PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATIONS IN RUSSIA AS AN EMERGING CIVIL SOCIETY INSTITUTION: THE EXPERTS’ VIEW

E.A. Ivanova

Vienna University of Business and Economics

Voluntary membership based professional associations in the field of business management represent an emerging civil society institution in contemporary Russia.

Introduction

For the last three decades the role of the nonprofit sector in the development of civil society in Russia remains a hot topic in the research community. Such an increased attention to the topic «civil society» in the transition economies could be explained by the recognition of the important role that institutions of civil society play for democratization. At the same time, it is important to note that the Russian polity has been historically exemplified by the strong etatist tradition and state corpo­ratism. The state has always been rather suspicious of the interest associations as intermediary organs between the citizens and the state. Simultaneously, the state had a close watch on all of the major industrial and professional corporations [Schofer, Fourcade-Gourinchas, 2001, p. 811]. As a consequence there was almost no room for civil society to develop. However, looking back at France’s path to societal develop- pment it seems that in the long run the Russian government would be forced to revise these longstanding cultural traditions.

Even though, such renowned scholars as Golenkova (1999) and Howard (2003) agree that civil society as well as democracy is in infancy in Russia, the existing civil society organizations (CSO), represented, among others, by business associa­tions have been recently under study by researchers, as evidenced in the works [Pyle, 2006; Yakovlev et al., 2010] and others.

For the purpose of my study, I argue that in the case of Russia the less estab­lished business management professions in comparison to such traditional profes­sions, as those of doctors and lawyers [Abbott, 1988; Abramov, 2005; Khurana et al., 2005] are one of the most promising institutions of civil society represented by the PAs, which could be regarded as collective agencies capable of bringing an institu­tional change. I assume that members of PAs represent Russian citizens successful in their business-related professions, which belong to the emerging middle class, share fundamental democratic values and most probably by means of collective action could take an active role in the democratic transformations in Russia. There­fore, this study aims to explore the activities of PAs as CSOs, by arguing that there is a set of distinctive societal functions that PAs perform. To develop this argument I examine which societal functions PAs perform and which are the driving and hin­dering forces that influence PA's capability to fulfill these functions. The present study starts with the literature review of academic thinking with regard to the socie­tal functions that CSOs perform. Then, I provide the theoretical framework and methods used in my empirical study. After that I present a typology of societal func­tions that PAs perform: advocacy, service delivery and community building.

Methodology

From the undertaken literature review, it was discovered that there are two specific features of research on CSOs. On the one hand, there are at least three aca­demic disciplines that offer a particular set of perspectives on CSO governance: economics, sociology and political science. On the other hand, it could be stated that

«research on CSO governance runs between theories» [Maier, Meyer, 2011, p. 4]. When one looks at PA as a particular type of CSO under study the situation is even more dramatic, as Knoke [Knoke, 1986, p. 1] claimed «elements of comprehensive theory of associations lie scattered across diverse disciplines», and a demand for more theories and empirical studies in the field of membership associations holds true today [Tschirhart, 2006, p. 535-536]. Given such a plurality of theoretical approa­ches, I assume that the neo-institutional theory based on the works by DiMaggio (1988), Tolbert and Zucker (1996) and Scott (2001) provide the most suitable theore­tical frame work in organization studies for the analysis of PAs. Taking this into account, for the operationalization of the activities that PAs perform as a civil so­ciety institution I have used the societal functions perspective, in order to build on the works of earlier authors, such as [Salamon et al., 2000; Frumkin, 2005; Kendall, 2003; Neumayr, Meyer, 2010]. Based on these works it could be summarized that there are three core functions that CSOs perform: advocacy, service delivery and community building. This led me to formulate two hypotheses:

H1: PAs perform three core societal functions - advocacy, service delivery and community building.

H2: Internal organizational factors dominate over external ones for facilitating fulfillment of the three core societal functions by PA’s.

The empirical data for the current study is collected by means of personal in­depth semi-structured expert interviews with leaders and senior employees of PAs for business executives, professional managers, entrepreneurs and representatives of other business-oriented occupations as well, as acknowledged scholars in this field.

Results

As a result of the conducted empirical study I managed to identify three main- streamsocietal functions that are typical for the business management PAs in Rus­

sia: advocacy, service delivery and community building. Content analysis of the transcribed interviews confirmed that the activities of the explored PAs match up against the aforementioned mainstream functions. Therewith the experts have men­tioned advocacy two times more frequently than service delivery and three times as frequently as community building. All experts when they were asked directly whether the three mainstream functions correspond to the activities of PAs have anonymously agreed with such a classification. Consequently, the first hypothesis is correct and it is in line with the reviewed literature. However, the advanced forms of the imple­mentation of the functions could be fully attributed mostly to the mature PAs, organi­zed on the competitive basis to represent collective interests of their constituencies. In what follows I will consider societal functions that PAs perform, as they are sum­marized in the Table 1, in more details.

