Changing patterns of employment in post-socialist organizations in Central and Eastern Europe: management action in a transitional context

Abstract

This article develops an alternative theoretical framework to the dominant 'top-down' macroeconomic and institutional views that have been so influential in studies of the post-socialist economic transition. The authors argue that in order to understand economic outcomes more fully, researchers need to adopt a theoretical approach that combines the sociological reasoning of the institutionalist view with micro-processual arguments that theorize employment and unemployment as outcomes of everyday social construction. Inverting the normal economic approach of starting from macro-economic trends and inferring the motives and practices of local socio-economic actors, the authors, therefore, seek to develop a 'ground-up' mode of explanation of unemployment dynamics that commences from the examination of the real decision-making practices and processes of socially embedded enterprise managers. Drawing on evidence from longitudinal case study research, the authors demonstrate that enterprise restructuring has not been a uniform or monocausal process and highlight the dangers of over-generalization from aggregated data.

Five star hotels of a Multinational Enterprise in countries of the transitional periphery: A case study in human resources management

“…Truly, such unknown frontiers feature a dearth of relevant properties for scholars to investigate and thus any research is obliged to proceed with in-depth case studies. As a result, these involve very few respondents among active subsidiary management practitioners who are, firstly, willing and available to contribute (Moilanen, 2007) and next, knowledgeable as well as operate based on documentation and formalized policies and practices (Frynas, Mellahi, & Pigman, 2006;Soulsby & Clark, 2006). Baum and Thompson (2007) identified the difficulties met in attempting to research senior management of accommodation and tourism business organizations in transitional periphery economies where they "encountered elements of mistrust if not outright hostility" (p. 242).…”

CSR development in post‐communist economies: employees' expectations regarding corporate socially responsible behaviour – the case of Romania

“…). The ‘employee‐friendly’ policies of companies continued in some CEECS in the early years of the transition (Iankova , Soulsby & Clark ). These policies were then threatened by the deepening of the post‐1989 transitional transformation and the firms' switch of focus towards short‐term gains (Murrell , King ), leading to high levels of unemployment and ‘flexibilisation’ of the workforce (Rainnie et al .…”

“…During socialism a kind of 'paternalistic' relations existed between the firm and its employees or local communities (Kornai 1992) and although not labelled as CSR, this type of behaviour has existed in the CEECs for years (Bronchain 2003, Johnson & Brady 2004, Koleva et al 2010). The 'employee-friendly' policies of companies continued in some CEECS in the early years of the transition (Iankova 2006, Soulsby & Clark 2006. These policies were then threatened by the deepening of the post-1989 transitional transformation and the firms' switch of focus towards short-term gains (Murrell 2000, King 2001), leading to high levels of unemployment and 'flexibilisation' of the workforce (Rainnie et al 2002), social marginalisation, poor access to health care and poor training of the new generation of business people (Koleva et al 2010).…”

The transition from school to work in Russia during and after socialism: change or continuity?

“…Firms act on habitualized and legitimizing traditions as well. Thus, many formerly socialist employers proceeded only gradually towards a capitalistic organization of the firm, thereby creating a great variety of combinations of capitalistic and socialist elements (Soulsby and Clark 2006). Socialist traditions also continued to be present because the privatization of state-owned firms took place with different intensities and strategies in Central and Eastern European countries (Stark and Bruszt 1998).…”