Introduction

This book is based on the findings of a research programme carried out in collaboration with local research teams affiliated with the Institute for Comparative Labour Relations Research (ISITO) in Russia since the early 1990s, funded primarily by the British Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and INTAS. The research on which this book is based was carried out in two phases. The first phase, in 1991-5 in collaboration with Peter Fairbrother, involved intensive longitudinal case studies of the restructuring of management and labour relations in traditional enterprises in four Russian regions.1 This research identified the continuity of traditional soviet management practices and the constraints on change imposed by the struggle to survive in a collapsing economy. This research was reported in a large number of publications in English and in Russian and forms the basis of the three introductory chapters of this book, which cover the central issues in theorising the transition, the characteristics of the soviet industrial enterprise and the key features of the survival strategies of traditional enterprises in the 1990s.