Features of Corporate Conflicts in Russian Entrepreneurship

Abstract

Based on the results of a study of current Russian economic, corporate management and arbitrationjudicial law enforcement practice, the article outlines the main features of the state and trends in the evolution of corporate conflict in the Russian Federation. Among them, the following interrelated trends are considered: a) an extremely high measure of the concentration of capital in the domestic economy – corporate rights to business structures and the persistence of the trend to “wash out” the layer of micro-minority shareholders as a fundamental prerequisite for shareholder antagonisms; b) hypertrophy of “shadow” relations in the field of domestic corporate governance and a high degree of latency in managerial decisions as a source of conflict; c) active use by the parties of a corporate conflict of criminal law methods of pressure on a direct opponent and his allies; d) the prominent role of the state (the Russian Federation, its constituent entities, municipalities) in the sphere of corporate conflicts that do not directly affect its legal interests; e) a high level of methods of resolving corporate conflicts that are not located in the legal field; f) the scenario tragedy of domestic corporate disputes due to the professional unpreparedness of a significant part of “active investors”, which is rarely perceived by them in the context of the inefficiency of the applied systems and methods of company management; g) tough disagreements between the subjects of the corporate governance system, which usually affect a significant part of a group of companies built like a holding company; h) an impressive volume of corporate conflicts in the Russian Federation, represented by mutual reproaches of coowners of parity companies; i) corporate conflict in the sphere of moderately large and medium-sized businesses, which is a consequence of the orientation of domestic investment practice towards a purely short-term perspective; j) excessive “psychologization” of corporate conflicts, the refusal of the participants in the managerial confrontation to exploit the criterion of economic efficiency of appropriate response measures to emergency corporate situations – a comparison of expected results and associated costs.