Labor opportunism: the nature and forms

The article considers the problems of labor opportunism. It provides a brief background to the study of problems of economic (institutional) opportunism, description of its forms, their classification and content. The article draws attention to the fact that economic opportunism has a long history. Starting from ancient times (i.e. since the inception of market relations) people searched their own benefit, including, by intentional damaging to the other side of the transaction. The statements of the ancient philosophers evidence this. In particular, the Greek sage Anacharsis (638-558 BC) defined market as a place reserved for people to cheat and steal from each other. The use in this definition of words "deceive" and "steal" shows that the ancient sage saw economic opportunism in market activity. In addition, having an ancient history, economic opportunism is not limited to the forms that accompany exclusively purchase and sale transactions. It is extremely diverse in its manifestations. Opportunism is common at work, where the company's management, on the one hand, trying to reach illusory efficiency, reduce costs of working conditions improvement, compounding, thus, problems with its protection; On the other hand, workers, in an effort to reduce their labor costs, hide the reserves of their work places, extracting thereby benefit themselves, but causing deterioration in performance and efficiency of the entire enterprise. There are many of such forms of opportunism at work. To date, they have not all been identified, studied and described. On this basis, the article proposes specific methods and methodological approaches to the classification of forms of labor opportunism. Two classification levels of labor opportunism, application spheres of labor opportunism and forms of labor opportunism manifestation have been allocated. Much attention is paid to the justification of the essential foundations of labor opportunism which includes social and labor relations. The article proves that among these relationships originate intentions of one side (management or employees) to extract benefit from the deliberate damage to the other side. The article proposes a broader understanding of the essence of social and labor relations than is customary abroad, where the meaning of the employment relationship is only limited to recruitment of specialists that occur in the labor market. It is recommended to take social and labor relations from the standpoint of the relationship between workers themselves and from the standpoint of relations between workers and management for better understanding of the causes of labor opportunism. Knowledge of the essential foundation of labor opportunism, content of its forms allows company management to seek and find ways to overcome manifestations of labor opportunism in the workplace.

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