ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses enterprise associations in Russian industries known as business groups. During last decade, business groups became the most important new organizational form in Russian industry. Only the largest business-groups (known as led by Russian ‘oligarchs’) control a large part of the country’s economic activity, according to recent estimates (Guriev and Rachinsky, 2004), namely up to 40 percent of sales and employment of all industrial companies. Business group are companies associated with various instruments of coordination. A business group in Russia can be any of the following types of association:
with no corporate mechanisms in place. This category includes most diverse associations, from a group of enterprises which coordinate their operations under the sponsorship of the regional government body, to the manufacturing enterprises which coordinate with the entities supplying raw materials for processing (tolling);
specific contract. In spite of the fact that fewer and fewer newly registered FIGs appear every year while the number of enterprises actively cooperating as parts of FIGs is declining, the official FIGs which are put together with common cooperative, investment and organizational links accounted for approximately 6-7 percent of Russia’s total industrial output in 2001-2002;
sharing common interests. Without a common control system, these companies can, nevertheless, carry out agreed market, innovation, investment, etc. policies.
