Institution of Higher Education and Science as a Factor of Economic Development

The modern economy is undergoing a structural transformation that enhances the role of knowledge and technology for economic development. Knowledge and technologies are created by researchers who received professional training in universities. The higher education system in Russia is changing similar to those in Western countries earlier. Institutional design should analyse knowledge about management routines, values, working rules, and the functioning of the institutional environment. The institutions operating in society can be identified by studying the narratives of the actors and the explanations for their actions. In the article, the in-depth interview is used for studying institutional changes in education and science. Data collected in projects «Identification of institutions and organizational mechanisms for the merger of universities in the context of the socio-economic development of the region» (10 interviews) and «Institutional traps of optimization of the sphere of education and science» (20 interviews, 3 expert focus group interviews). The narrative analysis identified interest groups in education and science that are involved in the functioning of institutional traps. The presence of special interest groups is an integral attribute of institutional traps that arise in conditions of quasi-optimal equilibrium. Combining research data shows the importance of the institution of higher education and science for economic development.

Institutional Traps for the Development of a Corporation's Creative Potential

The process of free formation and development of the creative potential of corporations in the context of the expansion of the digital economy is associated with the emergence of specific obstacles, which in economic theory are called development traps. Verifying this position, the article analyzes the institutional pitfalls of the development of creative potential caused by modern transformations. The concept of the institutional trap, first formulated in the works of P. David and D. North, and further developed in the works of A. Auzan, E. Balatsky, G. Kleiner, V. Polterovich seems to have been known and developed for a long time, but this is the trap of the trap itself. Despite all the banality and familiarity of the category of institutional trap in the Russian economy associated with the establishment of an inefficient norm, in recent years it has again attracted the attention of participants in various areas of scientific research, since it has significant hidden opportunities in the study of the formation and development of the creative potential of the corporation in the era of modern transformations. The creative potential, represented as a powerful creative force, endowed with special intellectual capital and competencies, is actively involved in accelerating transformations, the results of which are not always predictable, expected, accompanied by certain obligations and very unpredictable inertial results. Effective implementation of the creative potential of the corporation and its intellectual core involves expanding the opportunities for free generation of the creative potential of the corporation and overcoming specific obstacles to this formation associated with the processes of large-scale economic transformations, network development, corporate standardization and nationalization. We present the creative potential of the corporation as a kind of intellectual core, consisting of professional intellectuals who are able to generate new business development ideas and offer capital combinations of resources that do not fit into the standards, claiming to be the main ones. Through the prism of the pitfalls of developing the creative potential of the corporation, the author examines the main problems and contradictions of the transformations taking place in the Russian economy at the present stage. The research was conducted using the resources of the system economy, creative economy, knowledge economy, institutional economy, dialectics method, comparative analysis method, and empirical method.

Influence of Higher and Vocational Education on the Economic Development of the KhMAO-Yugra Region

The Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug — Yugra (KhMAO-Yugra) is classifie d a s on e o f Russia’ s norther n resource- extracting regions, the contribution of human capital to whose gross regional product (GRP) is typically negligible. In this context, the study investigated the impact of higher and vocational education on the development of the region’s economy. The objective of the research was to identify the direction and influence of human capital — in particular, higher and vocational education — on the economic development of KhMAO-Yugra. Despite the resource-extracting character of this region’s economy, its development can still be influenced by the quality of its human capital, as well as by institutional traps in the higher and vocational education system. Economic-statistical research methods — including multiple correlation and regression analysis — were used in combination with an abstract-logical approach. Along with an examination of the regional higher and vocational education system, the influence of its dynamic and structural factors on socio-economic development indicators is revealed. Predictions of GRP and average monthly salaries in KhMAO-Yugra until 2030 are offered. Institutional traps inherent in the region’s current higher and vocational education system are described. Factors identified as having the most significant positive impact include the number of postgraduate students, as well as bachelor-, specialist-, and masters-level graduates. The most harmful institutional traps are shown to be departmental affiliatio n, applica nt preference s, minim um tuiti on fee and low unemployment rate. If current trends in the region’s education and scientific systems are maintained, stagnation of its economy is likely to occur, resulting in a reduction of the region’s attractiveness to young professionals. The findings of the study can be applied when making changes to regional development programmes. More research is needed to determine economic development priorities in terms of human capital or resource extraction.

