CORPORATE DEMOGRAPHY: REGIONAL REFLECTION OF THE FEDERAL AGENDA

Abstract

Introduction. After the Russian government designated a new agenda for Russian business, which focuses this business on including measures to support employees' families in social packages, the formation of regional models of support for such family-oriented businesses began in the constituent entities of the Russian Federation. This process requires scientific understanding, including through the study of the attitude of employers and the working population towards it. The theoretical framework of the study is the neo-institutional approach and the theory of social exchange, the combination of which involves mediating the impact of government policy on business by its expectations of the effects of costs associated with the introduction of new measures to support the families of employees.

Materials and methods. The empirical basis of the study consists of a series of sociological surveys conducted in the Sverdlovsk region in 2024–2025, aimed at examining the attitudes of the working population and employers toward corporate family support practices. The data include surveys of the working population of reproductive age (2024: N = 303, random sampling, online panel by “OnIN” LLC; 2025: N = 1030, non-probability sampling), as well as in-depth interviews with employers in the Sverdlovsk Region (2025: N = 18).

Results. The key findings of the study are as follows: a generally positive perception of family-oriented measures among the working population; a wide diversity of such measures implemented across large, medium, and small enterprises; a broad spectrum of employer motivations for adopting these measures, ranging from implicit to explicitly articulated, and from paternalistic and traditionalist to economic and strategic; and varying levels of potential demographic and social effectiveness of corporate measures.

Discussion. The results of the analysis allowed us to record the stage of spontaneous formation of portfolios of family-oriented measures that began at the enterprises of the Sverdlovsk region. Increasing the effectiveness of business inclusion in the demographic agenda for all stakeholders – employers, the state and the population – is possible through the institutionalization of this process at the regional level. Understanding the goals, the range of tasks to be solved, and the motives of all interested parties, as well as developing understandable rules and roles, can, in turn, encourage businesses to take a special position of corporate citizenship in the demographic sphere, in which organizations include national objectives to support families, parenthood and childhood, and the development of human capital in their development strategies.