Chapter 8
Interpersonal Competence Versus Monitoring

The concept of 'interpersonal competence' revolves around the 'people' skills required for one's job, and the 'social' skills of running a business, so that functional competence can be effectively put to use. It is not difficult to imagine that, in a cross-border context, general perceptions of how friendships are developed and what behaviours are appropriate in different situations, may vary a great deal. This chapter will consider in detail the social skills required of expatriate managers in Russia, which make a business more or less likely to succeed. Interpersonal relations start with the simple matter of understanding the language each side uses, through to their style of communication in meetings, the everyday workplace and beyond in the wider business environment that is so reliant on personal relationships to make things work. In Russia, interpersonal competence is an important concept, because this is an environment where, traditionally, the social and the business realms have overlapped substantially.

The case study will provide evidence of the damage caused if interpersonal approaches are subordinated to more controlling, formal ones - a strategy towards managing the business that this researcher labels 'monitoring'. The trust determinant of monitoring refers to the preference for a party in a relationship to closely regulate and monitor that relationship through reliance on formal processes, contracting, assumptions and behaviours. The case study provided evidence that excessive formalisation and monitoring, particularly when stressed at the expense of interpersonal approaches, can lead to conflict and distrust.

A Matter of Language and Negotiation

Before skills relating to functional competence can be put to use and transferred, the language surrounding these skills must be established and understood. As one western respondent explained: 'we spent two days arguing about debt:equity ratios - then found out they didn't know what 'debt:equity ratio' means' (expatriate project manager). This matter is reflected in the comments of a Russian interviewee: 'talking ... about the misunderstanding of economic aspects, basically accounting principles, sometimes that does make it very difficult to come to terms, in terms of how to define a shareholding of a company, how to arrange the profit split, and so on (Russian general director).

While this is an issue of language, embedded within the language are assumptions and expectations as to how the venture operates and what it aims to achieve at a more political and strategic level: 'we spent a lot of time trying to find a common language, trying to explain the precepts of what we thought was good business and what they thought was good business. Because... the chairman of our major partner... what he wants is lots of phones installed with veterans and old ladies and people who have been waiting in a queue for a phone. And it's not interesting for him whether it makes money or doesn't make money, because the ministry have said you've got to put on 10 000 lines a year... and we were a quick way to achieve that. Whereas we've understood our social obligation, but we've also understood very clearly that we can't actually just endlessly throw kit and resources at it' (expatriate deputy general director). Clearly, embedded in finding a common language is also the need to establish common goals and expectations, based on different experiences, knowledge and perceived needs. Often, western managers found 'we are saying one thing, they are receiving something else, that is still the situation, and we find that coming up over and over again misunderstandings about what both of us are saying to each other' (expatriate deputy general director).

This problem was compounded by different perceived meeting and negotiation styles: 'it can take two days to achieve something normally resolved during a one-hour meeting in the UK', lamented one western manager. One experienced individual used to dealing with partners both within and outside of the main investment areas of Moscow and St Petersburg described 'tough people to negotiate with - they're good chess players and that's the way they negotiate... They're very good at brinkmanship, you often don't know when they mean it or when they don't mean it, you have to feel it' (expatriate general director). A number of respondents found that negotiation styles 'tend to be slow and longwinded, and you can have meetings hours long without really making much progress. In extended negotiations, which go on for a period of weeks or months or whatever, people tend to be frustrated that the Russian side tends to change tack, they think again, and what was agreed in one meeting, you have the next one, and you have to start all over again, so it's very difficult sometimes to feel you're making progress' (expatriate project director). Or, as another interviewee described it: 'we think we've solved something and go to a meeting and you go away and you think "that's OK, I think I've got that through", and you come back two weeks later and it's reverted back to where it was before'. He went on to describe how this led to increased monitoring from the western side: 'leave it too long and they revert, that's why we don't leave them too long, we tend to follow it up, keep an eye on it' (expatriate deputy general director).

The first western market entrants in Russia came across an important social aspect to meetings and negotiations that required some adjustments on both sides. As this interviewee explained: 'I think looking back over the four years, I've seen Russian negotiation styles coming much closer to western styles, because they've learnt a lot from us as we have from them, but there has been a coming together in negotiation styles I would say. One thing that does remain with the Russian side is they do like negotiation, they like it to be long, some ceremony surrounding it, the drinks after it or whatever' (expatriate deputy general director).

