The paradox and change of Russian cultural values

Existing studies on Russian culture using the dominant dimensional theory of culture (e.g., Hofstede’s), in general, offer “stereotypical” characterization of that country’s societal culture but fail to capture the dynamics of cultural values that exist in Russian business and society. We argue that this weakness stems from the either/or logic associated with such an approach. We echo the call for improving the quality of cross-cultural research by going beyond Hofstede (Tung & Verbeke, 2010) through studying cultural paradoxes and their embedded contexts (e.g., Osland & Bird, 2000) in historical and contemporary Russia. To this end, we have applied Faure & Fang’s (2008) framework which builds on the holistic, dynamic, and paradoxical Yin Yang thinking to unravel the paradox inherent and changes to Russian cultural values over time. We find that underlying paradoxical values that traditionally coexisted in Russian culture during the Communist regime have been further reinforced as a consequence of Russia’s interactions with the rest of the world. In post-Communist Russia, traditional values have not disappeared; rather, they coexist and interact with new values as a result of cultural learning and knowledge transfer in global economy. We discuss the implications of these findings for future research.     

员工地位竞争动机、知识分享行为与创新绩效——基于嵌入性悖论视角

组织中个体创新常常面临嵌入性悖论。相对于传统地位竞争的反功能视角，人们日益认识到地位竞争尤其是威望型地位竞争，可以为个体提供创新资源和动力。有效化解这一悖论，关键在于明晰何种类型的地位竞争以及何种程度的嵌入性可以促进个体创新。对一家大型多业务单元传媒集团227名员工进行实证调查，分析结果表明：威望型地位竞争可以通过促进个体知识分享行为提升个体创新绩效；非正式地位较低的个体更有可能具有威望型地位竞争动机；正式地位与非正式地位对个体地位竞争动机有交互影响，处于高正式地位的成员如果在非正式网络中处于边缘位置，则更可能在地位竞争中表现出威望型地位竞争动机。     

Role of corporate governance in moderating the risk-return paradox: Cross country evidence

This paper investigates the possible nexus between the 'risk-return paradox' and corporate-governance of firms in a cross-country cross-cultural setup. We use corporate governance as well as accounting risk and return data for a large dataset of 45,322 firm-years from 27 countries and show that the firm-level risk-return association may be a non-linear one, contingent on the firm performance. Firms which are below the industry median in terms of operating performance, exhibit an inverse relation in line with Bowman's (1980) ‘paradox' while those above-median exhibit a positive risk-return association. Further, we establish empirically that such risk-return association could be due to the rent-seeking actions of managers and that strong corporate-governance in a firm substantially moderates and reverses these effects. Our results are robust and hold strong through a number of robustness tests.     

非农就业提高农村居民幸福感了吗？

农村劳动力非农转移已经成为常态,对农村居民的福利水平产生了深远影响。文章基于体验效用假设,构建了工农要素流动下农村居民的幸福函数,并基于2018年中国家庭追踪调查(CFPS)农村调研数据,实证分析了非农就业影响农村居民幸福感的效应、机制与情境。结果表明:非农就业在总体上促进了农村居民幸福感提升,但却存在一定的"伊斯特林悖论"关系,即短期非农就业能够显著促进幸福增长,但长期非农就业对幸福增长的促进作用是有限的,甚至出现停滞或反向抑制状态;其内在机制主要在于非农就业过程中农村居民的需求层次逐渐由生存需要转向尊重和自我实现需要,但长期非农就业并不能显著提升外出务工农村居民的社会地位感知;非农就业对农村居民幸福感的促进效应,在本地非农就业和跨省流动的就业情境下更为显著,在女性群体、高中层次受教育程度群体中相对更高,且伴随农村居民的年龄增长呈现边际递减规律。基于此,文章提出创造本地就业市场、关注非农劳动力的就业需求变化、加强非农就业劳动力职业技能培训等针对性政策启示。