‘Professional’ and ‘family-friendship’ social ties in hiring practices of Russian employees

1. ‘Professional’ and ‘family-friendship’ social ties in hiring practices of Russian employees Evgeniya Balabanova National Research University – Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia SASE 26th Annual Conference July 10-12, 2014, Chicago

2. Using personal contacts in job search and job placement on the Russian labor market • widespread • most important under the conditions of: • high-tension labor markets • high vacancy competition • applying for prestigious and high-paid positions

3. Hiring ‘by pulling strings’: vice or norm?

4. Social networks in job search and placement • ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ ties (Granovetter 1973) • ‘information’ and ‘influence’ networks; ‘informative’ and ‘placement’ referrals (Simon, Warner 1992; Peterson et al. 2000; Yakubovich 2005) • ‘professional’ (obtained during one’s career), e.g. • reputation in relevant professional community • referrals from previous workplaces • finding job through professional acquaintances • versus ‘off-professional’ (‘old-boys networks’) • friendship and family ties

5. Social networks in job search and placement: differences of approaches ‘Strong’vs.‘weak’ (Granovetter 1973) Professional ties vs.family and friends networks Sources of social contacts • Intensity and intersection of social contacts

6. Center for Research in Social Organization of a Firm, HSE Faculty of Management ‘Specialists and managers in Russian business organizations: drivers and tendencies of development’, 2012

7. Sampling: 623 white-collar employees in 17 private-owned companies operating in Russia

8. Using of formal and networking channels of job search, %% of valid answers, N=518

9. Groups most often having network capital Professional Family-friendship aged 19-24 (74%) respondents from domestic companies in prestigious industries (73%) respondents from regions (71%) • males from: • regions; • foreign-owned companies; • prestigious industries (42% among each) • respondents from foreign-owned companies in prestigious industries (41%) • supervisors (37%) • aged 30-39 (35%) • having both professional experienceand special education (34%)

10. Professional and family-friendship capital: opposition orcomplementarity?

11. Job and career satisfaction and organizational commitment: comparison of 8 groups

12. Index for professional social capital

13. Index for family-friendship social capital

14. Regression models for employees’ well-being, standardized β-coefficients

15. Conclusions (1)

16. Conclusions (2) • ‘old-boys networks’ is rather a compensatory hiring mechanism that provides only one-time or initial advantages for relatively uncompetitive applicants, e.g. • the first position in the career • getting a job after a period of unemployment or being out of the labor force • moving from the ‘bad’ workplace to a ‘good’ one • using informal relatives’ or friends’ contacts to find jobs is rather a last resort for low-resource workers which stay on their jobs because of few alternative choices rather than because of better match quality (Loury 2006)

17. Directions for further research Professional reputation and professional social networks: ‘meritocratic’ or ‘anti-meritocratic’ factors of development?