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Russia’s First Handbook of Knowledge Management as a Reflector of a KM Landscape Sui Generis

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Towards Organizational Knowledge

Part of the book series: The Nonaka Series on Knowledge and Innovation ((NOSKI))

Abstract

The ‘new’ Russia is a country, whose lurch towards the market economy has been described ‘painful and contradictory’ (Shkuta, 2008); a country which has been graphically described as ‘an Old Testament land, a place of plagues and floods, of locusts and blizzards and power outrages without end’ Meier (2004: 50); and a country where the business environment is ‘merciless’ The Economist (2011a), and where ‘entrenched bossdom’ (Holden, 2012 variously discourages initiative, empowerment and creativity. Beyond that Puffer and McCarthy (2011) have contended that:

One of the defining characteristics of Russian business is the weak legitimacy of Russian institutions, which fosters dependency on informal institutions such as culture and ethics. This combination of environmental influences limits the range of viable options on bridging mechanisms such as corporate governance and business strategy.

Proceeding from there, these authors argue that the engrained Russian ‘distrust of formal organisations’ (Puffer & McCarthy, 2011) is not only holding back the country’s economic progress, but is also a serious constraint on knowledge management, whereby the very global competitiveness of Russian firms is seriously constrained. 1 Against this perturbing background, the relatively recent publication of Russia’s first major reference work on KM, The Handbook of Knowledge Management (Andreyeva & Gutnikova, 2009) is an event of no passing significance: not only as a new stage in Russia’s fraught attempts to embrace the market-economy system, on the one hand, and its struggle to absorb Western management concepts, on the other, but also (implausible as this may sound) as a notable landmark in KM as an international practice.

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Authors
  1. Nigel J. Holden
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. ETH Zurich, Switzerland

    Georg von Krogh

  2. Harvard Business School, USA

    Hirotaka Takeuchi

  3. IESE Business School and International University of Japan, Japan

    Kimio Kase

  4. CUNEF (Universidad Complutense de Madrid), Spain

    César González Cantón

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© 2013 Nigel J. Holden

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Holden, N.J. (2013). Russia’s First Handbook of Knowledge Management as a Reflector of a KM Landscape Sui Generis. In: von Krogh, G., Takeuchi, H., Kase, K., Cantón, C.G. (eds) Towards Organizational Knowledge. The Nonaka Series on Knowledge and Innovation. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137024961_9

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