The authors study the behavior of Russian enterprises in the field of employment and wages. On the basis of the dynamic model of labor demand and models of the negotiation process, the process of adaptation of enterprises to new economic conditions under the influence of external institutional factors, its dependence on the internal characteristics of the enterprise is studied. forms of ownership and structure of the share capital, size, location, activity of the trade union, etc. d. Econometric analysis is based on the data panel for 370 industrial enterprises of the Novosibirsk region for 1992-1998. It is established that the behavior of enterprises corresponds to the model of the "right to manage", t. e. the contract curve coincides with the labor demand curve. It is shown that employees of enterprises appropriate through wages part of the rent received by the enterprise, while the dominance of managers among the owners of the enterprise leads to its reduction.