Alienation in state-owned and private companies in Russia

Abstract

This study explores the level of alienation among Russian employees in state-owned and private business organizations over a period of 2 years. Based on the employment situation in Russia, employees in private companies were expected to be more alienated from their work than employees in state-owned companies. Survey data have been collected from 725 employees in five state-owned and three private Russian companies in 1994 and 1995. The results indicate that employees in private companies are more alienated than their counterparts in state-owned companies. Moreover, while the level of personal alienation has not changed over the 2-year period, social alienation has become more prevalent. It is concluded that as opposed to social alienation, which tends to change with a transition in the political and economic systems, Western style personal alienation is a steady measure of individual's attitude towards life that hardly changes in reaction to environmental changes. Logistic Regression analysis revealed Self-Estrangement to be more prevalent among employees in private companies than among employees in state-owned companies. Implications for research and practitioners are discussed.