To Minsk (Минск) and Beyond!

More on Belarusian Societal and Workplace Attitudes, 1990-2000

OK.  While I started last week with a few descriptive tidbits about work/life attitudes in Belarus, most of the week was devoted to exploring possible societal reasons for relatively low life/work satisfaction and other labor attitudes in Belarus.  Today I wanted to just provide a dump of what I consider to be many more relevant societal and work attitudes in Belarus (all descriptive statistics, most of which are for three waves of the World Values Survey Data; It is important to note that a fourth wave was conducted between 2006-2008, but Belarus did not participate, so unfortunately more recent data is not available).  

Table 1:

Table 1 looks at attitudes regarding social change.  While clearly most Belarusians in each of the three waves felt like society must be gradually improved by reforms, the percentage with this attitude increased drastically from 45.6% in 1990 to 93.5% in 1996, and then declined to 87.1% in 2000.   There was a corresponding drastic decrease (and then slight increase) in the polarized attitudes of "society must be radically changed" (26.2% in 1990 to 3.7% in 1996 and 5.3% in 2000) and "society must be valiantly defended" (28.1% in 1990, 2.9% in 1996, and 7.5% in 2000). 

Table 2:

Table 2 shows a rather steady shift in Belarusians' self-reported political ideology (left-liberal versus right-conservative) from 1990 to 2000.  In 1990, the overall mean for Belarus was 3.8 (with woman being farther right than men overall).  However, by 1996, the overall country mean increased 1.5%, to 5.3%, with men slightly farther right than woman, and by 2000 the overall country mean was even higher (5.7%) and nearly equal form both men and woman.  The percentage of far-left Belarusians (responding somewhere from 1-4 on the scale) decreased from over 60% in 1990 to just over 22% in 1996 and then to just over 15% in 2000.

Table 3: 

Table 3 shows a very interesting shift in Belarusians' attitude on the general role of government in their lives (whether people should take more responsibility or the government should take more responsibility).   While significantly more Belarusians in 2000 felt like they should take more personal responsibility for their lives than in 1990 (mean of 6 in 1990, compared to a mean of 5.6 in 2000), these mean scores are still clearly more on the side of government responsibility (additionally, in each of the three waves, woman had significantly higher mean scores than men).  Interestingly, in 1996 there was a huge jump for both men and woman (from 5.8 and 6.2 respectively in 1990 to 7 and 7.4 in 1996), followed by the rather stark pendulum swing back towards pro-personal responsibility attitudes just 4 years later.  

Table 4: 

Table 4 looks at attitudes about income inequality.  There has been a steadily decline in mean scores related to the income inequality attitudes of Belarusians from 1990 to 2000, with an overall mean score of 7.3 in 1990, to 6.6 in 1996 and just 5.3 in 2000, meaning more and more Belarusians are feeling that incomes should be made more equal, rather than having larger income differences as incentives (in each wave, woman had significantly lower mean scores than men).  

Table 5:

Table 5 shows a very interesting shift in Belarusians' attitude on private versus state ownership of business (whether private ownership of business should be increased or government ownership of business should be increased).   While significantly more Belarusians in 2000 felt like private ownership of business should be increased than in 1990 (mean of 5.9 in 1990, compared to a mean of 5.2 in 2000), these mean scores are still clearly more on the side of government ownership of business (additionally, in each of the three waves, woman had significantly higher mean scores than men).  However, in 1996 there was a jump for both men and woman (from 5.6 and 6.2 respectively in 1990 to 5.8 and 6.4 in 1996), followed by the rather stark pendulum swing back towards pro-private ownership attitudes just 4 years later. 

Table 6: 

Table 6 shows the comparative attitudes of Belarusian employees on how business and industry should be managed (before the Soviet collapse and following Belarus Independence and establishment of the current government).  Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, overwhelmingly the majority of employees in Belarus felt like "employees should the business and elect managers," with only 8.2% of male and 7.0% of female workers felt like the state should be the owner.  By 1996, attitudes had shifted significantly, with a over 21% of men and over 28% of woman feeling that the state should be the owner (with an overall much more even percentage distribution betwee the four categories, with some rather stark gender differences).

Table 7: 

Table 7 looks at attitudes about the role of competition in business.  The overall percentage of Belarusians who feel that competition is harmful for society has increased slightly from 1990 to 2000 (3.5 in 1990 to 3.7 in 2000), with a much higher percentage of men than woman feeling that competition is good for society.

