Temnitskiy A.L. (2023). Innovation Potential of Russia’s Working Population in the Dynamics of Three Decades of Reforms. Social area, 9 (3). DOI: 10.15838 ...

Текст статьи на сайтежурнала URL: http://socialarea-journal.ru/article/29756 (дата обращения 09.10.2023)

Abstract

The issue of identifying the characteristics of the employee's innovative potential presumes, first of all, resort to revealing those qualitative characteristics of the individual that reflect their susceptibility, readiness and ability for innovation and risk, mastering and implementing scientific and technological achievements in their current professional activities, as well as a flexible response to external changes. As a basic indicator of innovativeness of the employee's personality, we consider their value-based orientation towards being proactive and initiative, entrepreneurial spirit, search for the new in their professional activity and everyday life, and willingness to take risks, in contrast to orientation towards respect for established traditions and customs, adherence to what is familiar and accepted by most people. In terms of this indicator, the share of Russian employees showing signs of innovativeness has increased over 30 years of reforms from 45% in 2001 to 65% in 2021. Assumedly, the determining factors of its growth were not organizational impacts, but personal experience, successful practices, and results of actualizing innovative qualities. In this regard, the social contradiction between the employee's innovative potential accumulated over the years of reforms and the lack of adequate incentives from society and institutions for its productive use is relevant. In this paper, based on materials from monitoring studies conducted by the Federal Center of Theoretical and Applied Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 2001, 2011, and 2021, we have disclosed socio-demographic and socio-cultural characteristics of innovative employees. We have shown that, when constructing typological categories of innovative employees, we should take into account orientation towards the future and the individual freedom values in addition to their orientation towards entrepreneurship and search for new things in the professional activity and everyday life. In conclusion, we describe three key factors for maintaining the innovative potential accumulated by Russian employees: a) material well-being, b) guarantees of the individual freedom values, and c) confidence in a better future.