Meeting with Belarus High Tech/IT Industry Leaders

The last few days I have had a series of meetings/discussions with Belarus High Tech/IT industry leaders, starting with Valery Tsepkalo (Belarus High Tech Park Director) and Alexander Martinkevich (Deputy Director Marketing and Business Development).  

There is a great deal of government support behind the high tech industry in Belarus and it is a top economic development priority. In 2005, the Belarus Hi-Tech Park was established with the main goal of supporting the growing software industry, complete with an entirely different (and by contrast, very business friendly) corporate regulatory environment and tax regime. Starting in 2005 with just 4 companies, it now is home to more than 100 companies, which employ more than 12,000 Belarusians, at an average salary of more than 5 times that of the typical Belarusian worker.  You can find out more about the Belarus High Tech Park here.

In these initial meetings, we discussed the industry and its growth within the context of the broader Belarusian economy.  Particularly, we focused much of the discussion on the IT labor shortage and issues with the higher education system in the country.  I have agreed to do a series of workshops for the High Tech Park business leaders (based on their feedback regarding which topics they are most interested in), including:

1. Effective Interviewing and Employee Selection
2. Employee Motivation
3. Creating a High Performance Work Environment

These three training/Q&A sessions will be held at the Belarus High Tech Park (in Minsk) in its large auditorium, as well as be provided virtually via the internet to individuals working in other cities around the country.  We are also continuing discussions about them sending me to other cities around the country to do face-to-face sessions with business leaders in the outlying parts of the country.  I am very much looking forward to the opportunity.

I also spent a good portion of the day yesterday meeting with the CEO and other company leaders/employees at ScienceSoft, the oldest IT firm in Belarus (dating back to before the Soviet Collapse).  

I had a lengthy one-on-one with the CEO, Nikolay Kurayev, followed by a training/Q&A session I did with about 30 of the company managers (the topic was human capital leadership).  Then Nikolay and another ScienceSoft employee (Maxim) took me to a nice dinner, where we continued our discussion on the nature of the IT industry in Belarus.

As I mentioned above, the high tech/IT industry provides a very stark contrast to all other industries/sectors of the Belarusian economy, which just fascinates me.  I look forward to having the continued opportunity to meet with/learn from the various corporate leaders here and better understand this contrast and its impacts on employees in the workplace.

Week in Review

Monday was a good, typical day… nothing exciting.  The weather was beautiful so we spent a lot of time at the park.  The excitement of the day was when Jacque went shopping and the debit card didn’t work at the register.  She ran to what she thought was a ATM, but the card didn’t work there either (turns out it wasn’t an ATM), so I got a frantic call and left the kids alone in the apartment for 10 minutes while I ran to the store with cash for her.  We still don’t know why the card didn’t work on that occasion.  The rest of the day was relaxing.  I got lots of work done and we enjoyed a lot of time together. 

Tuesday morning I got up early with the kids and we did the normal morning routine and then left for work at 9:30.  When I arrived, I was frustrated because the MBA Office door was locked and no one was there.  I ended up waiting there for 30 minutes before someone let me in (luckily I had my iPad and was able to pick up some WiFi so I could do emails while I waited).  I got lots done in the morning and then I met with a BSU MBA faculty colleague to discuss research, consulting and general HR practice in Belarus.  It was very interesting to hear her perspective on things.  After that, I grabbed lunch and then went back to the office to work some more, before coming home.  When I got back, I picked up around the house, did dishes, and did laundry, and then I took the kids to the park.  We had a great time.  After dinner, the kids went through their normal bedtime routine and then Jacque left for her English class (where they discussed comparative rights/restrictions in the U.S. and Belarus; Jacque said it was very interesting).  It was a good day. 

