John Round

Corruption in the Post-Soviet Workplace: The Experiences of Recent Graduates in Contemporary Ukraine

While Ukraine was bestowed market economy status by the European Union in 2005 its labour market still endures many structural problems. By exploring the experiences of young graduate employees this article highlights the difficultly in obtaining work within Ukraines labour market and the problems they face once they have secured employment. Rather than seeing the development of a transparent labour market the collapse of the command economy has seen a relatively closed system develop. The article demonstrates how many jobs are secured through the use of connections or the demanding, and payment, of bribes.The situation does not improve once graduates obtain long-term employment. Interviewees discuss the lack of job security, the informal payment of wages and the lack of legal protection from corrupt employer practices. The article has broader resonance outside of the Ukrainian case study as the discussion of workplace corruption highlights how the issue is concerned with much more than simply cash based transactions and how those that endure it are likely to turn to the informal economy for employment.

Everyday tactics and spaces of power: the role of informal economies in post-Soviet Ukraine

Utilising de Certeaus concepts of daily life and his delineation between strategies and tactics as everyday practices this paper examines the role of informal economies in post-Ukraine. Based on 700 household surveys and seventy-five in-depth interviews, conducted in three Ukrainian cities, the paper argues that individuals/households have developed a wide range of tactics in response to the economic marginalisation the country has endured since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Firstly, the paper details the importance of informal economies in contemporary Ukraine while highlighting that many such practices are operated out of necessity due to low wage and pension rates and high levels of corruption. This challenges state-produced statistics on the scale of economic marginalisation currently experienced in the country. By exploring a variety of these tactics the paper then examines how unequal power relations shape the spaces in which these practices operate in and how they can be simultaneously sites of exploitation and resistance to economic marginalisation. The paper concludes pessimistically by suggesting that the way in which these economic spaces are shaped precludes the development of state policies which might benefit the economically marginalised.

Evaluating Informal Entrepreneurs’ Motives: Evidence from Moscow

PurposeRecently when studying mainstream (legitimate) entrepreneurs, the distinction between ‘necessity-driven’ entrepreneurs pushed into entrepreneurship because other options for work are absent or unsatisfactory, and ‘opportunity-driven’ entrepreneurs pulled into entrepreneurship to exploit some perceived business opportunity, has been transcended by commentators displaying the co-presence of opportunity and necessity in entrepreneurs’ motives and how their relative importance shifts over time. This paper evaluates critically whether this re-theorisation is also valid when considering the motives of informal entrepreneurs. MethodologyA household survey of entrepreneurship is reported conducted in Moscow during late 2005 and early 2006. In the 313 households surveyed, 81 entrepreneurs were identified who had started-up a business venture in the past 42 months, all of whom reported that they were operating wholly or partially in the informal economy.FindingsFor some 80 per cent of informal entrepreneurs, both necessity- and opportunity-drivers were co-present in their decision to start-up an enterprise. There was also a clearly identifiable shift in their motives away from necessity- and towards opportunity-drivers as their ventures became more established. Research implicationsAkin to recent literature on mainstream (legitimate) entrepreneurs’ motives, this survey thus displays the need for a less bifurcated understanding of informal entrepreneurs’ motives that recognises the co-existence of necessity- and opportunity-drivers and the temporal changes in their relative importance.Value of paperThis study reveals the need to transcend the currently dominant simplistic portrayals of informal entrepreneurs as either universally necessity-driven or universally opportunity-driven.

Beyond Negative Depictions of Informal Employment: Some Lessons from Moscow

Informal employment is conventionally viewed as residual, marginal and sweatshop-like work that impairs urban economic development and social cohesion. Reporting data from 313 interviews conducted with Moscow households during 2005/06, this negative reading is found to apply to just one segment of the informal labour market in this post-socialist city— namely, informal waged employment. Examining the multiple types of informal employment conducted on an own-account basis, more positive impacts emerge of this sphere as the key seedbed for enterprise development and principal mechanism for delivering community self-help. The outcome is a call for a finer-grained understanding and more nuanced policy approach towards informal employment that recognises its plurality of forms and their varying consequences for economic development and social cohesion.

Coping with the Social Costs of 'Transition': Everyday Life in Post-Soviet Russia and Ukraine

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, many Russian and Ukrainian households have experienced periods of economic marginalization. The role of this paper is to examine these social costs of transition, noting that official reporting underestimates the true scale of the problem, and the household responses to these costs. The discussions are based on both qualitative and quantitative research undertaken in numerous locations in Russia and Ukraine. One of the paper’s key arguments is that informal economic practices are crucial to many households and that a broad spectrum of coping tactics is employed. These tactics often reveal the unequal power relations that run through state—society and worker— employee relations and help detail the high levels of corruption that exist in post-Soviet societies. Furthermore, these tactics are entwined in the locations within which they take place and rely on high levels of social capital, ensuring that households would rather remain in their current location than migrate to cheaper regions. The paper concludes on a rather pessimistic note, arguing that, although Russian and Ukrainian households have ‘coped’ over the 20 years since the beginning of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the future poses new challenges. These include an ageing population, the increasing use of credit (default on which can lead to eviction) and the global recession, which leads to a decrease in opportunities in the informal sphere.

