Social Barriers to the Implementation of Organizational Innovations as a Tool for Overcoming Labor Shortages (Case of a Chemical Industry Enterprise)

Recently, the chemical industry has been facing a severe shortage of personnel due to its high technological complexity and long training periods. The implementation of innovations to compensate for the lack of personnel often faces resistance from workers, the social nature of which remains poorly understood. The aim is to identify the social barriers to the implementation of organizational innovations in the chemical industry, propose a typology of these barriers based on the professional differentiation of personnel, and provide practical mechanisms for overcoming them.The empirical basis included a questionnaire survey of employees of JSC «Chemist» (N = 107, 65 % of the total headcount), seven focus groups (37 participants), and 20 expert interviews (2023–2025). The sample represents production workers, engineering and technical personnel, and administrative staff.Key social barriers are identified: fear of job cuts, distrust of digital technologies, lack of training, and communication gaps. A typology of barriers is proposed: existential, instrumental, and communication barriers. At a chemical plant, fear of innovation is compounded by high safety requirements and the high cost of production errors. 61% of employees are ready for innovations given training, employment guarantees, and transparent communication. A threeloop model for overcoming social barriers (diagnostic, compensatory, and adaptive loops) is developed.The main research direction is to test the proposed model on an expanded sample of chemical industry enterprises.