Organizational Psychology

Purpose. The goal of the study is to generate evidence on an under explored phenomenonof international business. Study design. The study is based on the analysis of publicly available videosdevoted to formal plant opening ceremonies by foreign multinational corporations in Russia. In total, 119 videos devoted to openings of 56 industrial facilities were studied. To make possible the quantitative analysis of the content of the videos a special guide was developed in order to determine the frequency of particular elements of verbal and non-verbal communications. Findings. As foreign investors and host country’s authorities have different expectations towards newly opened production facilities (foreign investors are interested in technical efficiency of newly erected facilities while host countries authorities are interested in long-term functioning of the facility), the essence of the communication during formal opening ceremony is public assurance of the other side of acceptance of the other side’sinterests. Cognitive, affective and conative elements of communication are used to demonstrate the sincerity of the expressed messages. Research limitations. The major research limitation is related to thesingle-country design of the study. The major implication for practice is the importance of orientation tours on the newly erected premises for representatives of host country’s authorities; as such tours serve as a forma pretext to express admiration by the technical level of a new facility. Originality. The paper presents the first study of public opening ceremonies of oversea plants based on analysis of videos.