On Wednesday, we all spent the morning at the apartment together.  The kids did their school, I worked, we did some cleaning around the apartment, and we had an otherwise casual morning.  I made some Romen Noodles for lunch (the girls’ favorite) and then during rest time Jacque and I had a great “Mormon studies” discussion while the girls rested, and before we knew it, it was time for me to leave for my class and workshop with BSU undergrad students.  When I got there, it turns out that there was some scheduling mistake with the class and the room had been double-booked (in Belarus, they schedule classes on a weekly basis, rather than for the entire semester) and another professor was there with his class.  I think what actually happened was that the director who set up my class forgot to actually schedule it and advertise it to the students, so not only did I not have a room, but not a single person was there.  I went to an open room to wait, just in case someone came, but I just ended up working for an hour until it was time for the workshop session to start.  In contrast, the workshop went very well and was well attended.  I was done by about 6:45 and got home just a little after 7, just in time to help tuck the kids in bed.  The kids did not want to go to bed and were basically up and making noise/causing trouble until after 9 pm, but eventually they actually went to sleep.  Jacque and I watched a couple shows and then went to bed.  It was a good day.

Thursday we had the normal routine in the morning and then I was off to do office hours at BSU in the afternoon.  It was also the girl’s last day of home school, and they are now officially on summer break (Jacque is very relieved!).  I worked on a few projects during my office hours and then came home for dinner with the family.  After dinner, the kids had their normal evening routine and after we got them to bed I took a turn helping out at the BSU Language Institute for a class.  When I first got there it took me a while to find the room (the room numbers are not all in order) and when I found it, the door was locked and no one was there.  At first I thought maybe I had remembered the wrong room number and I wasn’t sure how I would find the correct one.  But then a minute later the instructor showed up and told me the room had changed and she took me to the new room.  Basically I had a discussion with her class for an hour and a half.  I told them about myself, my family, work, and things back in the U.S., they asked me lots of questions about the U.S., and I asked them lots of questions about Belarus.  It was a lot of fun. 

After a normal Friday morning, we decided to take a trip to the Belarus National History Museum downtown.  It was a little mini trek to get there, but we finally did and then it took us a while just to figure out how to look at stuff.  All the exhibits are locked up in different rooms on different floors and you need a ticket.  But no one speaks English and everything is written in Russian, and we couldn’t find where to buy a ticket.  Finally we found a place in a back corner in the basement where we could get tickets for everyone (after all of that trouble, it was less than $1 total for the entire family!).  Once we had tickets, everything was great.  We were literally the only people there, and the novelty of having a large American family visiting seemed too excited all of the old ladies who worked there.  They took us from room to room and we got to see lots of fun exhibits.  They also kept nagging us about taking pictures in front of just about every exhibit.  We humored them on some, but after a while I think we started disappointing them.  The museum was a lot of fun, and then we hit McDonald’s on the way home.  After rest time, I took the kids to the park and we fed the birds.  Then it was dinner and time for a movie night with the John’s (the senior couple).  We watched “Akeelah and the Bee” and the kids loved it.  The Johns enjoyed it too and we had a nice time visiting with them.  

 

Saturday was the day of the big Minsk Branch “picnic”.  We had to take the metro to the train station, where we took the electric train for 40 minutes or so.  By that point we were out in the middle of nowhere and there was then a 40-minute walk to the picnic site (luckily they took mercy on us and one of the members transported the family in his car so we didn’t have to all do that walk).  We were out in the middle of the woods and it was gorgeous! For the first part of the day, it was mostly us, the missionaries, and a bunch of the branch youth and other non-member youth and young adults.  We ate, they played lots of different sports, and it was just fun, in the perfect weather.  By early afternoon, other older branch members started showing up with their families and the girls had primary friends to play with (up to that point, Sara and Lia were primarily playing together and Amber was hanging out with the teenager/young adult group).  The food was yummy, the company was great, the weather was perfect, and it was just a very nice, tiring day.  It also happened to be David’s first birthday, so we counted that as his birthday party (we will do cake/ice-cream/presents later on Sunday).  We started the trek back around 4:30 and finally got home around 6:30, in time for a quick dinner and baths, before bedtime (and we were all exhausted).  Unfortunately, David was over tired from not really napping all day, so he had trouble getting to bed (finally falling asleep for good around 10:30).  It was a great day.   

Today was a normal morning and then a good day at church.  We are all now back at the apartment and resting, before dinner and David’s family party.  

You can see more pics here and here.

