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Job satisfaction, blat and intentions to leave among blue-collar employees in contemporary Russia

Evgeniya Balabanova (School of Business Administration, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia)
Azer Efendiev (School of Business Administration, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia)
Mats Ehrnrooth (Department of Management and Organization, Hanken School of Economics, Helsinki, Finland)
Alexei Koveshnikov (Department of Management Studies, Aalto University School of Business, Helsinki, Finland)

Baltic Journal of Management

ISSN: 1746-5265

Article publication date: 4 January 2016

1733

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine antecedents of intentions to leave among blue-collar employees in domestic Russian organizations.

Design/methodology/approach

The study is based on a sample of 1,210 blue-collar employees in 80 domestic organizations across 14 industries and eight regions in Russia.

Findings

The analysis shows that wage satisfaction is the strongest negative predictor of Russian employees’ intentions to leave compared to core job-related and interpersonal relations satisfaction. For non-blat employees, the relationships with intentions to leave are negative and significant for all three types of satisfactions, whereas for employees with blat only the relationship between core job-related satisfaction and intentions to leave is significant.

Originality/value

The present study, first, reveals that wage satisfaction is the most important but not the only way to retain blue-collar employees in Russia and, second, points toward the complex nature of blat’s influence on employees’ organizational behavior in contemporary Russian organizations. By so doing, the analysis provides a still rare empirical illustration of how relationships and variables explaining turnover intentions and its antecedents are contingent on economic, cultural and institutional contexts.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by grants from the National Research University – Higher School of Economics (HSE) through the Basic Research Program. The authors would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions to improve the quality of the paper.

Citation

Balabanova, E., Efendiev, A., Ehrnrooth, M. and Koveshnikov, A. (2016), "Job satisfaction, blat and intentions to leave among blue-collar employees in contemporary Russia", Baltic Journal of Management, Vol. 11 No. 1, pp. 21-43. https://doi.org/10.1108/BJM-03-2015-0079

Publisher

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Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2016, Emerald Group Publishing Limited

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