1. Workshop “Flexibility in Contracting” September, 29 – 30, 2011 Joensuu, Finland Elena A. Bogdanova Ph.D. (kandidat nauk) in Sociology Centre for Independent Social Research, St.Petersburg, Russia

2. Contracts: soft and hard, flexible and rigid, Optimized “European” …

3. Flexible contract Some fixed claims, execution of which allows certain individual circumstances Possibility of failure of basic requirements of a contract without any dramatic consequences for an actor, violating the agreement Russian legal dictionaries offer a definition of flexible contract as agreement of the parties …

4. Key components of flexible contracting: compromise, risk, uncertainty, trust …

5. Research ideas: Institutional level: Comprehension of flexibility and construction of flexibility To look at the phenomenon of flexible contracting through court practice. Doing that, we could analyze certain cases, caused by any violation of contracts. Cases, involving foreign actors worth considering as well. Is there any limit of violation, placing a problem into the area of legality. If so, could we say about a threshold (external, institutional) of contract flexibility? Practical level Another approach to the research of contracting and flexibility could be realized through the interviews with managers and lawyers, who have expert knowledge about all the stages of contracting: Institutional conditions, Flexibility of Russian legislation, Practice of drawing up (or not drawing up) of contracts, Alternative kinds of agreements, but contracts