Prospects and Challenges of Virtual Labour Market Development in Russia

Abstract

A virtual labour market is a new kind of market. It enters national and global economies on the basis of information and communication technologies due to emergence of a new specific commodity that is an information labour service. The intensity and effectiveness of actions performed by all participants of national innovation processes, as well as the quality of human capital regarded as the key resource in the context of globalization will largely be determined by prospects of virtual market development. As a systemic phenomenon, the virtual labour market is understudied in the Russian academic literature, therefore the present study is especially relevant. The purpose of the study was to clarify the author’s approach to analyzing the virtual labour market and to identify some inconsistencies in its model currently established in Russia. The study of the literature contributed to categorical framework clarification and validation of methodological prerequisites of the research. The identified systemic and specific characteristics of the virtual market proved that it should be recognized as a subsystem of the macroeconomic labour market that interacts with its real subsystem. In order to evaluate the adaptive capacity of the current model of the Russian virtual labour market, the authors analyzed some of its inconsistencies and proposed a range of measures to address them. Methods of logical and statistical analyses and systematic and institutional approaches were implemented in the study. The authors analyzed the most important sources of information, including international documents, the Russian legislative acts and analytical reports by the Higher School of Economics, the Agency for Strategic Initiatives and the Moscow School of Management SKOLKOVO.