The scientific work of AlmaU personnel won Carolyn Dexter award

The work, which explores two types of culture: European and Turkic, was co-written by 7 authors from the countries such as the USA, Israel, Belgium, Austria, Kazakhstan and Turkey, and presented at the Annual meeting of the American Academy of Management (http://aom.org) in the framework of the 23rd annual international conference on business ethics, August 5-9, 2016 in Anaheim, the USA. In the end, the report was highly praised and marked with Carolyn Dexter award (the 2016 Carolyn Dexter Awards). From the Kazakhstan side the co-author is Svetlana Shakirova, the editor of the Research Center journal of Almaty Management University.

This prize is annually awarded to scientific works that promote the goal of internationalization of the Academy of Management, offering new conceptual approaches, a rich actual material and creative research methodology.

It should be noted that the work of 8 co-authors explored an interesting topic: "Germanic vs Turkic Negotiators' Ethical Propensity and Formal Contracts: The Moderating Role of Trust". In particular, the authors considered the difference in culture of business negotiation in different countries, based on the theory about the two types of cultures: high context and low context.

Thus, Kazakhstan is a country with a high culture context, which also includes Russia, Asia, Africa, South America and the south of Europe.

In such societies, there are some unspoken, hidden rules, traditions and conventions that are important for understanding current events. For example, the status of the negotiators, their social context, environment, previous discussions, etc. are important during negotiations.  The higher the context, the higher is the complexity of culture. Traditionally, cultures with high context are Japan and Korea. And the higher the complexity of culture is, the harder it is for "outsiders" to understand correctly and assess the social situation. Cultures of low context are the USA, Scandinavia, Germany, England (West and North). 

Based on the theory about the two types of cultures, the authors on the basis of the survey tried to confirm or refute the thesis that in Germanic cultures of low context, written contracts have a greater impact than verbal agreements in the Turkic cultures of high-context.

The comparative study involved business representatives from the following countries: German culture was represented by Austria, Germany and Luxembourg, Turkic culture by Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkey.

The objects of research were taken from 1424 representatives of the various private and public companies in ICT, banking, industrial production, construction and trade.

A questionnaire was used consisting of one hundred questions, written in English and translated into the languages of the countries under research. In total 679 questionnaires of the European countries, and 745 from Asia were collected and analyzed.

In Kazakhstan 101 people, MBA students and Master’s students of Almaty Management University, were surveyed. The survey was conducted in 2014-2015.

A co-author of the article, Svetlana Shakirova, expresses sincere gratitude to the coordinators of MBA programs of AlmaU High school of business Asem Kabulova, Laura Akynova, and also the staff of the Department of Master's programs Professor, Ph. D. Nikiforova N.V., Zhanzhigitova G. A., Ramazanova F. S. for their active help in collecting primary material (questionnaires).

Co-authors of the article:

Abraham Stefanidis from St. From St. John's University, USA; 

Moshe Banai, professor of Zicklin School of Business, Baruch College, CUNY, USA;

Ana Shetach from Max Stern Academic College of Emek Yezreel, Israel;

Ursula Schinzel from United Business Institutes, Brussels, Belgium;

Svetlana Shakirova from Almaty Management University, Kazakhstan;

Herbert Goelzner from Salzburg University of Applied Sciences, Austria;

Ahmet Erkus from Bahcesehir University, Turkey; 

Mehmet Ferhat Özbek from Gumushane University, Turkey.