ABSTRACT
In 1992 a package of radical reforms was introduced in Russia that was designed to rapidly replace the state socialist economy with market institutions and practices. This chapter analyses the question of whether the socialist path of industrial work was broken after the market reforms. It compares the characteristics of production work before and after the reforms. The chapter discusses the literature on work organisation, employee development and qualification, remuneration and interest representation. Studies on work organisation at Russian enterprises in the early 1990s present a picture of weakly managed or even unpredictable production processes, characterised by frequent equipment breakdowns and very high amounts of slack and waste. In the 2000s, Russian companies began to show interest in international standards and concepts governing production. Certification of the quality management system for compliance with ISO 9000 became popular, but few domestic companies aimed at adopting lean production or related concepts.
