2008. Vol. 9. No. 1

The paper is devoted to the modern approaches to the market explanation that exist in the contemporary economic sociology. A wide research program with several directions is under focus here. The market is analyzed from the positions of different current socio-economic approaches: ecological, structural, new institutional, political economics, socio-cultural, phenomenological and political cultural.  

The author pays attention to the workers that do not belong to any formal organization. The paper deals with several aspects of self-employment in the modern economy. Its main features are defined by the characteristics of post-industrial or information society. Self-employment more and more relates to the highly qualified work in production sector or information sector. Freelancers who provide the services by themselves get more and more power on the market. Modern information and communication technologies work for self-employment re-structurisation.  Today it can be provided by tele-working. Virtual markets of freelancer or e-lancers appeared and are developing now. These markets allow no face-to face contact between self-employers and their clients. Job search, contract agreement, getting task, results transfer and the payment as well as everyday communication go through the internet.  The infrastructure of these markets is given by the special web-sites - exchanges of tele-work. The increase in the share of such workers (free-lancers and e-lancers) depends on the continuing growth of the volume of work in the information sector as well as on the further development of information and communication technologies.

The author follows the topic of variety of capitalism which became popular in 1990-2000 as antithesis to abstract discussions about globalization. The paper comprises the comparative analysis of Anglo-Saxon and Japan models of firm organization and its position on the market. Here the two approaches face each other: the first one defines firm as mostly the ownership structure and the second one treats firm as the universal society the activity of which depends on the managers’ and employees’ interests.  

The work of Russian women as hostesses in the night clubs in North-East Asia is the legal business that leads to the illegal activities (sex-services), which relate to the shadow economy.  Those girls experienced in hostess plus prostitution strategy face the transformation of values, they come back to Russia with changed psychics as they are sure that under the certain conditions prostitution is the usual type of work like seller or bookkeeper. Such experience in labour migration transforms the women world outlook by changing their moral and ethics, psychological norms and rules of behavior. It means that we face institutional changes here. The advantages of the job of hostess are also under focus. Being holders of changed social conciseness and at the same time successful socio-economic strategy the women-migrants transform gender stereotypes and make the role structure of the society be more difficult.  

The study is aimed at the analysis of the peculiarities of the labour relations between the Russian IT-free-lancers and their clients as well as at the problems disclosure during their collaboration. The author focuses on hiring process, work conditions, the length of collaboration, work conflicts during the task fulfillment and further development of the labour relations.