Actors of knowledge economy: roles of middle class

In instable institutional environment, prototypes of future institutions are different actors’ practices and the ways of realization and coordination of their role expectations. The paper demonstrates the application of the role analysis methodology to describe how the creators of high-technology products act, that allows studying the process of building institutions and the perspectives in knowledge economy. An empirical base of this study is the depth interviews conducted in 2007. We discovered that intra-role conflicts had been observed in the activity of scientists. Our analysis of the data obtained also showed the ways of how to minimize such conflicts, to reduce barriers and limits with which scientists had faced in commercialization of their works; and the analysis showed as well that models of their conducting business in promoting high-technology products were standard and adequate but needed more active behavior of consumers as units of the knowledge economy.