Social and Labour Relations: The Essential Basis of Employees' Labour Behaviour in the Implementation of Changes

The study is supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research, Research Project No. 19-010-00491. The article presents the results of the authors' theoretical and methodological studies aimed to form the conceptual foundations of the prescriptive theory and practical principles and techniques for management workers' behaviour during the implementation of changes. For decades, the problem of staff resistance to the introduction of advanced technological and organizational innovations has been discussed in foreign and domestic literature. The use of well-known methods aimed at neutralizing the destructive forms of workers' labour behaviour during the implementation of changes is ineffective. The authors believe that the reason lies in their orientation towards overcoming visible behavioural stereotypes rather than essential causes of labour behaviour. In their theoretical assumptions, the authors proceed from the fact that the essential basis of people's economic activity is determined by socioeconomic relations, and their labor activity is determined by social and labour relations. Consequently, change management techniques should be focused not only on overcoming negative behavioural stereotypes of workers' labour behaviour, but also on non-obvious essential reasons hidden in the content of social and labour relations. In order to determine how to influence social and labour relations, the nature of the category “relations” is studied, approaches to their classification are presented, the content of the concepts “social relations”, “socioeconomic relations”, “production relations”, “social and labour relations” is described. The types and varieties of social and labour relations are described. The theories and methods of foreign experts in labour relations management at enterprises are analysed. As a result, it has been established that the essential reason for workers' resistance to the introduction of progressive changes lies in their opportunistic relations and intentions, their desire to receive personal and group benefits due to the intentional damage to their enterprise during the periods of introduction of changes. The article proposes a methodology for targeted managerial influence on the social and labour relations that have developed at an enterprise introducing changes so that these relations correspond to the content of the changes being introduced. The use of the methodology will improve labour efficiency in the implementation of innovative changes at enterprises.

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