Informal relations as a tool for socialization and adaptation of state and municipal employees

The article proposes an algorithm for assessing the environment of informal relations between employees of state and municipal institutions. The purpose of the study is to improve management processes by assessing informal relations as a tool for socialization and adaptation of employees of state and municipal institutions. Based on a literature review, objectives for managing informal relationships were set. Further, the characteristics of the environment of informal relations are revealed, for the assessment of which the methods and techniques of domestic and foreign authors can be applied. The paper offers recommendations on the application of methods and techniques for studying the environment of informal relations between staff of state and municipal institutions. Applied methods: analysis of sources, comparison, legal method. The novelty of the work lies in the substantiation of the application of methods and techniques for assessing the psychological climate in the team, the level of job satisfaction, conflict, informal leadership to study the environment of informal relations. The practical significance of achieving the desired level of the environment lies in the ability to increase the level of retention of employees, to provide flexibility in making managerial decisions and their implementation.

Basic Characteristics of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises in Terms of Their Strategic Management

The strategic management represents current direction of management. It is applied in all types of enterprises, including small and medium sized ones. Using principles of process management within SMEs has its limitations caused mainly by the size of the enterprise and the related focus on operational management. Other specifics are function accumulation, informal leadership, preference of oral communication to written, etc. Nevertheless, implementation of strategic management can increase competitiveness, reduce costs, improve decision-making, facilitate implementation of the employee motivation system, shorten delivery times, raise quality of customer satisfaction, etc. The aim of this article is to find out how to what extent SMEs implement the principles of strategic management.

Protean Power Concept in International Relations: Origins and Prospects

In contrast to the representatives of other directions in International Relations Science, constructivists have long distanced themselves from the notion of power, but in the 2000s and 2010s, due to the increasing interest in conceptualizing this phenomenon, the first attempts of the constructivist interpretation of the concept of power started to emerge. Such interpretations received their fullest expression in the concept of Protean power, developed by a group of researchers under the informal leadership of Peter Katzenstein. The article analyzes the main features of the Protean power, as well as the emerging practices. The author shows that this type of power is less associated with specific actors and their intentions than other types of power, since it is aimed at overcoming uncertainty under the conditions when it is impossible to calculate risks. This formulation of the question allows one to reconsider the role of the creativity principle in international interactions and provide it with a higher ontological status. According to the author’s conclusion, the concept of Protean power continues the line of revising the ontological foundations of the studies of world politics, which has emerged within constructivism in the last decade. Similarly to some other constructivist concepts, this concept implies a holistic interpretation of the phenomenon of power in international relations and reflects the desire to move away from the classical (Newtonian) worldview. Although today it provides many reasons for criticism and, perhaps, needs further elaboration and reinterpretation, its contribution to the scientific discussion of the ontology of power in international interactions is beyond doubt. Protean power is paving the way that allows bypassing the neo-positivist consensus that has so far set the tone in the International Relations Science.

Expertise diversity, informal leadership hierarchy, and team knowledge creation: A study of pharmaceutical research collaborations

Knowledge creation increasingly requires experts from diverse domains to collaborate in teams, yet the effect of expertise diversity on team knowledge creation is inconclusive. We focus on task uncertainty and informal leadership hierarchies—the disparity in team members’ engagement in leadership activities (task- and relationship-oriented)—to answer the questions when and why expertise diversity may hinder team knowledge creation. We develop a model in which informal leadership hierarchy mediates the conditional indirect effect of the team’s expertise diversity on its knowledge creation under different levels of task uncertainty. We test this moderated mediation model using multi-source data from self-managing project teams comprised of collaborators from a pharmaceutical company and its research partners. We find that when task uncertainty is low, the indirect effect of expertise diversity on team knowledge creation is positive, whereas when task uncertainty is high, it is negative. This conditional indirect effect occurs via task-oriented but not relationship-oriented leadership hierarchy. Our findings provide insights into the mechanisms and boundary conditions for expertise diversity to hinder, rather than facilitate, knowledge creation in collaborations.