Tolerance to uncertainty as a factor of the relation to business interaction in the context of students' common cultural competences development

In this paper, we discuss the role of tolerance to uncertainty as a factor of students' readiness for business interaction. The problem is important due to the need of society in future managers with competences that would let them deal effectively in changing conditions of modern world, and interact in collective and design teams. However, young managers are often not ready for effective work in conditions of dynamic economic relations, for changes in their activity when the strategy of an enterprise development changes, for prediction of possible consequences in business interaction. We present here the results of an empirical research, in which last year students of management took part. We used the method of tolerance to uncertainty determining by S. Badner and an author's questionnaire for business interaction study. We discovered that the half of respondents have the low level of tolerance to uncertainty. It shows the tendency to take unusual and difficult situations as threatening rather than giving new opportunities. Only 17.5% of respondents demonstrated the high level of tolerance to uncertainty, which lets them feel relatively comfortable even in situations with high level of changeability. Comparative analysis showed that the students with high level of tolerance to uncertainty prefer competition to partnership; competition for personal achievements is preferable to competition for economic resources. The students with low level of tolerance to uncertainty demonstrate greater preference for partnership. The respondents with low level of tolerance to uncertainty note reputation, trust and companionship as factors of successful competition. The respondents with high level of tolerance to uncertainty focus on pragmatic and equality, while another group focuses on mutuality, moral and justice. The correlation analysis demonstrates that the high level of tolerance to uncertainty leads to masculine properties in business relationship, such as activism, self-confidence, independence, dominance. The students with low level of tolerance to uncertainty are inclined to show gender-neutral properties, such as tact, susceptibility, systematicity, analyticity, consciousness. We discovered a contradiction in educational results of managers training. Those students who are ready to activity in the changing conditions are less able to do collective activities in design teams. On the contrary, students with better created competences of team work have low tolerance to uncertainty and therefore are less prepared for activity in the changing conditions.

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