Retheorizing the Nature of Informal Employment Some Lessons from Ukraine

This article evaluates critically the contrasting theories of informal employment that variously read this sector as a leftover of pre-capitalism, a byproduct of a new emergent form of capitalism, a complement to formal employment or an alternative to the formal economy. Until now, a common tendency has been to either universally privilege one theorization over the others, or to depict each as appropriate in different regions of the world. Reporting on data collected through face-to-face interviews with 600 households in Ukraine, however, the finding is that each theory is valid when analysing particular types of informal employment in this country, and that only by combining them will a finer-grained and more comprehensive understanding of the complex and diverse nature of informal employment be achieved. The article concludes by outlining a way of synthesizing these theorizations in order to develop a more multilayered and nuanced understanding of informal employment.

The role of informal economies in the post-Soviet world : the end of transition?

1. Introduction: Part I (Re)theorising Transition Economies 2. Re-visiting the recurring question of transition 3. Re-theorising the economic 4. Beyond the formal/informal economy dualism: unpacking the diverse economies of post-Soviet societies Part II The Lived Experience of Transition 5. The role of the informal in the formal sphere 6. Informal employment 7. One-to-one unpaid labour, reimbursed family work and paid favours 8. Formal and informal unpaid employment 9. The internal economies of the household 10. Conclusions

ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND THE INFORMAL ECONOMY: A STUDY OF UKRAINE'S HIDDEN ENTERPRISE CULTURE

How many entrepreneurs start-up their business ventures conducting some or all of their trade in the informal economy? The aim of this paper is to answer this key question that has been seldom addressed using data from 600 face-to-face structured interviews conducted in Ukraine in late 2005 and early 2006. Analyzing the 331 entrepreneurs identified (i.e., individuals starting-up an enterprise in the past three years), just 10 percent operate on a wholly legitimate basis, while 39 percent have a license to trade and/or have registered their business but conduct a portion of their trade in the informal economy, and 51 percent operate unregistered enterprises and conduct all of their trade on an off-the-books basis. Given that some 90 percent of all business start-ups operate partially or wholly in the informal economy, and that 40 percent of all respondents depend on the informal economy as either their principal or secondary contributor to their livelihoods, the paper concludes by considering the wider implications of these findings both for further research and public policy.

The Role of Domestic Food Production in Everyday Life in Post-Soviet Ukraine

The Soviet Unions collapse brought economic uncertainty to many Ukrainians. Approximately 20 percent of the population, 10 million people, currently survive on incomes below the state-set subsistence minimum figure. Given the unrealistic nature of this state-produced definition, “poverty” levels are in reality much higher. A distinctive feature of this marginalization is its longevity, as seventeen years since the dismantling of the command economy relatively few feel the benefits of marketization. As Burawoy (2001) noted, the very fact that few people have starved to death during this period indicates that other economic practices must be in operation to ensure households survive. Therefore, there is a need to explore how people (re)structure their everyday lives in response to economic marginalization. Revealing such practices demonstrates the multiplicity of forms that economic marginalization can take, the relationships between formal and informal economies, the exploitation of marginalized groups, new spaces of resistance, and the potential impact of state reforms. Although there is an emerging literature qualitatively exploring the coping tactics developed as in response to economic marginalization, there has been little qualitative examination of the role that domestically produced food plays within this broad spectrum of practices. This article begins to fill this lacuna by exploring the various roles that the dacha, a plot of rural land given to households during the Soviet period, plays in everyday life.

The Hidden Enterprise Culture of Moscow: Entrepreneurship and Off-the-Books Working Practices

Even though entrepreneurs are commonly depicted as risk takers, little evaluation has occurred on whether they weigh the costs of being caught and the level of punishments, and engage in off-the-books working practices. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the degree to which entrepreneurs engage in such off-the-books work. Reporting a survey conducted in Moscow during late 2005 and early 2006 of 81 entrepreneurs (defined here as individuals starting-up an enterprise in the past three years), just 3.7 percent are found to operate on a wholly legitimate basis. The remaining 96.3 percent have not registered their business, have no license to trade and conduct all of their trade on an off-the-books basis. The outcome is a call to move beyond the wholesome and virtuous ideal-type of legitimate super heroes that pervade textbook depictions of entrepreneurs and toward a fuller understanding of the lived realities of entrepreneurship.