Andrei Kuznetsov

Barriers to the absorption of management knowledge in Belarus

Purpose – To identify factors that impede the absorption of management knowledge imported into transition countries, using Belarus as a case, in order to increase efficiency of knowledge transfer.Design/methodology/approach – The findings are based on three sources: the extensive analysis of the academic literature; the results of a detailed survey and interviews; and personal observations and impressions gained by the authors during almost ten years of participation in technical assistance programmes for Belarus universities financed by the British Council.Findings – The study reveals a combination of factors rooted in linguistics, culture, training and ambience that prevent knowledge transfer from fully achieving its objectives as a modernization tool insofar as knowledge gets distorted or missing during the transfer process.Practical implications – The proposed solution is to intensify the knowledge transfer even further through increasing its interactive component by providing channels for direct inte...

Economic Reforms in Russia: Enterprise Behaviour as an Impediment to Change*

THIS ARTICLE IS AN ATTEMPT TO ANALYSE a link between macroeconomic policy and microeconomic responses for the purpose of explaining the poor results of Russian economic reform in 1992. With hindsight it is quite clear that this period was momentous in defining the pattern and scope of reforms in Russia as the following months, up to the end of 1993, failed to contribute much fresh impetus to transition owing to a political deadlock in the country. The consequences of 1992 policies have proved to be of longstanding importance. They were in the focus of the political struggle that culminated in the December 1993 parliamentary election. The vote has brought to power a new team of policy makers convinced that Russia should first go through industrial restructuring in order to become better prepared for a tight-money policy. There is much debate on where this new approach to reforms may lead. Many analysts find nothing wrong with the policy of economic austerity pursued by Gaidar and his allies and attribute their failure rather to political factors. Reformers are criticised for underestimating the importance of the political campaigning necessary to mobilise public support. Even more often it is claimed that the progress of reforms was blocked by bureaucrats and apparatchiki who eventually proved to have more political and economic power than reformers in the government. Both observations are true. However, this does not dismiss the question whether the choice and application of the economic policy at the initial stage of reforms duly reflected the realities of Russia. It is conventional wisdom that political preferences reveal economic interests. It appears that a notorious resistance to reforms of vast layers of Russian enterprise managers which never ceased to exist cannot be fully accounted for unless one recognises that it was conditioned by some economic facts which the reforms failed to address properly.

Diversity within capitalism: The Russian labour market model

We establish a link between inefficient enforcement and the emergence of compensating institutional arrangements on the one side and the unusually broad implementation of flexible working time and flexible pay on the other as a crucial factor that made the stabilisation of employment in Russia possible.

Why Is the Progress of Marketisation Slow in Russia

Summary The paper highlights economic and socio-cultural conditions representing constraints for marketisation of Russia and explains why marketisation has been out of step with other highly significant macro- and microeconomic developments. Marketisation is unlikely to make headway unless economic conditions and market requirements will make its importance unequivocal to all market agents. Standard marketing techniques and activities require appropriate adaptations in an ideologically neutral manner. Consequently, the transfer of know-how may play only a very limited role following the discrepancy in business conditions in developed market economies and transition economies.

Ownership Concentration and Firm Performance in a Transition Economy: Evidence from Russia

This chapter looks at the impact of ownership structure on the performance of firms in Russia and identifies, within the domain of corporate governance theory, the factors that may explain any revealed differences in such performance and that of their counterparts in other industrialized countries. When market reforms started in Russia, it was anticipated that mass privatization would create ‘responsible’ owners and, as a result, produce a foundation on which economic reconstruction and growth would flourish. These expectations have on the whole failed to materialize. Restructuring in privatized firms has been slow, fixed production assets show a significant rate of wear, and innovation activity is low as is the competitiveness of domestic goods. Significantly, the inability of new owners to lead the firms forward has been consistently identified by experts as one of the causes of the poor economic performance of Russian companies (Nellis, 1999; Desai and Goldberg, 2000).

Corporate governance in Russia: concept and reality

The national system of corporate governance as reflected in the norms and provisions required to raise external finance is a key component of the institutional set-up in any market economy. Such systems may have different configurations but they have one crucial commonality: the task of providing means that help to institutionalize, i.e., regulate according to certain established rules, economic conflict between investors in companies and managers, facilitate information flows, and procure a solid and cost-efficient foundation for the growth of publicly held corporations. In other words, corporate governance is responsible for reassuring individual investors that the money they invest in a public company will be handled with due care by the management of the company, so that the interests of investors are protected. Seen in this perspective, corporate governance presents itself as one of the fundamental institutes of modern Western democracy, acting as a guarantor of sustainable economic growth (Sullivan, 2002). In countries with a long-lasting tradition of private corporate management, reliable and functional corporate governance is taken pretty much for granted, which is obvious from the degree of public outrage and concern when the system misfires, as the cases of ENRON and Parmalat vividly illustrate.

Privatization, Shareholding and Efficiency Arguments

This paper addresses a major and yet under-researched issue of the disciplinary mechanism in corporate systems of transition economies with a particular emphasis on Russia. The importance of this issue follows from the fact that privatization and hence creation of corporations is the core process in the institutional restructuring in the economies of Central and Eastern Europe and the CIS. The successes of privatization in terms of the absolute decrease in the number of state-owned enterprises and the growing share of privatized firms in GNP are often interpreted as the most important indication of advance towards a market economy. This has important practical implications too. For instance, progress in privatization is an important element of conditionality on assistance provided by international financial institutions (Ners, 1995).

The National Competitiveness Paradigm

Theories are reflections of the reality in the minds of the people analyzing this reality. Fashion in a theory may be just a fashion, or it might be a manifestation of the general recognition of a new reality. Recently there has been a notable surge of interest in national competitiveness. At first it looked predominantly like an American phenomenon, a demonstration on the part of American politicians, businessmen and academics of preoccupations with the declining role of American industry in the world.

The Challenges of Post- Communist Transition

The ex-Soviet economy at the beginning of the 1990s entered into the deepest crisis in its post-war history. Some interpreted its disastrous performance as an inevitable price of change. Others, however, claimed that there was no evidence of structural change; that the economy simply risked degeneration, and that it had lost its way on the path of transition. After six years of frustrated attempts at increasing economic efficiency without sacrificing the basic principles of a command-administrative system, reforms have taken a drastic turn towards radicalism.

The Political Economy of Free Economic Zones

Joint ventures with foreign firms are historically the first and, at present, the most diffused form of foreign participation in the ex-Soviet economy. In Russia’s industry joint ventures play a noticeable role. At the beginning of 1992, they employed 130 thousand persons and had a volume of sales above eleven billion rubles. In some branches their presence was quite substantial: by mid 1991, their share in telephone production was 10 per cent, in computers 7 per cent, in textile equipment 4 per cent and in footwear output over 2 per cent.