The Social Responsibility within Labour Relations Among the Employers in Small and Medium Businesses

Abstract

The issue of SME employers as a subject of social and labor relations is rarely discussed in the academic literature. At the same time, studying the activity of employers in developing entrepreneurship, taking risks and seeing opportunities in this area is important to foster understanding how social relations are configured in business. The theoretical framework of this study was based on classic and modern trends and the use of social and labor relations models in a market economy. It was also inspired by research done on the condition of social and labor relations in Russia as a whole, and in SME specifically. The empirical base of the research was made up of in-depth interviews with employers, owners and hired top managers of SMEs in Nizhny Novgorod and the Nizhny Novgorod Region. The findings suggest that a specific understanding and implementation of employers of subjectivity in social and labor relations exist, which are mainly aimed at preserving minimum guarantees and motivation for employees. On the other hand, the employer’s problems are isolated and in most cases resolved in the course of natural adaptation and adjustment to the situation. The employers only partially control employment in their area and do not consider it necessary to participate in managing this. Subjectivity is truncated but this allows the employer to maintain a balance of relations at the micro level in case of conflict and interdependencies when relations of domination cannot be simply reduced to raw arbitrariness. With such a view the employer plays the role of the driving factor, although in this case it is in essence only a minimalist account of the interests and needs of employees.