Toxic organizational environment on the Italian and Russian enterprises: an inter-country comparison

The concept of the organizational toxicity, which is considered by authors to be the phenomena of social pollution, is based on the study and synthesis of research results on the destructive aspects of the culture and working environment inside the organization. Toxic elements of the organizational environment have a negative impact on employees and cause a deterioration in their health and well-being that ultimately leads to a decrease in the efficiency of the use of human resources, in particular, and financial losses as a whole. Thus, there is underestimated the social aspect of a negative impact of the organization's economic activities on psychosocial health at work. The given research deals with the issue of the organizational toxicity, ex- pressed in reducing the level of well-being and deterioration of physical and psychosocial health of workers caused by the economic activities of the company. The theoretical study has allowed us to formulate hypoth- eses about the toxic management practices and their negative impact on workers’ psychosocial health. An empirical study conducted by the authors in comparison between Russian and Italian companies has permit- ted to verify the given hypotheses: to examine in detail the nature of the organizational toxicity and to identify toxic elements of the socio-labour relations in the company. An important feature of the current research is studying the toxic elements of working environment from the employers and employees points of view. The comparative studies possess an increasingly important cognitive function in the development of theories of labour and the science of management, as well as their practical applications. Inter-country comparisons allow us to approach the problem from a more common position, to the disclosure mechanisms of action, as well as forms of manifestation of separate regularities in various socio-economic systems.