This book first published in 1982 considers the problems of efficiently
managing large enterprises which are common to both the West and to the
Soviet Union. The growth in management science in the West has been
paralleled in the Soviet Union in the years since Khrushchev's fall.
Professor Conyngham provides a comprehensive discussion of the efforts
in the Soviet Union to develop techniques of scientific management that
are consistent with the requirements of communist ideology and a planned
economy. The opening chapter outlines the reforms of Soviet industrial
management during the post-Khrushchev era and, in particular, indicates
the role that increased decentralization has played in the developing
importance of management science. Conyngham then concentrates on the
generation of management theory and its application to the existing
economic system. Topics covered include the emergence of systems
analysis as the basic approach to management reform, the application of
mathematical models and computers to decision making, and the
introduction of economic and behavioural methods of management control.
The last part of the book deals with the impact of functional
rationalization on the structure of the existing system and the
ministerial reforms of the 1970s.