To ensure that what is being said is being understood in the business sense, one western manager believed 'you have to make sure that you are 100% understood. You have to ask questions back to make sure that you get the answer back, sort of, if you like, reverse translations in a sense to make sure that you are all completely in tune with each other' (expatriate general director). When it came to the more social aspects of meetings and negotiations, there was movement on both sides towards a middle ground. Successful western managers tended to recognise that 'you have got to get drunk with them, there's no question about that in a lot of instances' (deputy general director), because '[t]o get the big contracts you've got to do some big drinking' (expatriate general director). One simply had to do one's best: 'I try not to [do the vodka drinking], but it's difficult to get out of, especially in the culture of some of the companies we deal with... they're quite heavy drinkers. At these types of gatherings, you've just got to watch it. We've had one or two of those a year where we've had to show face. You knock back the first couple of toasts and then you just sit there all night, they just tend to get a bit more affected by it a bit quicker than you if you play your cards right' (expatriate deputy general director).

However, the Russians were changing this aspect of business behaviour perhaps noticing the much-reduced effectiveness of their western partners following a heavy food and drink session. One respondent observed that the style of the local partners had changed over the years from one where they initially set out heavy meals and flowing vodka over which to conduct negotiations, to a stage where lunch instead comprises lighter food and mineral water.

Building Effective Relationships within the Workplace

Good interpersonal competence skills, then, can make meetings and negotiations more successful. But the central role of interpersonal skills lies in building relationships with Russian partners - as already commented, the Russian business environment has traditionally relied heavily on associations between people. 'People very much prefer doing business with people that they know or doing business with people who they know through an acquaintance. If you can do it like that then things happen very much more quickly, that's not to say that it's illegal or underhand or anything like that, absolutely not. But if there were a row of 10 people who say they could do something, you'll find that interpersonal relationships will come to the fore very much, and going back a long way counts' (expatriate deputy general director).

One western interviewee gave a personal account ot what he saw as a Key turning point in his relationship with his Russian colleagues during an incentive trip abroad: 'That was the time when I realised I had been accepted. In fact I can give you a key moment which was after an evening of general entertainment, ending up in, typically Russians like to end up in someone's room in a hotel and drink vodka, they don't actually like going to the bar, they prefer to be in a room, it's enclosed and it's their place. And I remember going into a room and having a lot of vodka, and having a lot of chat and laughter and then saying "I'm going to bed" at about 2 o'clock in the morning. And I was aware that several people followed me out into the corridor as I left this other person's room, and we walked past my door, and I opened the door, I looked round and saw there was about three people there. And I said as a sort of offhand comment "does anyone fancy a nightcap?" and all of them came into my room, and one of them went back to his room and brought some ham and bread, another bottle of vodka, and we had a party in my room. And that's the moment when I knew I'd been accepted, they were actually going to come to my room for a late night drinking session, and that was great' (expatriate deputy general director).

It is the interpersonal aspects of business relationships in Russia that make the expatriate staff who are sent to Russia so important to a venture's success. Their personal qualities have the potential to make the difference between personal and business success and failure: 'out of the three who came here to start with, two failed, not because they didn't know their job, but because they were not good at relationship building' (expatriate deputy general director).

What makes an expatriate manager more or less likely to succeed in a situation where interpersonal skills appear to be a central factor? 'The people who are sent by a western company are absolutely critical. You don't have to spend very much time in Moscow as an expatriate to know most of the expatriates in your kind of peer group, and there are definitely two types - there are the types who are here for the money, who basically hate it, and there are types who are here as an adventure and really, really love it... The ones who do well are the ones who take the latter attitude, the flexible adventure, enjoying it type of attitude. Everything spills out from yourself. If the Russian staff see you enjoying it, and not criticising and moaning overly about things any more than they do, then you get on a lot better than someone who is permanently putting themselves on a pedestal in a sense and isolating themselves completely from the environment, which a lot of people do. That's good for them, that fits in with the way they want to live, but I don't think that's the best way, and we would certainly never employ anybody here that fell into that category' (expatriate general director).

