№ 2 (2023)

The paper analyzes the phenomenon of managerial favoritism defined as managers’ preferences for some of their subordinates, giving them the most favorable treatment at the expense of others. The study is based on two surveys of 1,116 managers and 364 employees. We reveal that the presence of favoritism is positively related to “clannish” type of social organization, with “closed” social network channels of hiring and employee socio-economic dependency from their managers. In organizations with favoritism, the importance of personal sympathies and subjective evaluations of managers is high, and a successful career requires compliance, discipline, and personal loyalty. In contrast, companies without favoritism are characterized by meritocratic type of social organization. They have open hiring channels, performance-based rewards and promotions, and a focus on continually updating the employees’ skills. Employees who reported favoritism in their organizations had lower job satisfaction, higher levels of role uncertainty, stress, and intentions to leave. Conversely, the most satisfied, engaged, and happy are those respondents who reported close and trusting relationships with their supervisors and at the same time an equal, not “exclusive”, treatment of all subordinates by supervisors.

Analysing the processes associated with the next reform of local government, the author comes to the conclusion that attempts to implant a socio-political institute which arose in Western Europe on the Russian soil were always unsuccessful, for living thing rejects a foreign matter. Evaluating the situation of local governance author found both certain advantages and disadvantages of the provisional draft law «General principles of the organization of local self-government in the unified system of public authority», based on the results of a survey of the heads of suburban municipal district settlements author emphasizes a need for policy decision in this field and justifies the need for radical changes in the system of training for positions of authority

The article reviews the process of global evolution as a way of ascent of complex systems to higher levels of organizational complexity. Due to the fact that society features integrity and differentiation into different spheres of human activity, the author argues that it is a socio-cultural system. The author considers culture as a specific human activity and as a set of spiritual and material values, norms, ideals, patterns of behavior involved in the multifaceted process of programming the future. Human creates culture, and culture shapes human. The cultural and genetic code that is formed in society performs a unique function of selection, preservation and transmission of the cultural heritage of the people living in it. The sacrament of creating the new, according to the image adopted on an alternative basis, occurs precisely in culture. It crystallizes from the variety of values that were introduced in the course of history, dominated, arose and went into eternity. Preservation of what confirms the ideal image of the people in the memory is a most important function of culture. The article also proposes to consider the mechanism of the emergence of a new civilizational integrity, the strategy of sufficient development of modern society based on the coordination of its development with the laws of evolution of the biosphere, and also justifies the expediency of the approval of a new humanism as a necessary condition for achieving a secure future.

The article is based on a representative public opinion survey of citizens aged 14 to 39 years to probe into problems of choosing and realizing life strategies of regional youth. The whole range of young people aspirations, representing their key life goals and achievements are considered as the objects of the prospective life scenario. It is concluded that in the process of self-construction of personal biographies, young people show hybridity of behavioral patterns reflected in declaring contradictory attitudes, blurring of value imperatives when designing a life path for the nearest/distant future. The problem of study lies in contradictions arising the life strategies of young people in the region. For example, regional youth are seriously concerned about the corruption and social injustice issues, but this has little effect on increasing the level of their civic participation, despite the fact that the minds of young people are affected by quite modern models of liberal democracy with its primacy of the value of freedom. At the verbal level, young people recognize the key value of health, perceiving it as a necessary condition for active life, self-realization, and the birth of children, while at the behavioral level it is often ignored; the paradox of such declarations is reinforced by a more than low demand for life expectancy and physical longevity. With their high sociability young people, however, encourage virtualization of interpersonal connections and relationships. Faced with "difficulties of ordinary people" (earnings, housing costs, etc.) and more than modest material reality, as part of a life project, young people naturally choose economic security, for which they are even willing to invest in knowledge and education as most pronounced determinants of life success. Demonstrating exceptional flexibility in adapting to the economic reality, young people do not exclude migration scenarios, as very conditional, but yet an attempt to eliminate the threat of unemployment, career barriers, and low income. Facing clear goals for economic independence, regional youth at the same time sees in work not only a source of well-being, but also a sphere of professional growth and creativity, the demand for which is due to desire for self-determination and self-realization. Critical reinterpretation of archetypal patterns of family life leads young people to choose a small family with remote responsibility to parents and a mixed role repertoire.

