions to improve the quality of the paper.
Citation
Balabanova, E., Efendiev, A., Ehrnrooth, M. and Koveshnikov, A. (2015), "Idiosyncrasy, heterogeneity and evolution of managerial styles in contemporary Russia", Baltic Journal of Management, Vol. 10 No. 1, pp. 2-29. https://doi.org/10.1108/BJM-03-2014-0039
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2015, Emerald Group Publishing Limited