Manifest and latent social groups: Phenomenon, evolution, determinants. Part 2

The aim of the research is to study the features of the social environment as potential conditions for the formation, functioning and evolution of latent social groups. Hypotheses: 1) there are pre-forms of social alliances of people (which can be tentatively called latent social groups); 2) diff erent conditions of a subject’s external and internal environment (including features perceived by a person as subjectively signifi cant for them in relation to certain life goals) might be the reasons why the pre-forms appear. The methods of the research are as follows: theoretical and categorical analysis, the study of literary sources, empirical research (questionnaires), multidimensional methods of parametric statistics. According to the author’s methodology (questionnaire “Dynamics of professional life style” – DPLS), respondents assessed the following variables: the role conditions of the social environment play as “factors of professionalism”, and the dynamics of their professionalism from 20 to 65 years (retrospectively to the current age and prospectively – predicting the dynamics of subsequent evolution); their socio-demographic and offi cial characteristics were also recorded. 482 employees, men and women aged 30 to 50 years (132 civil servants, 129 engineers and heads of departments of manufacturing plants, 221 managers) were interviewed as participants of the study. The total sample was divided into groups several times. As criteria for division, relative characteristics (calculated by the formulas) of “career speed”, “managerial experience”, “family life experience”were used. The results of the empirical study confi rm the working hypotheses. When dividing the sample according to diff erent criteria – both obvious (men / women, specialists / managers, etc.) and relative, the groups diff er signifi cantly in a number of variables (environmental conditions marked as “factors of professionalism”). Conclusion: in one social space-time, diff erent social alliances, structures, to a greater or lesser extent of their expression (manifestation), development, and active functioning as social groups can coexist. There are reasons to single out the phenomenon of latent social groups (LSG) as pre-forms of manifest social groups with subsequent diff erent trajectories of their possible development. LSG are possible alliances of people who are similar to each other in a number of important aspects of life (value orientations, lifestyle, etc.), and who are potentially capable of integration and interaction (to achieve common goals, to establish comfortable interpersonal communication, to maintain typical patterns of behavior, etc.). LGS are the pre-stages of various social structures representing their possible formation and development. Representatives of some latent social groups diff er from others both in terms of their preference and recognition of the role of individual environmental conditions and individual social spaces (parental family, their family, work groups, etc.). There may be some other “deep factors” behind people’s recognition of the subjective signifi cance of diff erent conditions of the social environment for them.

latent social groups, manifest social groups, subjects, environment, space, conditions, factors