Indeed, one westerner who had been working with his partners in Russia for many years had clearly made this work very well: [Russian interviewee]: 'We love him... He's more Russian than English, he's international... while working in Russia, he's drank so much vodka - he's really Russian now!' [Expatriate] 'We're united in drink! But we don't drink as much these days as we used to. I remember in the Brezhnev days there was a lot of drinking in enterprises. In ours we do drink to celebrate things, but not every day' (Russian deputy general director and expatriate general director).

Russian interviewees generally agreed with the view that interpersonal relationships were very important in business relationships in Russia, and recognised that a different way of doing business appeared to prevail among their western colleagues: 'it's a tendency in Russia that we do rely on personal relationships, whereas in England we notice that they pay more attention to papers. We are trying to build up our relationships on both bases, both things are important, though within this building we can say that we trust people more than we trust papers' (Russian general director). Another Russian interviewee saw this extending beyond the workplace to the external environment: 'It's also a different situation with Russians and foreigners: with foreigners it's not necessary that you are close friends or just good friends or know each other, other than in the office, but with Russians I notice that better that you know this person outside your office or that you have lunch together, talk, share each other's problems, it makes things easier, especially when Russians have to make a decision about a supplier or something. {Is it traditional in Russia that business deals are helped by socialising, vodka drinking, that type of thing?} I don't expect it's just vodka drinking! We still have this attitude, probably from our previous experience in Russian companies, they are all very close friends, and people who work in the same department are usually very close friends, we have a lot of work to do and we don't have much time to get together' (Russian focus group interviewee).

This interviewee raises two significant issues: 1. Within the workplace, there is a preference to work with friends; and 2. External suppliers and contractors can be determined through personal relationships.¹ These are both issues identified by western interviewees, and are investigated further next.

Jobs for the Boys and Girls

The preference to employ friends was discussed by one Russian focus group thus: {If there is a job here and you know a friend who could do it, do you introduce them?} [Interviewee 1]: Yes, that's not our, well that's not the only thing we are doing. If there's a job with this company and we know some people who would be good for the job, we will advise the person. But of course I know that that person is not the only one for this job, there is competition. {So you wouldn't expect any special favours?} Oh no, no way, no. [Interviewee 2]: I mean many people here join the company because they were friends of somebody. I have two close friends working for this company, but not because they are friends, but because they were just good for this job. That's how I joined the company, first I came as office support here, a close friend of mine was working and she just mentioned to me that there is a need for office support, but then I had an interview with one of the managers. [Interviewee 1]: We use head hunters... it also depends on the position, if it is more difficult to find, to fill that professional position. You would take a good look at whether your friend would perform' (Russian focus group).

Westerners did not generally regard recommending friends as an issue of particular significance. One manager who had noticed this happening in the joint venture stated: 'we're not against that, if that person is good enough to get the job we are very happy to do that, that's quite nice to do that, because it's more of a family situation, maybe there's more loyalty on the back of that' (expatriate deputy general director). Another struggled not to suffer too much anxiety over the issue for fairly predictable reasons: 'I think there is very much the Russian doing people a favour attitude, be they friends, be they colleagues, or whatever. In staff recruitment, for instance, everyone always knows someone - I think there is an inclination to build up a clique of people you know. I've been told it's because of the old days, you only wanted to work with people you trust, so because a joke could get you six years in prison, you wanted to make sure the people you told the joke to wouldn't be straight off to the KGB. Whereas I might say and you might say, someone's trying to build up a sort of core of their own people for whatever reason, be it totally legitimate. But you don't like cores or hidden cliques, because you don't know quite what their hidden agenda is or isn't' (expatriate general director).

However, the latter interviewee's worst fears came true for another expatriate manager who found relying on friends and family of staff for recruitment got him into difficulties earlier on in his career: 'rather than advertising for people, I used contacts, friends of staff to come and work for the company, because the logic was why advertise, there are so many criminals and so on, dangerous people around, let's just take on people that are recommended by the people we know who are already working for us. It worked well to the extent that people were happy to be working for their friends, but it was bad to the extent it created a sort of clique, cliques of people, and they were very reluctant then to have someone else from outside pushed upon them, they just became a bit too cushy and cliquey with friends working together. So that was a mistake, well I say a mistake, it worked, but it's something that I wouldn't do again' (expatriate general director).

