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Rethinking the Organizational Weapon: The Soviet System in a Systems Age

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Paul Cocks
Paul Cocks
Affiliation:
Harvard and Stanford
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Abstract

There is growing realization in the U.S.S.R. that the “contemporary scientific and technological revolution” is as much a managerial and cultural revolution as a scientific and industrial revolution. The key task is to develop not only modern technical hardware, but also an effective and distinctive software appropriate for the times. Accordingly, Soviet authorities have begun to think seriously, really for the first time, about organization and the structural requirements of progress. As organizations become more complex, the area of organizational design gains importance. Because it focuses attention on interrelationships, interdependencies, and integration, the “systems approach” has emerged as a way of coping with advancing complexity. The real significance of the U.S.S.R.'s belated awakening to the modern systems age is the discovery that the Soviet system is, in fact, not a “system.” Lacking both the power and the technique to deal with contemporary issues, Soviet leaders are busy forging new organizational weapons. Despite their increasing efforts to use modern systems terminology and technology to enhance integrative capabilities, conditions militate against any radical systems engineering.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 32 , Issue 2 , January 1980 , pp. 228 - 257
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1980

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References

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34 Brezhnev, Leonid I., Ob osnovnykh voprosakh ekonomicheskoi politiki KPSS na sovremennotn etape: rechi i dokjady [On Fundamental Questions of Economic Policy of the CPSU at the Contemporary Stage: Speeches and Reports] (Moscow: Politizdat 1975), II. 355–56Google Scholar.

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36 G. Ivanov and G. Yakovlev, “Pod novoi vyveskoi” [Under a New Nameplate], Pravda, March 26, 1978.

37 ibid.

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48 See Gubin and Kalinin (fn. 14), 121–23.

49 Ibid., 37–38.

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51 Its specific function, Kosygin said, “is to examine and resolve current questions of economic construction and to exercise systematic control over the fulfillment of the state plan and budget.” In his report on the new law on the USSR Council of Ministers, Kosygin also noted that questions dealing with interbranch problems and programs were absorbing more and more of the Council's attention. See Pravda, July 6, 1978.

52 Popov (fn. 45), 146.

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57 V. I. Berlozertsev, “Soedinenie nauchno-tekhnicheskoi revoliutsii s preimushchest-vami sotsializma” [Combining the Scientific and Technological Revolution with the Advantages of Socialism], in Problemy soedineniia dostizhenii nauchno-teckhnicheskpi revoliutsii s preimushchestvami sotsializma [Problems of Combining the Achievements of the Scientific and Technological Revolution with the Advantages of Socialism] (Voronezh: Izd-vo Voronezhkogo Universiteta 1974), 11–12.

58 For an insightful discussion of the general problems of adaptation and change, see Kaufman, Herbert, The Limits of Organizational Change (University, Alabama: University of Alabama Press 1971)Google Scholar. For a look at the Soviet experience from what is predominantly a perspective of adaptation, see Ryavek, Karl W., ed., Soviet Society and the Communist Party (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press 1978)Google Scholar.

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61 Mikhail P. Ring, a leading expert on science policy, writes: “The solution of interbranch, interregional, and national economic, scientific, and engineering problems determines on the whole the development of science and technology in the epoch of the STR.” See “Problemnoe upravlenie v nauke: pravovye aspekty” [Problem-oriented Management in Science: Legal Aspects], Vestnik Akademii nauk SSSR, No. 7 (July 1976), 12–13. Professor Popov, Dean of the Economics Faculty at Moscow University, similarly notes, “Today virtually all questions of any importance—above all, the key problems of scientific and technical progress—have become interbranch in nature. That is why improvement of the mechanism of interbranch coordination is one of the core problems of management.” See Popov, “Kakova nadezhnost' stykov?” [How Reliable Are the Interfaces?], Pravda, July 27, 1976.

62 G. Pospelov, “Sistemnyi podkhod” [The Systems Approach], Izvestiia, March 21, 1974.

63 Ring, “Problemnoe upravlnie v nauke” [Problem-oriented Management in Science], Vestnik Akademii nauk SSSR, No. 8 (August 1976), 34–35. In the past, scientific leaders of national priority programs were often powerful individuals who wielded considerable authority: Igor Kurchatov in nuclear industry, S. P. Korolev in the space program, and Trofim Lysenko in agriculture, were all strong “project managers” in their respective areas. As one knowledgeable observer writes, they “were able to force some ministers to resign if they found them inefficient in the management of the ‘state-important’ scientific programs.” See Medvedev, Zhores, Soviet Science (New York: Norton 1978), 130–31Google Scholar. In general, though, this kind of broad systems-management capability has been lacking in Soviet civilian-oriented research and development programs.