Skilling digital technologies in the labour sphere: experience of empirical research in Minsk and Saint Petersburg

Authors

  • Larissa G. Titarenko Belarusian State University, 4 Niezaliežnasci Avenue, Minsk 220030, Belarus https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2207-9894
  • Ruben V. Karapetyan Saint Petersburg State University, 7-9 Universitetskaya Embankment, Saint Petersburg 199034, Russia

Keywords:

digital economy, digitalisation of the labour sphere, information and communication technologies, motivation, digital risks
Supporting Agencies
The research was carried out with the financial support of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (scientific project No. 20-511-00011) and the grant of the Belarusian Republican Foundation for Fundamental Research (No. Г20Р-109).

Abstract

Article is written on the basis of an analysis of empirical data obtained in 2021 from sociological studies conducted in Saint Petersburg and Minsk – cities with a population of one million, which served as the object of research of the current digital transformation. A feature of both samples was the large percentage of people with higher education among the employed population. In fact, we studied a group of urban professionals. The authors identify trends in the world of work that detail digital transformation processes. The purpose of the article is to describe the trends in the digitalisation process in the world of work in a large city and to reveal how relevant these trends are for the Belarusian and Russian professionals. The authors show the level of digital acquisition of the employed urban population today, as well as the impact on this process of the previous year associated with the pandemic and the inevitable transition of a part of the employed population to remote work. The article presents the factors that determine the labour motivation of urban professionals of different levels in their mastering of information and communication technologies, reveals the development trends of labour digitalisation processes and their impact on certain groups of professionals employed in both production and non-production spheres. It is concluded that the motivation of the employed population to master new digital knowledge directly depends on how much a person needs it in the workplace, contributes to his career advancement or helps to keep the workplace.

Author Biography

  • Larissa G. Titarenko, Belarusian State University, 4 Niezaliežnasci Avenue, Minsk 220030, Belarus

    doctor of science (sociology), full professor; professor at the department of sociology, faculty of philosophy and social sciences

References

  1. Luzgina A. Digital transformation of the national economy: challenges and development prospects. Bankovskii vestnik. 2020;3:100–105. Russian.
  2. Batanov IA. Osnovy teorii sotsial’no-ekonomicheskikh transformatsii [Foundations of the theory of socio-economic transformations]. Saint Petersburg: Saint Petersburg State University of Economics; 2000. 132 p. Russian.
  3. Yadov VA. [And yet you can understand Russia with your mind]. In: Yadov VA, editor. Rossiya: transformiruyushcheesya obshchestvo [Russia: transforming society]. Moscow: Kanon-press-Ts; 2001. p. 9–20. Russian.
  4. Shtompka P. Sotsiologiya sotsial’nykh izmenenii [Sociology of social changes]. Мoscow: Aspect Press; 1996. 416 p. Russian.
  5. Belarus and Russia plan to create a register of technoparks of the Union State [Internet]. BELTA [cited 2021 June 30]. Available from: https://www.belta.by/society/view/belarus-i-rossija-planirujut-sozdat-edinyj-reestr-tehnoparkov-sojuznogo-gosudarstva-448127-2021/. Russian.
  6. Manyika J, Spence M. A better boom. How to capture the pandemic’s productivity potential [Internet]. Foreign Affairs. 2021 [cited 2021 July 1]. Available from: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2021-06-22/better-boom.
  7. Ivanov DV. Augmented modernity: effects of post-globalization and post-virtualization. Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniya. 2020;5:44–55. Russian.
  8. Karapetian RV, Sizova IL, Bakaev MA. Current and expected parameters of building digital competencies among the working population (the example of Saint Petersburg). Vestnik Instituta sotsiologii. 2020;1:113–136. Russian. DOI: 10.19181/ vis.2020.11.1.629.
  9. Golovenchik GG, Kovalev MM. Digital transformation and economic growth (on the example of the Belarusian economy). Journal of the Belarusian State University. Economics. 2018;1:102–121. Russian.
  10. COVID-19 in Eurasia: PONARS Eurasia Policy Perspectives. PONARS Eurasia [Internet]. April 2021 [cited 2021 July 1]. 103 p. Available from: https://www.ponarseurasia.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/COVID-19-in-Eurasia_PONARS-Eurasia-eBook_April-2021.pdf.
  11. Estrada MAR. Post-COVID-19 economic recovery model. The national domestic economic auto-sustainability model (NDEAS-Model). International Journal of Asia-Europe Relations. 2021;7(1):37–46. DOI: 10.37353/aei-insights.vol7.issue1.3. Russian.
  12. El’kina EE. [Digital culture as a field of interdisciplinary research: methodological approaches and development trends]. International Journal of Open Information Technologies. 2018;6(12):67–78. Russian.

Downloads

Published

2021-10-11

Issue

No. 3 (2021): Journal of the Belarusian State University. Sociology

Section

From the Working Table of a Sociologist

License

The authors who are published in this journal agree to the following:

  1. The authors retain copyright on the work and provide the journal with the right of first publication of the work on condition of license Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial. 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0).
  2. The authors retain the right to enter into certain contractual agreements relating to the non-exclusive distribution of the published version of the work (e.g. post it on the institutional repository, publication in the book), with the reference to its original publication in this journal.
  3. The authors have the right to post their work on the Internet (e.g. on the institutional store or personal website) prior to and during the review process, conducted by the journal, as this may lead to a productive discussion and a large number of references to this work. (See The Effect of Open Access.)

How to Cite

[1]
Titarenko, L.G. and Karapetyan, R.V. 2021. Skilling digital technologies in the labour sphere: experience of empirical research in Minsk and Saint Petersburg. Journal of the Belarusian State University. Sociology. 3 (Oct. 2021), 84–92. DOI:https://doi.org/10.33581/2521-6821-2021-3-84-92.