The authors of the paper analyse the aspects of subjective well-being in different age groups of Russian people, with focus on the study of subjective well-being in preretirement age. The results of the national telephone survey conducted by Institute of Social Analysis and Forecasting, RANEPA in 2021 demonstrate that respondents at age 56-65 are the most vulnerable social group in the country. The preretirement age can be called the most disadvantaged age in Russia, although it is traditionally perceived within the administrative system as an unproblematic category of citizens, characterized by a steady demand for stability, predictable behavior and formed attitudes. In answers to the question “In general, how do you assess your life today – as good, rather good, rather bad, or bad?” people of preretirement and early retirement age are more likely than other respondents to choose the variants “bad” or “rather bad” (42% of respondents, in comparison with sample average of 28%). The article attempts to identify the causes of this phenomenon as well as the main factors affecting subjective well-being in the “third age”. The authors conclude that changes in social status, i.e. foremost retirement, family changes (children leaving the parental home) and changes in family support networks, physical discomfort, are the main factors for transformation in subjective well-being experience. As a result, there is a decline in the emotional state, a lack of expectations for the future and anxiety state, which can lead to social exclusion.

The article deals with attempts to synthesize Marxism and the concepts of intersectionality. This synthesis became possible thanks to the evolution of Marxism, which focused less and less on economics and paid more attention to culture. Intersectional analysis completes this evolution by presenting class exploitation as one of the intersecting “systems of oppression”. This means that only by looking at all the dimensions of race, gender, sexuality and class in the structures of capitalism and imperialism can one understand power relations as we see them today. If the revolution of the working class never happened, then the last hope is to unite all the oppressed in order to fight for equality/justice, democracy/freedom and community/solidarity. But, as shown in the article, the discourses of intersectionality, due to the desire to combine incompatible interests and social representations of the “oppressed”, are incapable of a constructive dialogue and maintaining internal unity in the struggle against the capitalist system. In this regard, the question is raised about the prospects for the further evolution of (post-) Marxism.

The study of the financial and economic culture of the population is designed to help explain and predict its behavior, the ability to take advantage and avoid risks. The article presents the results of a study of the financial and economic culture of students. The theoretical premises were the approach to culture as a socially interactive process consisting of "shared meanings" and "shared practices", and the methodological framework was the concept of the institutional matrix and the phenomenon of financial subjectivity. The socio-economic block of issues considered in the article includes indicators characterizing risks of a macroeconomic nature and in interaction with financial institutions. Macroeconomic risks seem to many respondents to be very likely, which determines the orientation towards using such methods of saving and multiplying funds as investments in real estate, cash foreign currency and bank deposit.

The paper presents the author's analysis of the collective monograph entitled "From Precarious Employment to Precarity of Life." Despite the variety of precarious employment aspects discussed in separate chapters, the authors are united by a methodological principle: singling out the personality of an employee – as an individual, a resident, a worker, and a participant in his/her immediate environment in the context of interpersonal communication – and taking this personality into account in the analysis of social roles. Such an integrated approach allows to see the interconnection between the spheres of production and non-production life of people belonging to different professional groups and having different employment statuses. The main hypothesis of our study is that precarity of employment entails precarity of other spheres of life. This hypothesis is tested primarily by comparing precarious and non-precarious persons in their responses to relevant questions of a survey using the percentage difference method. Our analysis of the monograph content and the summary tables in the appendices allowed to conclude that there is not enough evidence to support this hypothesis. To better understand the differences described for the many aspects covered in the monograph, we have compiled a collective social and demographic profile of a precarious employee. Using this profile as a model for rechecking the authors' empirical generalizations led us to conclude that the influence of a third factor (sex, age, education) is often at the back of detectable differences between precarious and non-precarious persons.