This is a study of institutional and microeconomic processes concerning managers and workers in Russia. The Russian government's programs of reform and privatization have brought about major changes in the Russian economy in the past five years. These recent transformations and the growing diversity of the Russian economy provide a uniquely rich opportunity to test general theories in the sociology of organizations and microeconomic exchange. Now that the Russian economy has split into a multiplicity of ownership sectors, the relative influence of institutional and microeconomic processes can be expected to differ considerably from sector to sector. Institutional processes are hypothesized to be strongest in the state-owned sector, where the influence of the government is strongest, and where the "structural inertia" of individual organizations can be expected to be greatest because of these organizations' greater age. In the private sector, in contrast, institutional processes are likely to be weaker, and microeconomic determinants of employment relations should have freer reign. This study will investigate these processes by interviewing managers and workers in organizations drawn from the three major sectors of the contemporary Russian economy: the state-owned sector, which in 1994 still employed 46.7% of the Russian labor force; the private sector, which in 1994 employed 31.8% of the labor force; and Russia's new "mixed" ownership sector, which in 1994 accounted for 20.2% of Russian workers. One organization from each of these sectors will be selected from each of five industries (manufacturing, construction, retail trade, personal services, and science and scientific services) in each of three cities (Moscow, the national capital; a regional or "oblast" capital; and a small city). This research will test and develop theories in the sociology of organizations, and it will gain insight into the dramatic changes currently in progress in Russia. Thus it will cont ribute to the knowledge base required by both scholars and policy makers who wish to understand the transformation of formerly state-socialist societies and the global socio-economic evolution that distinguishes the end of the twentieth century.
