Prospects for Cross-Cultural Business Cooperation in the Context of Ukraine’s European Integration

Abstract

The research is aimed at studying and analyzing the attitude of the Ukrainian generation Z to potential cooperation with partners from the countries of the European Union. The article identifies and analyzes the priority of choosing specific countries for cooperation, as well as the motives of such a choice. To verify the hypotheses formulated in the course of research, empirical data collection was carried out by conducting an online survey using the survio.com. 403 respondents took part in the survey: 97 boys (24.1%) and 306 girls (75.9%). The respondents were students of Kyiv National Economic University named after Vadym Hetman (n = 130), Lviv National University named after Ivan Franko (n = 108), Kharkiv National Economic University named after S. Kuznets (n = 165). The results of the research showed that the vast majority of respondents are positive about cooperation with partners from the European Union countries. The research displayed that Ukrainian students are most interested in cooperation with partners from Germany, Sweden, Austria, France and Italy. It is worth noting that the countries that took the two highest positions in the overall ranking (Germany and Sweden), as well as France, which shared the overall third place with Austria, were in the top 5 according to the survey results in each of the three cities where it was conducted, i.e.: Kyiv, Lviv, Kharkiv. The respondents who have no experience of cross-cultural interaction also expressed a desire to interact with partners from the EU countries. At the same time, the top 5 countries that are interesting for potential interaction, according to these respondents, completely coincide with the overall top five. Among the main motives for choosing countries priority for business interaction, the respondents defined the following: «General positive impression of the country», «High level of economic development of this country», «Reliability of partners from this country», and «High probability of profit from interaction with partners from this country». Ukrainian youth are interested in cooperation with business partners from the countries of the European Union, which is extremely important in view of the European integration of our country. Among the countries that students have identified as priorities for business interaction are both lower-context Germany, Sweden and Austria, and higher-context France and Italy. This once again demonstrates the importance of professional preparation for cross-cultural interaction and the acquisition by Ukrainian students of the competencies of doing business in a global multicultural business environment.

Keywords

• cross-cultural communications
• cross-cultural management
• ukraine
• european integration
• european union