Page 4 - RUSSIAN ENTREPRENEURSHIP :

Law', where supply creates its own demand, no longer held sway. With the cessation of guaranteed raw materials and markets the new order of the day was fluctuating demand and competitive pricing. Bad debt became a feature of business life. Change, therefore, required that VOS enterprises produce competitive products and introduce new processes and technologies. In other words, to develop new and sustainable core competences. However, these new orientations could not readily co-exist with the ethos of employing the blind. ' The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands but in seeing with new eyes' Proust A new orientation for management had to be developed. The strategy/structure/performance relationship had to be redrawn. This meant that new cultures and organisational relationships which could adapt and implement the new philosophies and strategies had to be built. Juxtaposing the two enterprise directors and examining how they reacted to these changing conditions and relationships is illuminating. The contention is that where one tends to be reactive (see figure 1) Figure 2. the other, facing the same set of circumstances, tends to be proactive (see figure 2); where one operates and conforms to the structures imposed the other breaks the mould and develops expedient strategies and solutions; where one is organisational man the other is entrepreneurial in thought and deed. Alexander Ovtin was steeped in the culture of the pre-Perestroika system being a party member and director of Enterprise 13 since 1980. He manipulated the structure from the inside, obtaining soft loans from the government by the threat of sacking the visually impaired at a time when the government was seeking foreign investment. At the same time he sought a new product and market base (Moscow, St Petersburg, Leningrad) whilst introducing Western marketing techniques. In essence, he displayed intra-preneurship characteristics. But did