This paper investigates employees' individual innovative behavior. Three main stages of innovative processnew ideas generation, their promotion and implementationare examined. 623 Russian employees of domestic and foreign companies operating in Russia were surveyed. The results show high significance of individual determinants (status and self-assessment of professional competence), favorable organizational environment (managerial incentives) and types of decision-making for all three stages of innovative process. The authors' main proposition that foreign companies demonstrate higher level of individual innovative activity was not confirmed but qualitative distinctions at all three stages of innovative process were revealed.
The paper investigates the questions about social organization of work behavior in the Russian companies. Focus in research was made on desirable and obligatory behavior, work standards and determinants of different types of organizational behavior. Survey of 1423 employees presents all key industries of the Russian business, performing within the main federal districts. The results show that the domination of the mercantile and consumer attitude to work as means of achievement of material welfare is not the socio-cultural phenomenon only, but also the result of social and economic conditions in the work sphere. The examined distinction of interests, demands and standards of behavior for representatives of various professions represents one of the deepest contradictions of the development processes of working sphere in Russian society. The research found out deep deformations in the sphere of working activity of employees in the Russian companies.
This paper outlines major theoretical and methodological problems in Quality of Work Life (QWL) research within organisational studies and discusses possible solutions, based on extensive literature analysis. An electronic search in the Scopus database found 1,244 publications utilising the QWL concept. From this sample we selected 387 papers dealing directly with QWL and compiled a final set of publications for detailed review. The literature analysis revealed the absence of a clear and concrete understanding of QWL, various (and often incomplete) approaches to QWL content and indicators and interference between QWL and other concepts such as ‘job satisfaction’, which all resulted in a general confusion about the notion in academic discussions. As a possible solution, we suggested distinguishing clearly and including the following in the single integrative research instrument: 1) an aggregate subjective QWL measurement tool and 2) an aggregate objective QWL measurement tool. Finally, we present arguments for a new understanding of QWL, combining subjective and objective measures in the context of a general integration between ‘working conditions’ and ‘needs satisfaction’ approaches.
The goal of the paper is to suggest the methodological framework of social exchange for analysis of employment relations. Our literature review revealed confusion concerning the definition of social exchange in the context of labor processes and employee-organization relations. The latter are complex and imply all elements of reciprocal and negotiated exchange as well as economic and social forms of exchange. We focus on rules and means of exchange as well as powerdependence relations during the work process. The concept of "psychological contracts" that embodies the social exchange approach in empirical studies is also under consideration. Methodological limitations of current concepts and measures based on exchange methodology are discussed. The authors argue that deepening and specification of key parameters of social exchange approach could be very analytically productive in sociological research of employment relations seen as employee-employer mutual obligations.
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