The Impact of other Individual Factors on Belarusian Life Satisfaction

I have already posted on differences in self-reported Belarusian life satisfaction levels based on profession/job type, education level, and age.  Today I wanted to look at the role of other individual factors on life satisfaction in Belarus (Note: The following tables of descriptive statistics represent those factors that are available in the World Values Survey data for Belarus).

Table 1 below (followed by Figure 1: Belarus Province Map), shows comparative life satisfaction of Belarusians by geographical location (province).  Those living in Gomel and Vitebsk provinces (4.7 and 4.6 respectively) had the highest mean life satisfaction scores in 1996, while Mogilev  (4.0) had the lowest.  In 2000, residents of Vitebsk province (5.2) had the highest life satisfaction in 2000, followed by Minsk, Gomel, and Mogilev (each with 4.9), while residents of Grodno province (4.2) had the lowest mean life satisfaction score. 

Table 1:

Figure 1: Belarus Province Map

While Belarus is not a very ethnically diverse nation, Table 2 shows that ethnic Belorussians experience the lowest self-reported life satisfaction, save those of Polish ethnicity.  

Table 2: 

Table 3 shows that female Belarusians have slightly lower overall life satisfaction than their male counterparts, while both genders saw significant declines from 1990 to 1996, with a modest rebound and increase in life satisfaction from 1996 to 2000.

Table 3: 

Table 4 shows an overall decline in life satisfaction from 1990 to 1996, and then an increase (though still significantly lower than 1990 levels) from 1996 to 2000, with this pattern applying to each of the different marital status categories.  The highest life satisfaction is found among married and single/never married individuals, with divorced and separated individuals experiencing the lowest life satisfaction level. 

Table 4:

Table 5 shows that since 1990 (when there was no significant difference between living or not living with parents on life satisfaction), Belarusians that live with their parents experience overall greater life satisfaction than those who do not, with the gap increasing from 1996 to 2000.

 Table 5:

Table 6 shows an almost oddly consistent level of life satisfaction regardless of the number of adults living in the home.  There is a large jump from a single adult household, to those homes with more than one adult.  Oddly, homes with 6+ adults experience another significant boost in self-reported life satisfaction.

 Table 6:

Table 7 shows a very clear pattern of declining life satisfaction with each additional child in the home, with overall self-reported satisfaction levels being higher in 2000 than they were in 1996.

Table 7:

Table 8 shows comparative life satisfaction by how often the respondent attends religious service, over the three waves of the WVS data.  Interestingly, more religious Belarusians (attending a church service once a week or more) had the highest life satisfaction levels in 1990, but then had the lowest levels by 1996 and continuing to 2000. 

Table 8: 

Table 9 clearly shows that social class has a strong impact on the perceived life satisfaction of Belarusians.

Table 9:  

Table 10 shows a significant positive impact of self-reported income level on self-reported job satisfaction for Belarusians, with impact increasing with each of the three waves of the data.

Table 10:

 

Table 11 shows comparative life satisfaction by Belarusian employment status and study year.  Students experience the highest levels of life satisfaction across all three waves of the data.

Table 11:

 

Table 12 shows a very clear and significant increase in self-reported mean life satisfaction scores for those Belarusian workers who have some level of supervisory responsibilities on the job. 

Table 12: 

 

Table 13 shows comparative mean life satisfaction scores by chief wage earner profession/job type, with little consistent impact of chief wage earner profession/job type on one's perceived life satisfaction.

Table 13:  

  

So there are some descriptive statistics on life satisfaction in Belarus based on a variety of individual factors/characteristics.  Future regression models should take each of these individual factors into account.  

The Impact of other Individual Factors on Belarusian Worker Satisfaction

I have already posted on differences in self-reported Belarusian worker satisfaction levels based on profession/job type, education level, and age.  Today I wanted to look at the role of other individual factors on worker satisfaction (Note: While the job satisfaction literature identifies many important individual factors that may impact worker satisfaction and/or should be controlled for in statistical analyses, the following tables represent those factors that are available in the World Values Survey data for Belarus, limited as they may be).

