Russia

 

High context or Low Context

by: Ja'Vante Mack

 

 

Russia is a high context culture that emphasizes all three dimensions of Attitudes, Behaviors, and Cognitions. In a high context culture, "everything matters". The society is very aware of components in the surrounding environment, including non-verbal, traditions, history, and relationships

In order to communicate effectively with people in other countries, it’s important to know the business hierarchy and how people relate to each other. One way to understand this is in terms of "high context" and "low context," a classification based on how people in different cultures communicate. High context refers to societies in which people have close connections. High-context people are generally defined as:

·        Less verbally explicit. Instead, they rely more on indirect verbal interaction and are proficient at reading non-verbal cues.

·        Having less written/formal communication. High-context cultures are more interested in fostering trust than in signing contracts.

·        Having strong boundaries. They have more clearly defined roles of authority, and differences in status are valued. They rarely call people by their first names.

·        Relationship-focused. Decisions and activities are focused around personal, face-to-face relationships.

Communication within the Russian business culture

 

 

 

Living in Russia as a foreigner is a unique experience. This country, full of contradictory images, can bring the best and, unfortunately, the worst. Working among Russian colleagues is an excellent opportunity to find out the true nature of this culture often perceived through biased stereotypes.

 

The behaviour of Russian employees and managers, once the first weeks of mutual observation and diplomatic gestures are over, becomes little by little bewildering at best, and possibly disturbing at worst. However, with a little curiosity and open-mindedness, the reality that appears may be highly instructive and useful for the rest of your stay.

 

A new field of business management can help in understanding the hidden layers of the Russian culture: cross-cultural management. Composed of a bit of anthropology, a bit of sociology and a lot of management theories, this new field helps understanding why the  culture is different.

              HAPTICS (Use of touch)

Russians are a demonstrative people, and public physical contact is common.  Hugging, backslapping, kissing on the cheeks, and other  gestures are common among friends or acquaintances and between members of the same sex.

Kissing is considered nonverbal communication.  People kiss when they miss people and to show affection.  In weddings, when people are toasting the groom and bride, they say “Gor'ko!”; it means the wine is bitter.  Then, the newlywed couple must kiss each other.  They must stand up and kiss each other for as long as possible, and all the guests count "1, 2, 3, 4 , 5..." while they are kissing.  If the couple was not kissing long enough, the guests can insist that the wine is still bitter, and request another kiss.  This happens following almost every toast, so the couple kisses a lot throughout the wedding.

     Chronemics (Use of time)

Since Russia is a individualist , high-context culture, they tend to be more of a p-time culture rather than a m-time culture.  This means that p-time, or "polychronic" cultures believe that many things can be done at  one time whereas, m-time, or "monochronic" cultures seem to believe that only one activity can be done at a time.  Polychronic cultures, such as Russia, view time as less tangible than m-time, place little emphasis on scheduling, put stress on the involvement and completion of tasks instead of on their schedules, and their relationships take priority over everything else.