Informal Collegial Management Structures in a One-company Town

<p style="text-align: justify;">Despite the fact that some of the aspects concerning socio-economic development of a one-company town are touched upon in the up-to-date works of modern scientists, a series of issues remain uncovered or insufficiently studied, such as the influence of informal collegial structures on the management of a one-company town. The object of the study is informal collegial management structures in a one-company town. The subject of the research is the management relations that appear during the process of managing a mono-profile municipality (town).</p><p style="text-align: justify;">The aim of the study is to reveal and discover the informal collegial structures and describe their influence on the management of social and economic development of a one-company town.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">The statement that apart from formal institutional organizational management forms in mono-profile towns there are informal collegial structures that also influence the development of such towns serves as a hypothesis of the research.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">The study was carried out by means of the sociological research in a form of a case study that allowed us to conduct a thorough analysis of a particular case based on the experience of Kachkanarsky urban district in Sverdlovsky region.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">The empirical basis consists of materials of a project-based learning laboratory of a municipal administration of National Research University - Higher School of Economics collected during the research trips to Kachkanarsky urban district in Sverdlovsky region in May and November, 2009, as well as the documents from the official web-resources and mass media articles.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">The issue of management of one-company towns is examined from the point of view of informal collegial structures. A new definition to the term &ldquo;informal collegial management structures&rdquo; is given. Two approaches to revealing those informal collegial structures in mono-profile towns are identified. The mechanisms of influence of informal collegial structures on the socio-economic development of a one-company town by means of informal representation in the representative body in a municipal body are described based on the example of Kachkanarsky urban district in Sverdlovsky region.</p>