Table 1 shows that married and divorced Belarusian respondents experience significantly higher job satisfaction levels than individuals who are separated (by far the lowest), widowed, and single.  This is mostly in line with the job satisfaction literature, which has consistently shown that married individuals report the highest job satisfaction levels.  However, the high job satisfaction scores for divorced Belarusians is an interesting and contradictory finding and warrants additional examination.

Table 1:

Somewhat surprisingly, Table 2 shows that religious observance has little consistent impact on self-reported job satisfaction levels, while Belarusians who attend religious services once a week have the lowest self-reported job satisfaction and those that only attend on "other specific holidays" have by far the highest.  This is at odds with much of the job satisfaction and religion literature, which has consistently shown that higher levels of religiosity often carry over into other areas of perceived satisfaction (whether it be marital, work, or life satisfaction) an warrants additional examination.

 Table 2:

Table 3 shows a significant impact of self-reported income level on self-report job satisfaction for both Belarusian male and female workers (consistent with existing literature), while Belarusian women job satisfaction is even more positively impacted by higher income than it is for males workers (inconsistent; the literature has shown that male job satisfaction levels tend to be more greatly impacted by income than for woman).

Table 3: 

While I already looked at job satisfaction by profession, Table 4 shows comparative mean job satisfaction scores by chief wage earner profession/job type (a slight but not insignificant distinction).  We see that chief wage earners working as managers in larger organizations, as professional workers, as semi-skilled manual workers, and as members of the armed forces result in relatively higher job satisfaction scores for the respondent, while junior level non-manual chief wage earners have the lowest.

Table 4: 

Consistent with the existing job satisfaction literature, Table 5 shows a very clear and significant increase in self-reported mean job satisfaction scores for those Belarusian workers who have some level of supervisory responsibilities on the job, as compared with those who do not.  

Table 5: 

Another important individual factor that is often looked at in the job satisfaction literature is household composition.  Unfortunately, the WVS data for Belarus does not have much in that regard.  However, Table 6 does look at the number of adults in the home and shows little difference on self-reported job satisfaction scores by the number of adults living in the home, while there is a significant jump from 1 to 2 adults, followed by a modest decline with each additional adult in the home.

Table 6: 

In the existing literature, the size of the organization in which an individual works has been shown to impact overall job satisfaction levels.  Interestingly, Table 7 shows little consistent impact of the number of other workers in the organization on job satisfaction.  Those individuals in organizations with 500-999 employees have the lowest self-reported job satisfaction (5.2), while those in organizations with 2500 and more employees have the highest (6.7), with mixed results at other tiers of organizational size.

Table 7: 

And while it has been noted in previous posts, it should be reiterated that overall job satisfaction in Belarus does not differ significantly by gender, though there are significant gender differences by other individual/demographic factors and certainly gender will be an important individual control variable in future statistical analysis.

My next post will look at the role of these and other individual factors on Belarusian life satisfaction.

Life and Job Satisfaction in Belarus, by Profession/Job Type, Education Level, and Age

Today I thought I would provide a little more detail on self-reported life and job satisfaction levels in Belarus, particularly as each relates to respondent profession/job type, education level, and age.

But first, I thought I would provide a comparison point, providing a quick look at comparative life satisfaction in Belarus and the U.S., by profession/job type (see Table 1 below), which shows that U.S. employees of all job types are reportedly much more satisfied with their life than their Belarusian counterparts.  In both countries, unskilled manual laborers have the lowest life satisfaction scores.

Table 1:

Now, let's look more at life satisfaction and job satisfaction in Belarus based on profession/job type, education level, and age.  

Table 2 below shows comparative mean life satisfaction scores for Belarus, by profession/job type of the respondent and study year (1990, 1996, and 2000).  While overall mean life satisfaction scores have dropped significantly over this 10-year period (from 5.5 in 1990 to 4.8 in 2000), Table 2 shows very significant drops from 1990 to 1996 in mean scores for employers/managers of large/small organizations.  There is also a fairly clear pattern of more professional employees experiencing higher overall life satisfaction than those who do some sort of manual/blue-collar labor.

