2006. Vol. 7. No. 3

The author analyses the possibility of social structure analysis of contemporary Russian society with the help of resource approach – new scientific conception developing within the last thirty years. The basis for stratification in this approach is the volume and structure of resources (capitals and actives), that people have and which are not the only traditional economic capital but also human and authority capitals as well. Special attention is given here to the types of resources obtained from the socialization, culture and behavioral models, which were considered earlier as the consequences of economic status as well as physiological status.  According to the author the transition to the resources concept as the basis for the stratification theory is supported by the previous development of the stratification theories in the world and is promising the methodological jump up from the current stagnating stratification theories. 

The suggested theory of the market as intra-timing process integrated the variety of different theoretical concepts. Basing on the event method analysis the authors investigate the breakup in organizational ties between the advertising agencies and their clients, influenced by the three market forces: competition, power relations and institutional enforcement. Informal rules of exchange institutionalized on the stage of formation of the advertising services market suggest “exclusive partnership” and loyalty. The research results show that in most cases the relationships between the advertising agencies and their clients are exclusive and remain constant for several years. However the competition, power relations and institutional enforcement give a certain impact on them encouraging or discouraging these rules. The institutional enforcement decreases the risk of breakup between the agency and the client. The most powerful agencies mobilize the resources in order to increase the stability of the ties while the most powerful clients have different behavior and use the resources to increase or decrease this stability. Competition is the weakest market force but its impact is clear and important. It always increases the risk of breakup in relations. The conclusion is that the market institutionalizes through the repeated imperfect exchange models as competition and change of norms, that regulate the market ties, destabilize the market relations.

The motivation for this paper was the research project “Management, labour relations and class formation on the contemporary Russia” (52 enterprises were covered in the different Russian regions). The enterprises of different fields were taken into analysis, they have different forms of organizational structure but with more or less medium size. The information collection was done by case-study method. The main focus of the paper is the practices of the quality provision, management actions taken in certain situations. It was found out that the quality problem is solved differently today on the Russian enterprises. Some companies provide quality control as control on employees functions. Other companies have more sophisticated means (institutionally and technically) to control the quality. At the same time the quality problem does not exist if do not consider this situation within the development framework. This question is not under discussion on the level of tactics and current business. While in soviet time this problem was out of focus due to the deficit character of economy in Russia it is still not under focus but because of main focus to the costs to stay in the same market niche. 

In the nearest past Russia suffered great changes that touched the society life including employment sphere. The author focuses on one of the employment problem – value-motivation structure, especially gender differences in motivation and value changes that occurred since 1990s. The author states that two opposite processes could be seen in this sphere. On the one hand we trace the bias of labour motivation and employment values. On the other hand we see the reproduction of traditional labour values driven by the inertia. The paper tries to disclose these main lines of changes in labour field and to fix the keep of traditional attitudes as well.