Employee’s Opportunism as an Alienation Manifest in Russian Firms

Abstract

In the twenty-first century, employees are increasingly far from the process of real product creation, or in terms of classical political economy, alienated from labor. At the same time, in terms of neo-institutional economics, the modern employee tends to behave opportunistically toward the firm and the employer. Both the employees’ alienation and their opportunism negatively affect labor productivity. On a theoretical level, these phenomena are related. However, the critical question is—how is it possible to identify this relation at the empirical level, and what are the features of this relation? The paper aims to answer the question: are alienation and behavioral opportunism interconnected on data from a survey of 300 Russian employees conducted in October 2020? The study used ANOVA to test hypotheses about the relationship of these phenomena for different groups. The positive interconnection of behavioral opportunism and alienation is confirmed. The most alienated were employees with the willingness to passive opportunism. Factors obliterating the differences between alienation and employee opportunism were managerial position of an employee, capital place of life (Moscow), salary, or position improvement in the near past. Top- and HR managers can use the research results to increase employee involvement and labor productivity growth.