 Table 2:

Table 3 shows comparative life satisfaction scores by Belarusian respondent education level and age.  We see that increased education level contributes to higher life satisfaction scores and that younger Belarusians tend to have higher levels of life satisfaction than their older counterparts (both findings are consistent with many other life satisfaction studies that have looked at the role of education and age). 

 Table 3:

Table 4 shows the comparative mean job satisfaction scores for Belarusian workers, by profession/job type (I actually have a more detailed table that breaks the job types out further, but it is quite large and I couldn't get a clear enough screen shot of it to be able to add a clear picture of it here).  Though there does not seem to be any clear-cut distinction between professional-level employees and those holding blue collar types of positions, the table below does show slightly higher job satisfaction levels for employees of the professional variety.  The more detailed table shows that laborers in mining, construction, manufacturing and transport (mean of 4.4) share the distinction of experiencing the lowest mean job satisfaction scores with life science and health associate professionals (mean of 4.4).  Stationary plant and related operators have the highest job satisfaction scores (7.1) and clerks (6.5) have the second highest.  

Table 4: 

Table 5 shows comparative job satisfaction scores by Belarusian worker education level and age.  We see that increased education level contributes to higher job satisfaction scores and that older employees tend to also have higher levels of job satisfaction than their younger counterparts (both findings are consistent with many other job satisfaction studies that have looked at the role of education and age).  However, for those with the least educational attainment, those workers from ages 55-65 have mean job satisfaction scores just slightly higher than those of the youngest age group, while it is the 45-54 age group for middle educational attainment employees, and the 65+ age group of the upper educational attainment employees that are most similar to the youngest age group.

Table 5:

In future posts, I will likely look at how other individual factors (such as marital status, household composition, housing situation, other occupation characteristics, economic situation, geographical location, and ethnicity) impact self-reported life satisfaction and job satisfaction in Belarus.

Week in Review

Last Sunday was of course Mother's Day.  We let Jacque sleep in and the girls helped me make her French toast and an omelet for breakfast (the girls were very cute and very excited to make Mommy breakfast!).  Then it was off to church.  It was branch conference and the Moscow West mission president and his wife (President and Sister Woolley) attended and even taught a combined Priesthood/Relief Society lesson on strengthening families.  It was really nice to have a lesson in English!  It was also nice to meet them and get a chance to chat with them a bit (I had exchanged emails with President Woolley previously, so it was nice to put a face with the name).  After church we came home and had a quiet afternoon together and enjoyed the rest of the day.

Monday was a very casual day.  Since I was gone all day Saturday at the BSU MBA faculty retreat, we didn’t plan anything.  The girls got up extra early, so I was up with them at 6 am, but it was nice to just sit around and read and cuddle with them for most of the morning.  Then during rest time, after lunch, I rested with Lia and then Sara, eventually falling asleep myself and having a short nap.  We had an early dinner and then went to the park to play after a short Family Home Evening lesson.  The kids then came back and went to bed and Jacque and I had a pleasant evening together.  It was a nice, relaxing day!

Tuesday was another early start with the kids and then some work until I had to leave for BSU at 9:30, at which point Jacque took over with the kids.  I got lots of writing done on my Belarus research project and then I met with a potential BSU MBA student that I met at an orientation meeting last week.  He wanted to take me to lunch and talk about his business and see if I might be willing to come and visit the facilities, talk to management, and learn more about their business and the IT industry here in Minsk.  It was a very good meeting and I am looking forward to visiting his business here in the next few weeks.  After that, I came home and worked a bit more until going to the park with the kids later in the afternoon.  Jacque had a class at the language institute in the evening, so I stayed here with the kids.  It was a good day!

Wednesday was been a quiet day.  I set up an internet VPN service so we can have secure data (and more importantly access Hulu and Netflix videos… Jacque is super excited to have American TV, beyond the few channels we get here…!).  Jacque took Sara to the store with her to get noodles for lunch and then we had rest time.  The afternoon was quiet as the kids and Jacque napped/rested and we had a lot of rain outside (I think it sounds really cool on the many skylights throughout the apartment!).  I have been worked a bit more throughout the afternoon and then had a BSU MBA PR event canceled in the evening so we had a quiet evening at home instead.