The Pre-eminence of Personal Relationships Versus the Rule of Law in the External Environment

The preference to work with friends was part and parcel of the legacy from the Soviet era. The pre-eminence of personal relationships in business life generally, both within the workplace, and in the wider business environment that was identified in Chapter 6 on local competence, is another issue that was typical of Soviet times. The old Soviet need to deal with friends you can trust may well explain it, but conversely, in the 1990s, business was taking place in the context of an emerging legal system; the law was unevolved, constantly changing, and little relied upon in good faith.

In the external environment within which the enterprise operated, the personal aspects of doing business no doubt heavily tested the interpersonal skills of expatriate managers and staff: 'Extremely important, the personal factors cannot be underestimated. Contracts really have little value in Russia, contracts are signed with great pomp and ceremony, but as soon as they're signed, they are then ignored as soon as it becomes inconvenient to adhere to them. The legal framework also does not really work in an efficient way, there's little scope to actually have contracts enforced... So really there's little sense in spending tens of thousands of dollars getting advice from a legal organisation, or a firm of lawyers on a contract, in my view, because people don't respect contracts. It's interesting that a colleague of mine says that a contract in Russia is not actually the end of the negotiations, it's the beginning of the negotiations... The approach is... because it is inconvenient to do something, it entirely justifies us not doing something. So the contract is seen as something which can be moulded round situations, what is convenient or inconvenient for them to do. So that is why it is extremely important to develop a personal relationship, and one of trust, credibility and friendship with the organisations with whom you have contracts' (expatriate general director).

Echoing these sentiments, another respondent explained the importance of understanding that 'your word is your bond - things don't necessarily have to be written down to be thought of as bonded, and if you break a commitment, everything is finished, the relationship is finished' (expatriate deputy general director). A western accountant working in Russia, couching his anger in typically western business phraseology, found this an extremely frustrating aspect of the business culture: 'Western companies are driven by their shareholders, to make a profit, to make dividends, wise investment, risk avoidance or risk recognition. Contracts from any western company will be substantial, will anticipate every eventuality as far as can be foreseen, everything is done in a very business-like manner. Russia is far more run by people with associations and connections, deals are done over a bottle of vodka, deals are done because you've known someone for 15-20 years and you went to school with them. Deals are done on a personal basis, contracts are far less sophisticated and detailed than we would expect, in many ways you wouldn't recognise it to be a contract'. He continued: 'I get a lot of my information because of my personal associations. I would prefer to get my information as a matter of right, far prefer, but I don't, or if I have, to struggle and scream and shout. It's very difficult to get information as a matter of right, and even then it will only be for that particular instance, and in the absence of information, particularly with what I do, my job becomes impossible' (expatriate financial controller).

A number of western interviewees had realised the need to develop their interpersonal skills. This may be manifested, for example, in terms of management style: 'I've tried to adopt the fairly relaxed style of management we're used to in the west, getting away from the stern faced, traditional style. I just go put myself about a lot. I try to ensure that I am seen by most people in the company at least once a week... and I think giving fair judgements on decisions, taking people's views into account' (expatriate general director). However, he did admit that 'they don't like it sometimes, when they say 'what should we do about this?', and you say 'what do you think we should do?'... They still want that rubber stamp that says the general director says it's OK... People still almost stand to attention because the old Russian general director was the god king in his own right.'

This respondent's open style was reflected by another respondent who thought 'that they like that I am very, very open, and friendly with everyone from top to bottom, I go out of my way to make people feel welcome and warm and part of the team... I have a complete open door policy, and really from the lowest level of the ladder I treat them in exactly the same way as I treat a senior person, and I think that shows good judgement in how to deal with people' (expatriate general director). Openness occurred in the account of another expatriate who claimed: 'I like to tell them as much as I can, I probably divulge more information than I should to many people in the organisation, but I feel that it's important for them to know I'm open and that what I've said will actually happen' (expatriate general director).

