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This paper aims to review tourist directions that reflect the uniqueness of the Sverdlovsk region of Russia and form the basis of its multi-touristic potential.

This paper reviews diversification of the Middle Urals tourist potential based on its natural, geographic, business, ethno-cultural and industrial features.

The findings reveal the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats relating to the implementation of the multi-touristic brand “Great Ural”.

Sverdlovsk region is known as a great industrial region of the Russia. The paper reveals that this region is an area with wide tourism potential. The authors deem that tourist diversification will help to improve the competitiveness of the Middle Urals.

The main output of the paper is a review of the key directions for tourism in the Sverdlovsk region with implications for practitioners, tourists and entrepreneurs. The identification of problems and imperfections in the Middle Urals tourism market is also useful for researchers working in the area of territorial marketing.

The purpose of this paper is to present the results of the authors’ questionnaire survey focused on the comparison of study motivation and job expectations of full-time and part-time students of Russian universities and identify main problems of higher education and graduate employment and suggest their possible solutions.

The authors’ questionnaire survey was conducted from March to October 2018. The respondents were full-time and part-time bachelor’s and master’s students from 30 regions across Russia. The relevant data were obtained from 1,051 students. The data analysis was based on the calculation of relative frequencies (as a share from the total number of respondents) and the evaluation of the dependence of responses on the form of study (full-time students and part-time students) using contingency tables and χ² tests of independence.

The results of the authors’ questionnaire survey support the assumption that the current generation of full-time and part-time students of Russian universities studies to succeed in the future. Surveyed university students certainly have a high motivation to study, but at the same time, they seem to have too high expectations about their future work and career, which can negatively affect their future success in their jobs if they do not have appropriate knowledge, skills and abilities.

The results of the authors’ questionnaire survey show some unique tendencies in the Russian university students’ attitudes to study, work and career that are worth attention both from the point of view of universities and from the point of view of employers and their current approaches to the education and the employment of the current generation of young people. The results open up new possibilities for further research focused on the higher education and the employability of the new generation of work force.

A neo-institutional methodology defines the entrepreneurial environment for SMEs as a multidimensional set of interacting formal/informal institutions influencing regional economic growth. Acknowledging the multidimensional nature of SME growth, this study tests an approach to measure SME institutional environment quality through the identification of regional-level determinants.

The method used in this paper is based on Bruns et al.’s (2017) model and is tested on 81 Russian Federation regions. The approach seeks to determine variation in entrepreneurial ecosystems based on quality and estimated marginal effects of difference across geographical regions.

The most severe obstacle to SME development in Russia is its shadow economy and corruption. Access to finance, high transportation fees, and instability in the political and economic field ranks second and third, respectively. Results suggest governments should eliminate main obstacles at country-level, which hampers the SME sector's development. While this is noted for this case looking at Russia, this is a common argument found in SME research.

Findings from this study are useful in managerial practice, aimed at increasing innovative development and increasing the competitiveness of Russian SMEs. A neo-institutional approach is one of the theoretical strands with the emphasis on enhanced understanding of organizational behavior and social capital, including cultural norms and beliefs.

Utilizing an extended empirical approach to assess the institutional environment for SMEs addresses a research gap – offering novel insight on SME growth useful for policy makers. The results can inform managerial practices to increase SME contribution to economic growth.

This paper aims to review the contributions made to the strategic question about the challenges and opportunities driving the Russian tourism and hospitality market as it becomes more diverse with new destinations.

Based on the strategic question, a brief analysis of each contribution was carried out to identify the key findings, as they relate to the theme.

The findings reveal 11 key characteristics related to major issues and shifts in the contemporary Russian tourism and hospitality market.

The findings add to the literature on hospitality and tourism in emerging markets by unveiling the pros and cons of developing new destinations and types of tourism in Russia. Overall, the theme issue provides a useful framework for discussion with a wider range of stakeholders. This is important to both academics and practitioners engaged in hospitality and tourism development and research.

All 11 articles have contributed different perspectives to the topic and confirm that it is important for all key stakeholders to consider both international trends in hospitality and tourism and the region-specific resources and opportunities that make many parts of Russia potentially attractive to different target audiences with broad interests and preferences.

This paper aims to review recent developments in the Russian tourism and hospitality market and to underline Russia’s strong tourism prospects – despite the challenges it has to face.

The study sets the scene for the theme issue (that draws from both academia and industry) by discussing the challenges facing the contemporary Russian tourism and hospitality market. It also profiles the efforts of the Russian Government to boost tourism development in different Russian regions that are potentially attractive tourist destinations due to their natural resources and cultural heritage.

The paper sheds light on the major shift to domestic tourism that is partly due to the turbulent economic environment that is forcing Russia to search for internal sources of development. At the same time, the decision to rely on diversity of opportunities and sustainable regional tourism makes it possible to have a broad variety of tourist value propositions in almost all parts of Russia. This also makes Russia more attractive to foreign tourists. Still, to make Russia a popular destination internationally, improvement in almost all elements of the Russian tourist product is needed.

