East meets West: a case example of knowledge transfer

摘要

This article highlights some of the similarities and differences in management theory and practice between the UK and the Former Soviet Union (FSU) and Central and East European (CEE) states. It does so in the context of a debate over the appropriateness and extent of cultural dominance in knowledge transfer of theory and practice, which has occurred during the last decade, and which is still unresolved. It reviews a scheme for knowledge transfer which offered a flexible structure within which the organizers could amend their material in the light of their growing experience with the way in which the scheme operated, and whereby they might avoid some of the mistakes of cultural dominance made within other schemes offered elsewhere. The Joint Industrial and Commercial Attachment Programme (JICAP), its structure, approach and some outcomes are outlined as a case example. Sponsored by the British Council to arrange visits by middle and senior managers from the post-command economies to the UK for intensive management training and work placement in an organization complementary to their home employment, JICAP was typical of the best Western thinking in management development of the time. The espousals and realities, the benefits and flaws in this approach are examined, drawing on the perceptions of the JICAP delegates themselves in terms of their personal and business development. Czarniawska's model of the travel of ideas (Czarniawska and Joerges 1996) is used as an organizing framework within which the problems of knowledge transfer, culturally dominant or maximally flexible, can be examined, and the underlying issues identified. This notion of flexibility, within which alternative perspectives can be negotiated and new meanings created, constitutes the main contribution proposed by this paper.