In this paper we attempt to investigate the attitudes towards their perceived social responsibility on the part of the executives of a sample of medium and large Russian companies. Our empirical study is based on an original survey of executive managers of 500 industrial enterprises in almost all regions of Russia. We designed our questionnaire using as a starting point some important conclusions made by theorists who analysed the development of CSR in mature capitalist economies. Our objective was to probe whether the reaction by Russian managers would be in line with expectations grounded in western theoretical constructs, in particular the concept of business legitimacy. To preview our findings, we got evidence of a discrepancy between anticipated and actual attitudes. This result led us to consider a range of economic, social and political factors in the search for an explanation.

Using ethnographic evidence from the former Soviet republics, this article examines a relatively new and mainly unobserved in the International Business (IB) literature phenomenon of communication disengagement that manifests itself in many emerging markets. We link it to the deficiencies of the local professional business discourse rooted in language limitations reflecting lack of experience with the market economy. This hampers cognitive coherence between foreign and local business entities, adding to the liability of foreignness as certain instances of professional experience fail to find adequate linguistic expression, and complicates cross-cultural adjustments causing multi-national companies (MNCs) financial losses. We contribute to the IB literature by examining cross-border semantic sensemaking through a retrospectively constructed observational study. We argue that a relative inadequacy of the national professional idiom is likely to remain a feature of business environment in post-communist economies for some time and therefore should be factored into business strategies of MNCs.Consequently, we recommend including discursive hazards in the risk evaluation of international projects.

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