ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an account of the experiences of and the difficulties being faced by the Moose joint venture prior to the researcher's arrival. The role clash arose partially out of the absence of the joint venture's permanent Russian general director. The Russian general director was also president of the largest Russian shareholder in the venture. The individual officials who were imposing rules, and creating situations were not necessarily actively working against the venture. A possible root cause of some of the difficulties with external bureaucratic requirements that Moose was experiencing was the difficulty of interpreting the law in the post-Soviet situation. In the external environment, significant issues were arising as a consequence of Russia's bureaucratic practices. The chapter discusses the problems relating to bureaucracy, customs difficulties, lack of knowledge of local practices, and dual accounting systems, in what seems to be a generally low-trust local business environment.