Table 8:

Table 8 looks at attitudes about scientific advances.  While the majority of Belarusians feel that scientific advances are helpful to society, their was a significant jump from 1990 to 1996, followed by a significant decline from 1996 to 2000 (with a higher percentage of woman than men in each wave feeling that scientific advances will be harmful).

Table 9:

Table 9 looks at attitudes about nationality.  While clearly the vast majority of Belarusians are proud of their nationality, the percentage is in clear decline (82.3% in 1990, 79.3% in 1996, and 72.5% in 2000), with an increasing number not proud of their country (17.7% in 1990, 20.7% in 1996, and 27.6% in 2000).  

Table 10:

Table 10 shows that a greater percentage of woman agree that work is a duty towards society (65.9%) than their male counterparts (59.9%), with a greater percentage of men disagreeing  (25.0%) than woman (21.6%).

Table 11: 

Table 11 shows the overall perceived importance of work in the life of Belarusian workers for three waves of the World Values Survey data (1990, 1996, and 2000).  Overall, nearly 85% of all Belarusian workers feel that work is either very important or rather importation in life, with this overall percentage increasing to more than 88% for men from 1990 to 2000, and dropping to just over 80% for woman over the same time period.  However, it is also important to note that while the overall percentage of men saying that work is either very important or rather important increased, the percentage of male workers saying work was very important in life dropped more than 9% from 1990-2000 (presumably most of that 9% decline selecting "rather important" instead of "very important" by 2000).  Additionally, it is interesting to note that for woman, the percentage saying that work is not at all important steadily increased from just 2.2% in 1990 to 7.6% in 2000.

Table 12:

Table 12 shows what Belarus employees deemed to be the most important aspects of their job (from most frequently mentioned to least frequently mentioned), for three waves of World Values Survey data (1990, 1996, and 2000; Note that the 1990 wave precedes Belarusian independence following the collapse of the Soviet Union).  For both males and females, pay (an extrinsic motivator) was clearly considered the most important aspect of their job (the percentage actually rising for men from 1990 to 2000, and falling for woman during the same period).  The percentage of respondents mentioning interesting work (an intrinsic motivator) as a key job aspect dropped sharply from 1990 to 2000 (by more than 12% for men and 16% for woman).  There was then a rather stark drop between the next items mentioned as important aspects of a job.  Woman more highly valued good working hours, while men more highly valued good job security (both extrinsic motivators with near-equal total means for both men and woman across the three waves of data).  The percentage of workers mentioning having a job that meets one's abilities (intrinsic motivator) as important dropped drastically for both men and woman from 1990 to 2000 (a more than 8% decline for men and a more than 12% decline for woman).  Similarly, the percentage of Belarusian workers mentioning having a respected job (an intrinsic motivator) as important dropped drastically from 1990 to 2000 (by more than 9% for men and more than 14% for woman).  Generous holidays (an extrinsic motivator) saw a drastic drop for both men and woman from 1990 to 2000, while the percentage of workers mentioning that it was important to feel that you can achieve something (intrinsic motivator) dropped by more than 8% for men and more than 13% for woman from 1990 to 2000.  Not having too much pressure at work (intrinsic motivator) dropped the most of any work characteristic, by more than 40% for men and nearly 39% for woman from 1990-2000.  Finally, two additional intrinsic motivators (using initiative and having a responsible job) both saw double digit declines for both male and female workers from 1990 to 2000.  

Table 13: 

Table 13 looks at additional work attitudes.  In 2000, Belarusian workers also mentioned several additional work characteristics not included in the previous two waves of the data, workplace relationships (intrinsic motivator) being mentioned only less frequently than pay for both men and woman that year.  Physical working conditions (extrinsic motivator) was also mentioned more than 54% of the time, with time off for the weekends (extrinsic motivator), meeting people (intrinsic motivator), having a job useful for society (intrinsic motivator), and having opportunities for promotion (extrinsic/intrinsic motivator) each being mentioned by significantly fewer Belarusian employees (both male and female alike).  

Overall, Tables 12 and 13 demonstrate that Belarusian workers (men and woman alike) clearly mentioned extrinsic work characteristics as being important aspects of work more often than intrinsic work characteristics, with the largest percentage drops in aspects of the job mentioned occurring with the intrinsic workplace factors.  This shows that in the years following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Belarusian independence, the establishment of the new Belarusian government, and the intervening economic struggles, that Belarusian workers' attitudes on the importance of various job characteristics shifted from a fairly balanced mixed of intrinsic and extrinsic job characteristics before the Soviet collapse to a much heavier focus on the importance of various extrinsic job characteristics by the end of the decade.