This theme issue provides an analysis and evaluation of tourism development in Russia in the current decade and, in so doing, contributes to knowledge of the fast developing Russian tourism and hospitality market by unveiling a number of new tourist products and destinations in different Russian regions.

The purpose of this paper is to examine macroeconomic factors that are significantly related to consumption of various alcoholic beverages in Russia.

The authors consider 78 Russian regions for the period from 2008 to 2012. Data were collected from the Federal State Statistics Service of Russia. The authors investigate differences in the volume and structure of consuming absolute alcohol in aggregate, vodka, beer, and wine. Estimating fixed effect panel models enables us to reveal the relationship between alcohol consumption and the set of macroeconomic factors that include economic development of regions and living standards, the effect of unemployment, and the degree of urbanization.

Alcohol consumption is procyclical in Russia. Two main alcoholic beverages in Russia are vodka and beer. Economic development and urbanization of regions are positively related to consuming alcohol. Unemployment rate affects consumption of different types of alcoholic drinks in a different way. For absolute alcohol, vodka and beer, this relationship is negative. However, it is positive for wine. The effect of unemployment on absolute alcohol and vodka increases over time. For beer, it is remained unchanged. For wine, this effect weakens over time.

To the authors knowledge, the paper is the first one to analyze macro-level factors of consumption of different alcoholic beverages in Russia. Conclusions made on aggregate macroeconomic data add to understanding of drinking patterns in Russia as a country with the large territory and great regional variations. Findings can be used for correcting the alcohol policy at the national and regional level.

This paper aims at assessing the impacts of the national cluster policy, cluster age, cluster development benchmarks of neighbouring regions and the cumulative level of regional innovative capacity on the quantity and quality of cluster initiatives in Russia.

Hypotheses’ testing was carried out by a series of calculations comparing the qualitative and quantitative characteristics of cluster initiatives; the number of new cluster initiatives to the number of neighbouring regions, where cluster initiatives had begun to develop earlier; and ranks of regions within the Russian regional innovation scoreboard to the quantity and quality characteristics of cluster initiatives therein.

The results of the study empirically confirm that the national cluster policy significantly influenced the emergence and advancement of cluster initiatives in Russia. The proximity to the regions, having previously launched cluster support programmes, also had an impact on the emergence of new cluster initiatives. The cluster initiatives’ age had an ambiguous effect on their performance. Finally, the level of regional innovative capacity was correlated only with the number of cluster initiatives localised therein.

The findings show that along with the direct effects of the national cluster policy for the government-supported clusters, there are positive externalities, e.g. the emergence of new cluster initiatives throughout the country.

The research database of 277 cluster initiatives has been drawn up as a part of the first national cluster mapping and covers almost a decade of clustering activity in Russia. The study analyses not only the cluster initiatives supported by the federal government but also those developed independently.

This paper aims to investigate business network activity patterns and how they change when actors experience tensions.

Four tensions, developed from previous literature, are considered in relation to how they influence activity patterns. A longitudinal case study focusing on the modernization of an international airport illustrates how tensions experienced by actors influence changes in activity patterns.

Results highlight that when tensions in relation to network position are experienced activity patterns are more likely to break and form new patterns. When multiple tensions are experienced within the same period, an old activity pattern is more likely to be broken and the new activity pattern develop.

Contributions in relation to interdependencies between activities heighten the impact of changes leading to the breaking of existing patterns, particularly the importance of coordination activities. These findings are context specific because activity patterns vary according to the industry.

Practical implications indicate that understanding network interdependences within the change process is important, particularly for co-ordination activities. The study informs practitioners about possible outcomes while tensions are experienced. This study found that when actors are experiencing multiple tensions, breaking of activity patterns is more likely to occur while experience less tensions extending existing activity patterns becoming more likely.

Contributions are made in relation to gaps in investigating the business network activity layer and their changes in relation to tensions.

Attempts to discover an internal logic in the high‐speed events taking place in the former Soviet Union. In addressing the problems of the country′s disintegration, examines the issue in its socioeconomic, political and territorial‐administrative aspects. Analyses, for this purpose, the nature of Soviet society prior to Gorbachev′s reforms, its present transitional stage and its probable direction in the near future.

In the recent two decades, a model of the labor market formed in Russia; it differs from the model that is peculiar for most developed countries. Its specific feature consists in the fact that adaptation to the fluctuations of the economic situation takes place by means of changes in the labor price, not by means of changes in employment and unemployment.

Such model ensures high and stable level of employment and low level of unemployment with significant pro-cyclic fluctuations of wages. Changes that take place in the sphere of employment of population in labor markets and gradual implementation of collection of information in view of the forms of labor activities into the practices of different countries led to the necessity for reconsidering the previously adopted international standards.

This is due to the fact that the normative documents present the treatment of unemployment without the criterion “job search,” and new indicators of measuring potential labor force and incomplete employment were adopted. The authors analyze the situation of labor underutilization, which is important for characterizing a region of the Russian Federation by the indicator of unmet need for employment.

The offered information could be used for wider monitoring of the labor market, studying the volume and tendencies in the sphere of unemployment, evaluating the problems of integration in the labor market, studying the connection between employment and poverty and forecasting the tendencies.