Study of management activities at the enterprise level in USSR industries. The problem for managers is to combine central economic planning of the collective economy and local level decision making. Wage incentives and profits. Management attitudes during planning process. Personnel management, an occupational sociology problem. Significant comparisons with management activities in the USA.

The Sovnarkhoz Reform of 1957 was designed by Khrushchev to improve efficiency in the Soviet economic system by decentralising economic decision making from all-Union branch ministries in Moscow to the governments of the individual republics and regional economic councils. Based on extensive original research, including unpublished archival material, this book examines the reform, discussing the motivations for it, which included Khrushchev's attempt to strengthen his own power base. The book explores how the process of reform was implemented, especially its impact on the republics, and analyses why the reform, which was reversed in 1959, failed. Overall, the book reveals a great deal about the workings, and the shortcomings, of the Soviet economic system at its height.

How does the excessive bureaucratization of central planning affect politics in communist countries? Mark Beissinger suggests an answer through this history of the Soviet Scientific Management movement and its contemporary descendants, raising at the same time broader questions about the political consequences of economic systems. Beissinger traces the rise and decline of administrative strategies throughout Soviet history, focusing on the roles of managerial technique and disciplinary coercion. He argues that over-bureaucratization leads to a succession of national crises of effectiveness, which political leaders use to challenge the power of entrenched elites and to consolidate their rule. It also encourages leaders to resort to radical administrative strategies--technocratic utopias, mass mobilization, and discipline campaigns--and gives rise to a cycling syndrome, as similar problems and solutions reappear over time. Beissinger gives a new perspective and interpretation of Soviet history through the prism of organizational theory. He also provides a comprehensive history of the Soviet rationalization movement from Lenin to Gorbachev that describes the recurring attractions and tensions between politicians and management experts, as well as the reception accorded Western management techniques in the Soviet factory and management-training classroom. Beissinger uses a number of unusual sources: the personal archive of Aleksei Gastev, the foremost Soviet Taylorist of the 1920s; published Soviet archival documents; unpublished Soviet government documents and dissertations on management science and executive training; interviews with Soviet management scientists; and the author's personal observations of managers attending a three-month executive training program in the Soviet Union. Beissinger's skillful handling of this singular material will attract the attention of political scientists, historians, and economists, especially those working in Soviet studies.

In the past, intensive interest in Soviet research and development has been sporadic both in the West and in the USSR. The end of the 1980s coincided with the demise of the Soviet model of economic development. As a result, a surge of attention has been given to t~e factors driving the motor of Soviet growth and development, as well as R&D. The opening, first, of the Soviet and, subsequently, of the Russian economy, finally exposed it to global stan to scientific dards. The long period of international isolation with respect and technological exchanges made it difficult for scholars and policy makers at home and abroad to measure the status of Soviet advances. Consequently, some overrated the levels, while others underestimated them. Now it comes to light that, although the Soviets put the first satellite in space (Sputnik) and developed their own hydrogen bomb, these were more the exceptions of innovation from research results rather than the rule. Therefore, as the management of the entire economy increasingly malfunctioned, so did the management of R&D in contributing to economic growth and development. There is no denying the incredible investment of the former Soviet state in domestic science and research. The R&D community was one of the largest, if not the largest, in the world during the second half of the twentieth century. Now, Russia has inherited not only this enormous resource, but also the inadequate organization, management, and structure.

Soviet managerial culture, however resistant to change, is in fact changing (just as Western managers have begun to grasp some of its written rules). This volume attempts to reveal the direction of those changes. It spotlights the problems that are preparing students, career managers, and the employees of Western ventures for work in a very different environment. The issues (and the pitfalls) are brought to life in reports from the field by some of the Soviet and Western consultants, executives, instructors and students who are pioneers in the conscious creation of a new managerial culture.