ABSTRACT
The trust determinant of local competence refers to the knowledge of and feel for 'how things are done' in the Russian business environment in order to navigate it. Russian bureaucratic requirements represented a significant hardship for western businesses operating there after the fall of communism. Most Russian interviewees stated their dissatisfaction with an environment where corruption appeared to be endemic. Corruption's most unpleasant manifestation, perhaps, appears in the guise of the mafia. The vignette below shows how the lack of western local competence, and the way the Russians exercised their own local competence was causing enormous problems that revolved around integrating local competence - over which the Russians had the monopoly - into a 50/50 western-Russian joint venture. Moose's Russian partners had agreed a price, and awarded a contract with a company that was also the venture's main shareholder company.