Institutional Traps of Digitalization of Russian Higher Education

In 2016-2018 the state in Russia adopted a package of program documents, which implies the transfer of education to the large-scale introduction of digital technologies. This phenomenon has been called “digitalization of education”. In scientific literature, electronization and digitalization are increasingly called one of the institutional traps for the development of Russian universities, since the corresponding institutional environment has not yet been formed due to the forced nature of innovations. As a result, the processes of introducing new technologies into education are still not regulated. Within the framework of the purpose of the study, the manifestations of the trap of electronization and digitalization of Russian higher education were analyzed on the basis of sociological data, and the theoretical modeling of the process of adaptation of educational agents to the institution of digitalization was carried out.In the course of the study, the approaches were summarized that have been developed in discussions on educational digitalization. The article presents the author’s vision of the studied phenomenon as an institutional trap; as well as understanding of the institutional features and characteristics of electronization and digitalization in education.The research method is the analysis of estimates obtained in the course of an expert survey which was conducted by the Vologda Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences among the representatives of the teaching staff of state universities in the Vologda region. In the course of this analysis, the indicators of educational digitalization as an effective innovation were clarified such as an increased accessibility of educational resources; simplification of communication and the process of transferring knowledge from teacher to student; increased opportunities for training specialists for the new (digital) economy; improving the quality of education in universities, etc. Based on the results of the empirical study, it has been determined that the conditions for the development of digitalization in Russian universities are currently ambiguous, which is closely related to the level of competitiveness of the educational organization.The scientific novelty of the research consists in the presentation of an original matrix describing the process of university employees adaptation to the conditions of digital transformation of education. The matrix is proposed on the basis of a sociological analysis of the impact of the trap of electronization and digitalization on the activities of educational agents. The matrix can be taken into account in the practice of higher education management.

The Ways to Come Over the Institutional Traps of Higher Education and Science Spere

The present paper is devoted to the Russian ineffective higher education and science institutions functioning study and analysis. We consider such institutions to be institutional traps, which are identified as sustainable inefficient rules and practices with the negative impact for education and science sphere reforms and transformations. The lack of the methodology base for regular institutional monitoring is one of the reasonable issues to institutional traps study. Such institutional monitoring should consist of qualitative and quantitative studies to find out the higher education and science sphere representatives points of view on the reforms results. To find out the solution and to improve the research methodology we used in-depth interview surveys and focus group discussions with lecturers and scientists of the Southern Federal University. This methodology let us to improve the institutional traps study and to design the way to come over the difficulties and barriers considering the ideas and experience of the sphere representatives. The responders involved in the present research were suggested by the six following institutional traps to discuss: the metric's trap, the trap of raising level of bureaucracy, the trap of shortage of financing, the quality of education decline trap, the trap of staff capacity and the electronization and digitalization trap.

THEORETICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS OF SOCIO-POLITICAL ANALYSIS OF DIGITAL PROTEST ACTIVITY

The analysis of various forms of protest activity in the virtual space becomes especially relevant in the era of digital technologies development in all spheres of public life. But until now, there has not been a comprehensive work devoted to the trends that cause, accompany and organize digital protest activity in the world. The purpose of this paper is to determine the theoretical and methodological foundations of the socio-political analysis of digital protest activity in modern societies. The study solved the problems of analyzing the values of provincial Russian societies, institutional matrices, network political management and specific forms of virtual communication in the network space. The authors reveal the theoretical and methodological foundations of the development of digital protest activity in the world: features of social temporality, public values, specifics of trust, types of social connections in urban space; digitalization, virtualization and mediativization, information inequality, digital elitism; institutional matrices and institutional traps of electronic communication, trends in digital management. The theoretical grounds provided are the basis of digital simulation of the protest activity in Megacities and provincial towns.

Regional institutional environment of public-private partnership: The case study of the Ural Federal District regions. Part 2

Subject. This article discusses the issues related to regulatory support for public-private partnership in the regions of the Ural Federal District. Objectives. The article aims to assess the institutional aspects of public-private partnership. Methods. For the study, we used a comparative analysis and the tabular methods to interpret the collected data. Results. The article points to the positive changes in the development of public-private partnership in the regions of the Ural Federal District. It also identifies institutional traps in local legislation and offers some recommendations to improve the investment climate. Conclusions. The article concludes that all the prerequisites for effective cooperation between private and public capitals have been created in the Ural Federal District regions. The development of public-private partnership is not possible without the continuous improvement of the institutional environment.

Alternatives to managerialism in higher education and science

Commitment to efficiency amid the implementation of competition principles and the market-oriented approach stimulates the emergence of contradictory tendencies such as commoditization and bureaucratization of higher education and science. The paper explores the dissemination of ideas of managerialism and related institutional traps in academic environment. Methodologically, the study rests on original institutional economics and the theory of reforms for analyzing institutional traps in the education and academic sphere. The authors apply qualitative methods and focus group research to identify possible alternatives to managerialism. Using data from three focus groups, we analyze institutional traps in education and science and the mechanisms for eliminating them through identification of opinions, values and experience of respondents (actors). The study underlines that there is a need for considering principles, models and regulation mechanisms in education and science alternative to managerialism. They are being formed either in the context of rules, routines, norms and management technologies emerging as a result of evolution and actors’ adaptation to the changing environment, or as processes deliberately planned and developed within academic self-government and self-organization and/or as a result of state policy. The research develops alternative management mechanisms in the field of education and science with reference to the identified institutional traps and actors that can act as bearers of these alternatives in academic community.