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07
INTERCULTURAL
DIFFERENCES
How authenticity is experienced in Germany, Russia, and the UK
The study surveyed respondents from Germany, Russia, and the UK.
This cultural mix reveals a number of interesting differences between the
countries in question with respect to the experience of authenticity.
PECULIARITIES IN RUSSIA
An analysis of the Russian managers shows that work-life
conflict has MUCH LESS INFLUENCE on their experience of
authenticity when compared with the other two countries.
More importantly, the factors ‘feeling of belonging’ and ‘individuality’
exhibit a similarly strong correlation with authenticity.
By contrast, for German managers, a feeling of belonging
is substantially more important for authenticity than is
individuality. This observation is striking given Russia’s past
history, which offered individuals little opportunity to distinguish
themselves positively from the masses. We further
note that the factor ‘company size’ is hardly important at all
for the experience of authenticity in Russian managers, and,
compared with the international average, increasing age and
experience appear to have little impact on their experience
of authenticity.
PECULIARITIES IN THE UK
The striking thing about British managers is that their own
managers’ leadership style appears to have only a small influence
on their experience of authenticity. This is an interesting
observation given that the majority of modern leadership
theories come from the Anglo-American sphere, which could
lead one to assume that leadership should play a prominent
role in these countries in general and for the experience of authenticity
in particular. Nevertheless, in the sample surveyed
it is precisely leadership that seems to have had little influence,
at least as far as the feeling of authenticity is concerned.
For British managers too, the factors ‘feeling of belonging’
and ‘individuality’ play equally important roles – similar to
their Russian colleagues, but in contrast to the German managers.
Belonging seems to be more important to the latter
than individuality.
In general, UK managers appear to feel less authentic than
their colleagues in Germany and Russia: though the differences
are small, on average the SELF-ALIENATION values
are highest for British managers such that external factors
influence their actions on a regular basis. This could be related
to the historical and cultural histories of the countries
in questions: in Germany, for instance, the legacy of “inwardness”
still plays a role, whereas throughout Russian history
individuals have almost uninterruptedly been exposed to
the influence of substantial, often negative, external factors.
These divergent histories could be the cause of the present
situation, in which both German and Russian managers
perceive and process external factors less strongly than their
British counterparts. ||