Rather than openness, another interviewee identified flexibility and humility as the key: 'I was perfectly prepared to say I know nothing about any of this, I haven't stood here and said I know what I'm talking about. But I have stood by certain principles and not let certain things go... I have said that the end result has got to be this and if it's not then we're all going to fall out and there's going to be a nasty scene. It's worked for me, others have fallen by the wayside that I've seen because they've said not only is this where we're going, but this is how we're going to get there' (expatriate deputy general director). Indeed, one Russian partner described very positively the humility shown by her UK partners: 'our British partners say "we are like blind kittens here in Russia, we are young, we are like a blind kitten, so just lead us"... Despite the fact that they've got the majority of the shares, they rather behave like partners or colleagues, and not like bosses or owners. If they make mistakes, they admit that they make mistakes, so do we, this is a partnership' (Russian general director).

Ritual behaviour is another aspect of interpersonal competence that occurred in western descriptions of their trust building activities, because 'gaining trust and respect from individuals you are dealing with is by far the most important part. In the Russian culture, this means sitting around in saunas and drinking a lot' (expatriate deputy general director). Drinking, with few exceptions, came up time and time again: 'It usually starts with drinking vodka together, which... is actually very important, drinking vodka together is a sort of bond between two people, and in fact there is a Russian saying, well, if you ask somebody "do you know Ivan?", a Russian person may reply "do I know Ivan, I've drunk with him'" (expatriate general director).

Respondents pointed to repeated social interaction both in the business and the social context: 'We've been working with the same people now for over four years, so I think we've got strong relationships with them now.... From a personal point of view, they come over, we take them out, to our homes in the evenings, see them at weekends' (expatriate deputy general director). Another respondent reporteds such activities as showing gratitude, present giving on birthdays etc, sharing problems '[t]he same as building personal relationships in any part of the world really' (expatriate general director).

Within the workplace, keeping promises emerged as an important issue. One interviewee described establishing trusting relations 'by doing things that we said we would do, they cannot point to anything that we've promised that we didn't do, we keep our end of the bargain, it's a straightforward handshake situation' (expatriate deputy general director). This was observable in the accounts of other interviewees: 'you've got to be impeccable in your trustworthiness, if you say something to someone, even in a very informal way, you have to be always be seen to be true to that' (expatriate deputy general director). Or as another one put it: 'not punching above your weight is very important, it's easy to come here and look the big cheese' (expatriate deputy general director), or another 'carrying out what you've promised, that's probably not promising more than you can achieve or ought to achieve' (expatriate general director).

Looking to the Boss

One post-Soviet legacy mentioned above, and a very important issue for western investors in Russia which 'has over the last few years been a major headache for the western companies here' (expatriate general director) is that of overcoming what is perhaps best described as a hierarchical mindset amongst managers and staff: 'One of my partners, actually right at the top of the organisation, used to get very cross with me that I would not draw organisation charts that had layer upon layer, because basically she was not prepared to talk to people who were at the bottom. She felt that every document should go all the way down this organisation, and all the way back up. She simply could not cope, and was extremely rude to people at the bottom - a "how dare you speak to me" sort of approach, "go away I'm busy", which is completely instilled in anyone over a particular age. She was about 38-39, but she had worked for the Russian Ministry of Finance and she was used to, most people crawl their way up, and she had done really well to have done that as a woman, non-party member from Moldova. But she wanted to claw her way up to having an office, so you could close the door having told them to go away when they tried to get in' (expatriate director).

In practice this led to difficulties for westerners charged with running an operation. It often started with the fact that, as general director in a Russian enterprise, expectations of role performance to which they may be unaccustomed were foisted on the expatriate managers - as one interviewee observed above, staff seemed almost to stand to attention when he's around: 'it's very difficult to get Russian people to take initiatives... they really do look for leadership from the general director of the company.... The leadership requirements are very strong' (expatriate general director). Another respondent had the following experience to recount: 'I remember a very senior [Russian] manager ... turning round to me a year ago and saying "John, we're not used to taking decisions, we want you to take decisions, we want to be told what to do, because we've always been told what to do, we've been used to a generation of being told what to do'" (expatriate deputy general director).

In the workplace, this attitude tended to lead to situations of: 'just letting a problem carry on for a long time without actually doing anything about it... when a problem arises, just fling your arms up, "oh there's a problem, there's a problem", without actually trying to sort out the solution' (expatriate general director). Another respondent described how: 'It is something that's difficult, it's still a weakness in the Russian average employee, I would say, to want to take responsibility, and to see things through from beginning to end. People do, I think, tend to see where their job begins and ends, not where the process begins and ends. What we want people to do is to be process oriented, to see, whatever the process might be, it might be ordering a packet of something that gets imported, the process is from when it gets ordered to when it gets to the customer, not my little piece which is the customs clearance part' (expatriate deputy general director).