Thursday was a fairly typical day with the normal morning routine.  Late morning Jacque took a trip to the store and I watched the kids and got them lunch.  As soon as she got back I left for work.  I had a pretty boring afternoon at work, just focusing on research stuff and then I was home by dinner time.  The kids had their evening routine and went to bed, and then Jacque went to teach at the language institute while I stayed home with the kids.  The weather all day was very rainy and I couldn’t help but notice the generally terrible road drainage around the city, which made for lots of huge puddles and lots of wet feet! 

Friday was the first sunny day of the week and we took advantage of it.  We took off around 9:30 in the morning for Victory Square and the nearby parks.  It felt great to get out and walk around in the sunshine!  When we got to Victory Square, there was some kind of military/political event going on, so we weren’t able to get to the actual square.  So instead we were across the street watching everything from the sidewalk, taking pictures (that is, until a plain-clothes officer of some sort came over to us and made us stop taking pictures).  It was fun to see the official military marching and everything.  There were apparently some very important political figures there doing something, but we couldn’t tell who or what, and there was nothing in the internet news about it when I looked later.  After that, we walked around a beautiful park for a while and then made our way to McDonald’s for lunch (this time we ate inside).  After our morning out, we got the kids back to the apartment for rest time and I took off for my afternoon class at BSU (which went really well).  We had a yummy dinner and then walked down to the neighborhood grocery store to pick out ice-cream for ice-cream Friday!  Then we got the kids to bed and Jacque and I watched a movie (on Netflix!) before we went to bed.  It was a great day.

Saturday morning I was up early with the kids and got them all ready before leaving to teach my morning MBA class.  The focus of the class was labor/employment law in the U.S., as compared with Belarus.  It was a rather interesting session for me (I am not sure how interesting it was for the students).  After class, I had lunch with a student and then came home.  The kids were having rest time, so after doing a little cleaning/picking up around the apartment, I then joined them and we had a pretty casual afternoon.  I then took the kids to the park and then we had dinner and our normal bedtime routine.  Jacque and I watched another movie before bed.

Today the weather is gorgeous! We had a typical morning and then headed off to church, which was great as normal.  Now we are back at the apartment and enjoying a general conference talk and rest time. That's all for this week.

The Impacts of Comparative Economic Freedom in Belarus

Today I wanted to explore the idea of economic freedom as it relates to the complex geopolitical, economic, and sociocultural circumstances that have wide sweeping impacts on the workplace and the experience of workers, particularly with regards to Belarusian organizations effectively competing in an increasingly global marketplace (both global consumer and labor markets, though most of these impacts will need to be hashed out in future posts).  

One useful definition of economic freedom is as follows: "The freedom to prosper within a country without intervention from a government or economic authority. Individuals are free to secure and protect his/her human resources, labor and private property. Economic freedom is common in capitalist economies and must incorporate other civil liberties to be deemed as truly free" (www.businessdictionary.com).

The most commonly used and arguably the most quantitatively robust measure of economic freedom to date is the Index of Economic Freedom (a series of 10 economic measurements created by The Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal, which purports to measure the degree of economic freedom in the world's nations).  The index scores nations on 10 broad factors of economic freedom using statistics from organizations like the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the Economist Intelligence Unit (for full list of data sources see: http://www.heritage.org/index/book/major-works), including the following:

