Culture is commonly understood as a set of beliefs, traditions, rules, and habits that belong to a particular group of individuals at a specific time. Therefore, it is impossible to find two identical cultures on the globe. Cultural belonging influences people’s way of acting and thinking and, consequently, it affects the business context. The paper considers the distinctions and resemblances between the cultures of Australia and Russia and compares them concerning the global business environment. The essay argues that these cultures have more dissimilar than shared features, and this leads to unequal conditions for doing business.
Before moving to the comparison of Australian and Russian cultures, the two mentioned above cultural groups will be checked for the presence or absence of common features in the key dimensions of culture. Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner (2011) compare cultures by seven criteria. On one side of the scale, there are universalism, individualism, specificity, neutrality, and achievements. On the other side, there are particularism, communitarianism, diffusion, emotionality, and ascription. Apart from that, such dimensions as sequential versus synchronous time and either internal or outer direction of culture are also used.
Firstly, universalism means that people obey laws, regulations, and obligations whatever the circumstances are. Particularism, on the contrary, denotes that in each particular situation, the response of people may change since they believe that universal rules do not exist. Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner (2011) mark that Australia is a country with a universalist culture, while Russia is an example of particularistic culture. Secondly, individualism implies that people highly appreciate personal achievements and the ability to make decisions independently. Collectivism, in turn, denotes that people count a group as more important than an individual. They value safety that is easier to achieve in a group. Hofstede (2020) evaluates Australia as approximately two times more individualist than Russia. It could be supposed that the high level of communitarianism in Russia is a reminder of its Soviet past. Thirdly, from a high level of individualism and universalism, follows that Australian culture is more specific; people tend to separate private life and career. At the same time, Russian culture is characterized by a high degree of diffusion; local people believe that success in relationships has a firm link with one in career and vice versa.
Two chosen cultures are antipodal in other dimensions as well. Australians are more emotional than Russians and value performance at work independently from one’s position. Meanwhile, the culture in Russia cherishes people regarding their titles and statuses (Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner, 2011). This distinction leads to the difference in the power distance: in the Australian culture, an average empowered person is ten times closer to communicating with subordinates than in Russia (Hofstede, 2020). It is interesting to notice that, despite the dissimilarities, the extent of uncertainty avoidance in Australia is only one time bigger than in Russia (Hofstede, 2020). Uncertainty avoidance refers to the degree of the willingness to take risks and resistance to change. Taking into consideration all the mentioned above, one could infer that the North-Western and the South-Eastern countries are opposite in almost every given dimension.
Undoubtedly, culture influences not only the way of life but also the way of doing business. Traditionally, such cultural dimensions as power distance, individualism, and uncertainty avoidance are associated with entrepreneurial activity (Castillo-Palacio, Batista-Canino, and Collazos, 2017). That is true because these dimensions affect team members interaction, how they build a hierarchy in a company, and whether they are ready to gamble or not. Still, some other dimensions have a direct tie with the business environment in a country and prove that Australian and Russian cultures are nonidentical. Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner (2011) insist that the concept of time has a connection with the business environment. In Australia, people tend to work strictly according to the schedule, making one task after another, whereas Russians intertwine past and present and regard plans as flexible. Russia is also supposed to be an outer direction country in contrast to Australia (Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner, 2011). Hence, in the culture of the latter state, teamwork is more efficient than in the former one.
The fact that various cultural peculiarities affect the business environment could be proven by the Doing Business ranking. In the ranking provided by the World Bank (Ease of doing business rankings, 2019), Australia takes the 14th out of 190 places in the ease of doing business. Russia takes the 28th position for this criterion that is two times lower than Australia. Russia is more significant in the territory, more abundant in resources, and more powerful in the international political arena than Australia. Notwithstanding this fact, the latter is more attractive for entrepreneurship. The differences in cultural dimensions prove that culture affects the business environment and is one of the decisive factors that determine favorable conditions for enterprise activity.
In conclusion, these two countries were used to illustrate that culture does matter in the issue of business activity. Apparently, these cultures do not possess a lot of similarities due to their various historical backgrounds. Still, the example of Australia and Russia indicates that business has a more auspicious environment in countries with a culture that values universality over particularity, individualism over collectivism, and encourages not to be afraid of taking risks.
Reference List
Castillo-Palacio, M., Batista-Canino, R. M. and Collazos, A. (2017) ‘The relationship between culture and entrepreneurship: from cultural dimensions of GLOBE project’, Espacios, 38(34), pp. 12-27.
Ease of doing business rankings(2019). Web.
Trompenaars, F. and Hampden-Turner, C. (2011) Riding the waves of culture: understanding diversity in global business. London: Nicholas Brealey Publisher.
Hofstede, G. (2020) The 6-D model of national culture. Web.