The result of this for western managers was that: Trying to decentralise decision making has been extremely difficult, to get all power out of the hands of the general director and hand it down to the other directors. And it's not because he's power crazed or foolish or unaware, it is because it's a very, very centralised tradition, and trying to get people to take responsibility for their actions and manage down is very, very difficult, and that has been a real barrier to getting things done' (expatriate deputy general director). Indeed, expatriate managers offered an explanation for this behaviour that usually ran something like: 'I think the average Russian at all levels was told to do something, and, provided you set it out clearly enough, would go ahead and do that perfectly. What they didn't do was question whether it was right or wrong or anything else' (expatriate general director).

Moose: Interpersonal Competence at One End – Monitoring at the Other

As stated at the outset of this chapter, the Moose joint venture highlighted an important divide between methods for managing an east-west alliance that revolves around the interpersonal competence trust determinant. At one end are the more interpersonal approaches to running the business, and at the other are approaches that rely less on relationships and more on procedures and controls. Before looking at these in depth, we will finish up the foregoing consideration of responsibility avoidance through surveying the Moose experience of this issue.

Responsibility Avoidance

The Moose joint venture provided ample evidence of the challenges arising from the Russian difficulty in taking personal responsibility: 'The problems I've had in Russia is that to get the job done, you have to pick up the ball and you have to carry it to the next person. There is a culture here that they have very defined job boundaries, job responsibilities, and if you stepped outside of that in the old regime you got into trouble. What I'm trying to encourage is that if you pick up the ball and go to the boundary of your responsibility and there's not someone there to pick that ball up, you don't just put it down and walk away, you carry it another five yards until you find someone in the new territory that will carry it on and deal with it', explained one Mammoth contractor.

Western efforts towards changing this mindset were actually mentioned by Russian interviewees at the Moose joint venture as a positive aspect of working there. A number of Russian respondents put the changes in the context of previously working for Russian companies: 'If you take for example the Russian personnel in the project, it is evident there are changes in attitudes to work objectives. In Russian companies, especially in the government... systems of administration and control depended on the administrative acts of management. People worked under fear. In Russian companies, if you made a mistake, you were punished by material means and then fired. We had inadequate information, people didn't tell the truth to protect themselves, and so management decisions were not always correct... I had lots of doubts if we would succeed with Russian personnel. Now we don't feel part of a mechanism, but a point of support that makes the company balanced' (Russian interviewee). Another Russian supplemented this view of the change process with a description of the old system: 'It's a question of relations... We basically changed the whole system now, and it's difficult for me to recall, and sometimes it's even laughable to recall the matters we used to manage, the situations and operations, it's unbelievable.'

The result for the Russian personnel was: 'new business relationships between people - it's very important... Here [in the joint venture], people do anything they can do to improve the business, they try to do their best to improve the relationship between people. For example, the way we work with other departments, I think it is due to their management and the coordination between all the departments. The ethic - is it? - I can feel the nice business atmosphere in our company. Whatever I address to any department, it doesn't matter how busy they are, if I need some urgent information, or somebody else from another department, I know we help each other. We never say it's high time for me to go home. We work jointly, and that's what I like very much. Some sense of how people act towards each other, patient, it's difficult to talk about this but it helps a lot.' She even felt this had affected her personally: 'we change... I can say new company, new people, and I understand myself, my friends, my relatives, they notice how I change, and they say I change to good.'

A number of Russians mentioned the change towards managers having their own financial responsibility within their own departments: 'it's the way the work is organised here and all the procedures... Each department has its own budget and he is free to use the funds within the budget at his own discretion and he doesn't have to consult say the general director - this is a very big change' (Russian interviewee). According to another Russian interviewee, this was quite a revelation: 'We realise that we can manage and participate in the activities of this company by trying to save funds and somehow making operations more efficient. I have worked in Russian companies and there is no opportunity for engineers to take part in cost control.'

