Performance Effects of Technological Dynamism: Private vs. State Enterprises in Russia

Abstract How has the privatization-led economic transition transformed Russian firms? Prior to recent economic recession caused by Western sanctions, Russia’s economic performance has been impressive, yet little is known about its micro-level sources. Particularly, while macro-level data suggests a positive effect of privatization, such effect is seldom substantiated at firm-level in Russia. To take a step towards opening the black box, we investigated the performance effect of technology dynamism in Russian firms and the extent to which ownership mattered with regards to the technology dynamism-performance link. Our survey data shows that performance is driven by IT adoption, entrepreneurial orientation, and technological turbulence in Russian firms and that the positive effects of technological turbulence are stronger for private than for state-owned Russian firms. According to our results, Russian private enterprises appear more capable of buffering and gaining from technological turmoil, suggesting that the most significant outcome of organizational transformation in Russia is the firms enhanced capability in managing external environmental dynamism.