Binational Organizational Behavior in Latvia

Due to worldwide globalization, more and more companies have to become international companies. Still there are very few international companies in Latvia.
Though, there are a lot of binational (Russian – Latvian) companies. This is very important problem for many companies and also the one, I am working in.

IT Alise Ltd. is one of the leading computer software development and support company in Latvia. There are more than 100 employee’s working in it.
For a long time it was purely Latvian company (historically, it was founded by Latvians). Even now all top management and most of middle management are Latvians.
Still, about 2 years ago, it was decided to stop ignoring potential employee’s with a different nationality (mostly Russians). Currently, there are 102 Latvians and 26 Russians and employee’s experiance difficulties with that all the time.

What are the cultural differences between Latvians and Russians?
We cannot speak in this case about the standard forms of cultural barriers. There are almost no language barriers. Company hires only Russians, who fluently speak Latvian and 99 % of Latvians speak fluently Russian. Well, of course Russians understand and speaks Russian better and Latvians understand and speaks Latvian better, but still – verbal communication is not so important to employee’s, who sit for the most of time at computer desk. They talk to each other only for like half hour a day. Also there is no coyness between two people with different cultures – they have lived for the entire life side by side, playing with each other, when they were kids, etc.…