Interpersonal Competence in Practice

Returning to the importance and problems of implementing interpersonal approaches within the workplace, the experience of John - the newly-arrived expatriate deputy at the Moose joint venture - provided an illuminating vignette of interpersonal competence in practice. Prior to arriving at Moose, he had been stationed in Kazakhstan, which from the outset appeared to make him more worthy of respect in the eyes of the Russian deputy (his Russian counterpart), on account of the increased functional competence this was perceived to give him. The experience also meant that he arrived at the venture with Russian language skills, which, along with his own personable style, appeared to endear him to the Russian staff.

Following the crucial meeting between himself and the Russian deputy aimed at ironing out some of the tensions that had arisen during John's first three months at the venture (see Chapter 5), he described some of the initiatives they had discussed for moving forward. One step he saw as important were attempts to change his Russian opposite number's aggressive management style: 'He does know he's got a quick temper, and I've told him this, he needs to control it, because, typically, I'll have a meeting... He'll come an hour into the meeting asking fundamental questions that have already been answered, get very aggressive with various people around the table, storm off in the middle of the meeting, and as I told him yesterday, that's totally unacceptable behaviour. You're welcome to come to any meetings, but you come in, you show common courtesies, you stay to the end, if you want to leave, OK, excuse yourself, leave. But you don't come racing in, interfering with things and going out. And he understands he needs to show respect to me, I need to show respect to him, which I think I do anyway.'

Another effort was to show mutual support: 'The other thing I said is that we will try to do mutually in meetings, where for example I may or may not agree with him, where I can give him public support I will and he will do the same for me. And so we're going to actually try to, I think we will be working positively together, because I'm certainly not working against him, we will be working positively together, but I want to project that.'

It is clear that interpersonal skills are the key to reducing the likelihood of such relationship breakdowns occurring in the first place, and managing their consequences successfully when they do inevitably arise. The common opinion in the joint venture appeared to be that the Mammoth partners had a long way to go in that regard. As an American old timer who had witnessed the changeover from the original American to the British 50% shareholding at the venture observed: 'Some Mammoth people didn't fit in and damaged the project through damaging confidence. The first step must be made by the westerners to control damage - to change their tactics of control, a way to blend with the Russians and be part of the process, the westerners are being pushed out of the decision making process'.

His mention of tactics of control was an important one, and his belief that as a result of inappropriate control techniques Mammoth was being pushed out of decision making a potentially worrying one for the western partners. He put it down to the fact that: 'the people from the UK, they have a way to do things, to see things and to manage the business which is totally different from north American business, and since those people [the Russians] worked before with the north Americans, now they work with the Brits, these might see a difference, and I don't know if it's the change they don't like, it's a shock for them.' As an example of Mammoth's inappropriate control mechanisms, the interviewee complained that 'Russians must produce financial statements once a year, but in Mammoth they want them once a month.'

In fact, the Mammoth corporate culture emphasised procedures, monitoring, and control - something that did not go down well with the Russian partners. Mammoth interviewees mentioned quite frequently the importance of procedures, and the lack of them at Moose: 'they're not managed the way we would manage them from a project management point of view in terms of planning their work, bringing in other people, awarding contracts... and so we continually get into situations where things aren't ready or priorities have changed, and there seems to be no solution to it' (expatriate contractor). Mammoth concerns about proper procedures for doing things were not limited only to the Russian partners in the venture. A Mammoth interviewee described how: 'the contractor is an American contractor, and the way in which they would control their work is with very limited scheduling, very limited of productivity and performance, which we, we are very familiar with very detailed and extremely stringent controls and monitoring.' He went on to say how his current project 'ran out of control prior to the beginning of last year when we got it by the scruff of the neck.'

Those subject to procedures designed to get projects 'by the scruff of the neck' are not always impressed. One American contractor complained that Mammoth insisted on procedures and regulations, ignoring the informal aspects: 'they don't realise how much we do for them that we don't have to do - we'll bring parts back from America needed for production, bringing it over as carry-on, or putting it in our luggage - we don't have to do it, but we do'.

One has the feeling, too, that when the Russians were complaining of British arrogance, they may in fact have been complaining in part about the insistence on doing things in a particular way, that adhere to Mammoth procedures and control mechanisms. Indeed, Mammoth personnel who claim 'we've still got a job of putting in the procedures for constructions, procedures for procurement' may be causing more bad feeling than they realise when insisting on these things.

¹ Clearly there is a crossover here between the local competence and interpersonal competence trust determinants.