Transfer of ideas and models in the field of management, and other collective and individual human activities across borders is of course not new and in fact has a long history. In ancient times, great empires learned from one another as well as from those peoples that they conquered. In more recent times, colonial powers took their administrative skills and procedures to their colonies. The Indian civil service is well known to have been modeled after that of the UK during British rule: even now, some five decades after independence, strong traces of British systems are still discernible in Indian Bureaucracy.

Although never a colony, Iran has had for centuries close cultural and commercial ties with France. When, early in the twentieth century, the Iranians wanted to modernize their institutions, they imported ideas from France, especially in such areas as education, the civil service and the legal system.

The early part of the twentieth century saw the adoption of Scientific Management techniques in Europe. Since the early 1980s, Japanese management techniques have been adopted in the USA and the UK in an attempt to emulate the success of Japanese firms. More recently, the economic transition of ECE and FSU countries and the development of the Chinese economy has brought with them a search for management expertise mostly centered on the West.

In the context of the almost continuous evolution of management thought in the West, there exists an interesting perception on the part of some commentators and by many managers in ECE countries that the transition from the command to the market economy will be effected in the short-term. Whilst some organizations will necessarily adopt new methods quickly, it may be naive to think that some fifty years of business context will be replaced in the short-term. Although this fifty year period is only part of a cultural time-frame of much greater antiquity, it has had a major effect on management thinking and behavior in the relevant countries.

A question which has for a long time been a center of debate amongst academics, and a focus of interest amongst managers is 'to what extent are management practices transferable from one country to another'?

From a purely culturaist point of view, organizations and management styles are, as Crozier expresses it 'cultural solutions to social problems'. In which case, an Iranian organization has nothing to learn from an American company, because the two countries are poles apart culturally. A proponent of the universalist approach would argue that business is business wherever you go. Managers have to deal with customers, competitors, unions, creditors and so on, regardless of where they are located.

The reality - what managers actually do - is much too complicated to fit into any one of the above models or indeed any black and white prescriptions. Some practices can be transferred almost without any change from one country to another. Some must be modified to become workable in another setting. Some are deeply culture-specific and may be very difficult to transfer. Some practices are part of a coherent strategy, a 'package' and cannot therefore be transferred successfully in isolation and without the rest of the package going with them as well (Tayeb ).

For example, teamwork has become very fashionable and many managers especially in the West attempt to emulate the Japanese companies in this respect. Team-work is congruent with a collectivist culture and may not necessarily find fertile ground in individualistic countries, or at least not as successfully as in Japan.

This cultural argument aside, team-work is only one aspect of a whole set of Japanese management styles and practices. The package contains some other 'supporting' items such as collective decision-making, job rotation and flexible working arrangements, long-term employment, mutual emotional dependence between employee and employer, seniority-based promotion, team appraisal and reward policies. These other factors all contribute to the presence of team-work in Japanese companies.

To be effective in Western, or any other non-Japanese culture, the idea of the work team should be transferred with at least some of its 'sibling' techniques, outlined above. For example, there is an inherent mutually exclusive dichotomy of thinking in setting up work-teams and asking people to co-operate with one another as team members, and yet reward people on the basis of individual performance, thus encouraging competition among team members. Another example can be cited: one cannot expect employees to consider themselves as members of a 'big, happy family', with a high degree of commitment to their workplace, if, when economic downturns come or there is a fall-off in demand, the company lays off workers and other junior employees or reduce their pay, and leave jobs, salaries and bonuses of senior managers and directors intact.

Similar arguments can be made for other management practices such as Quality Circles, TQM, JIT, plant-based unionization, seniority wage settlement and ringi decision-making, some of which have been attempted by Western companies with mixed results (see for instance Oliver and Davies ; Oliver and Wilkinson ; Tayeb ; Shadur et al. ). In the same vein, Huo argues against the transplanting of American HRM practices into Chinese organizations.

Kindlarski , in considering whether Poland should adopt European, American or Japanese models of Total Quality Management argues the need for a specific Polish approach to quality and how to implement quality programs. This view is supported by Thorpe and Pavlica in their comparative study of British and Czech managers, which indicates that, when adopting any foreign knowledge, managers make sense of new management techniques in terms of their own country culture as 'every country creates its own preferred way of defining and practicing management' (Thorpe and Pavlica p213). In addition, they may have to assess the implications for the organization as well as deciding how to manage the change effectively.

These issues are particularly important in transition and other developing economies where many competing demands are made on management time and resources. There is a need, therefore, to evaluate issues such as implementation timescales, costs, possible resistance to change and the strategic relevance of new techniques being considered by organizations.

The ability gain new expertise through business partnerships should not be ignored (Harrigan ; Kogut ). Technology transfer has been a significant factor in the strategic use of joint ventures by organizations in developing economies. As Pucik argues, the sharing of information and know-how within a common strategic purpose may provide greater opportunities for learning than if a firm retains an individual market presence. Although involvement in joint ventures is still associated with significant risks, firms in developing economies have benefited by an injection of new technology and market expertise in dealing with the pressures and changes brought about by a market economy orientation.