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CALL FOR PAPERS
Leonid Borodkin, Marcel van der Linden, Jan Lucassen
and Andrey Sokolov will organize a session at the 13th
World Congress of the International Economic History Association,
Buenos Aires, July 22 - July 26, 2002.
Title of the session
"Evolution of Work Incentives in East Europe,
XIXth-XXth centuries".
Contact information
Prof. Leonid Borodkin
Center for Economic History
Faculty of History
Moscow Lomonosov State University
Vorobyevy Hills
Moscow 119899
Russia
tel/fax: (095)9391165
e-mail: borodkin@hist.msu.ru
Dr. Jan Lucassen
Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis
Cruquiusweg, 31
1019 ατ Amsterdam
tel.: +31-20-668-58-66
Fax: +31-20-665-41-81
e-mail: jlu@iisg.nl
Other organizers
Dr. Marcel van der Linden
Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis
Amsterdam
The Netherlands
Prof. Andrey Sokolov
Institute of Russian History
Russian Academy of Sciences
Moscow, Russia
Description of the session
The session is aimed to contribute to a better understanding of the crisis of employee work motivation in contemporary East European countries, including the former USSR republics. Through a detailed comparative longitudinal study of work incentive systems in different branches of industries in the East Europe countries the session will try to reconstruct the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of specific incentive systems under given and changing conditions.
The economic crisis in New Independent States perpetuated in part by social norms governing human cooperation and civic order, such as strong patron-client-relationships and a lack of social trust. Understanding the origins of the social norms is therefore crucial. Are current social norms entirely the product of the years of the bureaucratic planned economy, as many experts believe, or was the planned economy the continuation of other, still older behavioural patterns?
Labour norms will be in the center of the session papers. Which incentives appeal to workers? What motivates or discourages them in their performance? These questions seem crucial. Many companies in Eastern Europe today are struggling with incentive- related problems. Such issues already existed during the "Soviet era". Here, like in the broader field of social norms, the question arises as to whether the planned economy may have perpetuated still older behavioural patterns among the subordinate strata.
These observations lead to the following main questions in the session research programme:
1) Which work incentives have existed since the start of modern
industrialization, and in what combinations?
2) How effective were these combinations of work incentives in their specific context?
3) Which factors have given rise to changes in the combinations of work incentives in different countries?
4) What do the answers to the first three questions reveal about the current situation? Which conditions must a system of work incentives satisfy to increase labour productivity and to achieve quality industrial output in the East Europe?
The session papers are expected to expand existing approaches in two ways: (i) through comparison of incentive systems adopted in different countries of East Europe; and (ii) through developing a longer view, stretching from the early nineteenth to the late twentieth century. This longer period includes periods of serfdom, the introduction of capitalism and industrialisation, communism and the return to capitalism, thus enabling to analyse the continuity and discontinuity of work patterns and other economic institutions through major societal transformations.
Provisional list of participants
Dr. Sergey Afontsev (Institute of World Economy, Moscow, Russia)
Prof. Leonid Borodkin (Moscow State University, Russia)
Prof. Carol Leonard (Oxford University, UK)
Dr. Marcel van der Linden (Institute of Social History, Amsterdam, Netherlands)
Prof. Jan Lucassen (Institute of Social History, Amsterdam, Netherlands)
Prof. Andrey Sokolov (Institute of Russian History, Russia)
We are still looking for additional proposals.
Those interested should send an abstract of their proposed paper
no later than by Sept. 30, 2001.
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