Table 1. Core societal functions performed by the business

management PA

Advocacy is the most important societal function performed by the examined PAs in Russia. It is understood in two senses, first of all, as deliberate representation of the interests of collective agencies directed towards the state and secondly, as the «enlightenment» activities addressed through the media to society at large. The for­mer, also known as «policy advocacy», consists of proposing new and changing exis­ting legislation and lobbying for resources, and the latter, also referred to as «citizen advocacy», concerns setting and promoting of agendas by influencing the public opinion [Knapp et al., 1988, p. 15]. The respondents named two critical resources for the successful fulfillment of each form of advocacy. For interest representation, considered primarily from a legal perspective, the informal close ties with the actors

in the state within the mutually shared atmosphere of privacy are of crucial impor­tance. At the same time, for the successful «enlightenment» activities, viewed from a communicative perspective, a different pattern of the maximal publicity, openness and transparency of PAs in articulating awareness of their position is essential. Both forms of advocacy allow PAs with varying degrees of power to be actively involved in shaping their institutional environment by influencing how institutional norms are perceived in order to eventually gain legitimacy. All in all, it appears that the major institutional changes that result from PAs' work to shape their institutional contexts are achieved by means of advocacy.

The second important function that inspected PAs perform is service delivery to the membership and society at large. It takes various forms of specialized infor­mation delivery and knowledge transfer of public and collective character, such as providing members with relevant statistical data, surveys, analytical reports, and other types of filtered information by means of mailing lists, websites or on request. PAs in their service delivery capacity are platforms that enable articulation of com­mon interests, exchange of best practices, mutual learning and professional devel­opment through the medium of public events that they organize. The critical re­sources for the efficient delivery of high quality services are the professionalism and managerialism of the PAs' staff. The ability of PA’s permanent staff to raise funds, to attract volunteers, to organize the internal procedures of service delivery and ad hoc project management services to the members are the prerequisites for the suc­cessful implementation of the second function. The organizational perspective de­termines how the membership logic is exercised by means of PAs as an interface for the consistent service delivery.

Community building is the third societal function that PAs, as a unifying agency for the existing and new members, have reported. It involves the creation of rules that grant status, identity and privileges, set boundaries of membership and hierarchies within an organizational field. Implementation of this function varies from rather simple forms, such as regular networking events aimed at contributing to the sense of community. The more advanced forms refer to the formation of a code of ethics for the profession, as well as to the establishment of formal accreditation processes, the creation of professional standards and the certification of actors within a professional field. Collective action is a critical resource in accomplishing the creation of identities as a key component of the community building function. The normative perspective provides a foundation to understanding the interaction logic of this function. Moreover, it encourages both economic growth and democratiza­tion, each of which is not possible without the bonds of trust facilitated by them.

The major driving forces that contribute to the capacity of PAs to perform their mainstream functions are found predominantly at the organizational level, whereas the hindering forces are mostly located in the external environment at the individual and societal levels. Thus, the second hypothesis is supported. Such factors, as effi­cient internal organizational governance structures and expertise of the staff that per­mits running annual plan of activities and offering new opportunities to the mem­bers, personality of the leader, reputation of the PA and its ability to secure funding from various sources positively effects the PAs’ ability to fulfill their societal func­tions. On the contrary, factors that prevent PAs from performing their mainstream functions are culturally embedded, historically constructed and politically condi­tioned. They include ambiguity of the prevailing socio-cultural views and values in relation to engagement in PAs and understanding the benefits from collective action that is underpinned by the lack of tradition of civic activism and horizontal commu­nications, the low ability to reach agreement by consensus and a drastic decline in national morals, as well as the relatively weak articulation and consolidation of interests within the business management professions. The political dimension, characterized by inefficient and over-centralized state machinery fostering imperfect institutional environment and the lack of an ongoing public political process aimed at mobilizing public participation generally, and particularly the lack of the law on lobbying refer to such hindering factors, which have been emphasized by the experts in relation to advocacy.

Conclusion

Finally, as the conducted empirical study revealed, the role of business mana­gement PAs, as an emerging civil society institution cannot be given consideration in isolation from broader cultural, historical and political context. Even though, the mainstream societal functions - advocacy, service delivery and community building - that the examined PAs perform are in line with the reviewed literature, the bounda­ries between them are blurring, they often appear to mutually reinforce each other and the forms of their realization are to a large extend determined by the national ethos.

The fact that supply side organizational factors are considered as driving forces for the successful implementation of the societal functions by PAs, while the exter­nal environment hinders their development, reveals one of such national specificities within the business related-professions. However, it would be too early to make an inference that the state, in exchange for the granting of an economic monopoly over a business management jurisdiction, expects these professions to support their own project of state-building. At the moment, PAs grant only a limited number of creden­tials to practice occupation, competing, for instance, with business schools.

One of the possible directions of the further study could be the technological turn expressed through the influence of the Web 2.0 on the mainstream societal functions that PAs perform. It remains to be explored, whether the self-regulated and volatile online communities will substitute PAs or they will find a way to inte­grate the new ICTs in their core societal functions in terms of the transformed forms of their implementation. I suppose that this problem could be tackled by ap­plying a network framework to comprehensively analyze this nascent phenomenon.

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