Sociological recommendations: concept, functions, principles and creation mechanism

Abstract

Purpose. Improving municipal administration practices through sociological recommendations. Methods and methodology. Conceptually targeted provisions by prominent domestic sociologists, like G.S. Batygina, A.G. Zdravomyslova, A.V. Tikhonov on developing guidelines, recommendations and outcomes of the research, along with individual points by Zh.T. Toshchenko on requirements to the conceptual framework of sociology, management mechanism have been used for drafting the article. The author draws on the existing in modern Russian sociology advances on interrelations of conclusions and recommendations, justification structure, on diagnosing relevance of recommendations in administrative and political decisions and their loss of optionality. Besides, theoretical understanding of space and its managerial and social dimension (by P.Bourdieu, A.F. Filippov) helped the author to consider the localization of interactions and elements of mechanism of recommendations implementation in the area of municipal connections and relationships. Such applied methods as structural and functional microanalysis, diagnostic test survey; comparative analysis of documents; questionnaire survey; secondary analysis have been employed. Results. The quality of social recommendations and competence of municipal employees, close social connections with the population provide for the relevance of recommendations in municipal management practices. The recommendations of traditional and innovative types are to a certain extent different in functional load, placement in sociological production and relevance to management practice. The fundamental differences of recommendations and decisions are in due degree of execution, accuracy of risks and threats calculation and resource availability. The research identifies that sociological recommendations quality improvement requires social and professional competencies engagement by sociologists and municipal employees in designing and implementation of recommendations in municipal management practices. The article demonstrates possibilities to reveal the reserves of municipal management practices through the justification of recommendations and the use of knowledge-competence-based criterion in improving the professionalism of sociologists and municipal employees relying on practice-oriented principles of developing recommendations. The role and structure of mechanism for developing and implementation of sociological recommendations are characterized.