• Business Freedom: Business freedom is a quantitative measure of the ability to start, operate, and close a business that represents the overall burden of regulation as well as the efficiency of government in the regulatory process.
• Trade Freedom: Trade freedom is a composite measure of the absence of tariff and non-tariff barriers that affect imports and exports of goods and services. Different imports entering a country can, and often do, face different tariffs.
• Monetary Freedom: Monetary freedom combines a measure of price stability with an assessment of price controls. Both inflation and price controls distort market activity. Price stability without microeconomic intervention is the ideal state for the free market.
• Government Size/Spending: This component considers the level of government expenditures as a percentage of GDP. Government expenditures, including consumption and transfers, account for the entire score.
• Fiscal Freedom: Fiscal freedom is a measure of the tax burden imposed by government.
• Property Rights: The property rights component is an assessment of the ability of individuals to accumulate private property, secured by clear laws that are fully enforced by the state.
• Investment Freedom: In an economically free country, there would be no constraints on the flow of investment capital. Individuals and firms would be allowed to move their resources into and out of specific activities internally and across the country’s borders without restriction.
• Financial Freedom: Financial freedom is a measure of banking efficiency as well as a measure of independence from government control and interference in the financial sector.
• Freedom from Corruption: Corruption erodes economic freedom by introducing insecurity and uncertainty into economic relationships. The higher the level of corruption, the lower the level of overall economic freedom and the lower a country’s score.
• Labor Freedom: The labor freedom component is a quantitative measure that looks into aspects of the legal and regulatory framework of a country’s labor market.

The 10 factors are averaged equally into a total score. Each one of the 10 freedoms is graded using a scale from 0 to 100, where 100 represents the maximum freedom. A score of 100 signifies an economic environment or set of policies that is most conducive to economic freedom (for full methodological description, see: http://www.heritage.org/index/book/methodology).  

Figure 1 below shows a color-coated categorization of economic freedom around the world in 2012, along with world averages of each of the 10 factors listed above.  A score of 100-80 (dark green) is considered "free"; a score of 79.9-70 (light green) is considered "mostly free"; a score of 69.9-60 (yellow) is considered "moderately free"; a score of 59.9-50 (orange) is considered "mostly unfree"; and a score of 49.9 and below (red) is considered "repressed." 
 

Figure 1: 2012 Economic Freedom World Heat Map

"2012 Index of Economic Freedom," The Heritage Foundation and the Wall Street Journal (www.heritage.org/index/heatmap)

Figure 2 below shows a little more detail for Belarus specifically, over the past few years and in comparison to world and region averages for 2012.  In 2012, Belarus was ranked 153 out of 163 countries around the world, and 42 out of 43 countries in the region.  With an overall index score of 49, it is considered a "repressed" society in terms of economic freedom. 

Figure 2: 2012 Belarus Index of Economic Freedom

Figure 3 and Table 1 below (in case you want to see specific data points) shows 18 years of Belarus economic freedom scores for not only overall economic freedom, but also each of the 10 factors defined above.

Figure 3: Belarus Index of Economic Freedom, 1995-2012

Data Source: "2012 Index of Economic Freedom," The Heritage Foundation and the Wall Street Journal.

First, it is important to note the overall slight positive upward trend of the overall economic freedom index score over the past 18 years, driven primarily by sustained and dramatic increases in its "fiscal freedom", "monetary freedom", and "trade freedom" factor scores.  "Business freedom" has also experienced a steady increase since 2006, but that has only raised it back to the levels it was at from 1995-1997, before the big dip.  The "labor freedom" factor started being used in 2005 and has had an overall increase since then, though it has dropped the last two years.  "Government spending", "freedom from corruption", "property rights", and "financial freedom" are the lagging factors that continue to hold down the overall economic freedom index score for the country.

Table 1: Belarus Index of Economic Freedom, 1995-2012

Data Source: "2012 Index of Economic Freedom," The Heritage Foundation and the Wall Street Journal.

So why is all of this important/relevant?  First, some evidence has shown that higher economic freedom correlates strongly with higher self-reported happiness, higher average personal income, higher income of the poorest 10%, higher life expectancy, higher literacy, lower infant mortality, higher access to water sources, and lower corruption (The Cato Institute, 2007; Heritage Foundation, 2012). Secondly, many of these 10 factors of the economic freedom index are related to the comparative international structural theories I posted about at the end of last week, while each clearly directly contributes to the overall country-contextual conditions in which organizations operate and labor and daily living occurs within Belarus.  Therefore, I believe that the role of global comparative economic freedom levels (and Belarus' specific placement therein) may ultimately play an important role in helping to explain why Belarus has such comparatively low life/work satisfaction and labor characteristics attitudes, and thus deserves additional examination.