One of my key interest in the business school was performance management. Having exchange ideas on numerous occasions, my supervisor offered me to do some joint work on the subject of performance management in Russia . The focus was non-material rewards as and their relative weight as motivators, and the sectors chosen were art and sports - the two areas where the Soviets achieved groundbreaking results. Our collaboration with Tony Bovaird, now head of Strategic Management Group at Bristol Business School , resulted in a series of papers. Please click here to see some of them.
WORKING PAPER NO: RP9906 'Performance management in the Soviet Union : A conceptual framework'
by Anastasia Mironova and Tony Bovaird
ISBN No: 1 85449 397 3
ABSTRACT:
This paper derives from a wider research programme on comparative performance management techniques in a range of open economic systems, which explores new and unconventional approaches to understanding complexity in modern public service organisations.
The paper focuses upon performance management within the Soviet Union in its final years, a period during which the long-established command-and-control routines of central planning were becoming moderated by a wave of economic reforms. The paper develops a conceptual framework within which the performance management rituals of the Soviet system are viewed as a complex and interactive set of negotiating activities between different levels of organisation and different levels of management, rather than as a top-down "systemic control" activity.
The paper explores the limitations and contradictions of previous research, which has often tended to dismiss the Soviet Union 's industrial performance record without regard to its context. It argues that Soviet management was not as inefficient as it has often been portrayed, given the context within which it had to operate. It suggests that some of the reasons for excellent performance in certain sectors can be attributed to their performance management systems, as well as to the ingenuity of Soviet managers and their ability to learn A set of hypotheses are developed to guide future exploration of these themes, in order that some of the lessons of the decades of performance management in the Soviet Union may be made available to Western organisations, particularly in the public sector, which have been pushed down this route in recent years.
PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT IN THE USSR : THE CASE OF THE SPORTS SECTOR by Anastasia Mironova and Tony Bovaird
ISBN No: 1 85449 309 4
ABSTRACT:
This paper emanates from a wider research programme on comparative performance management techniques in a range of open economic systems, which explores new and unconventional approaches to understanding complexity in modern public service organisations.
In a previous paper, we showed how the performance management rituals of the Soviet system could be viewed as a complex and interactive set of negotiating activities between different levels of organisation and different levels of management, rather than as a topdown "systemic control" activity.
This working paper now tests how this framework can be applied in the case of one service sector in which Soviet performance was world class - sport. It is argued that in this sector some of the reasons for excellent performance can be attributed to the performance management system. The paper explores the limitations and contradictions of previous research, which has often tended to dismiss the Soviet Union's sports performance record as due mainly to the oppression of Soviet athletes, leading to their powerlessness and fear (and,in some cases their acceptance of drug-based training regimes), and therefore unconnected with positive managerial methods. The paper offers new perspectives on management in
Soviet sport, based on original research undertaken by the authors, and emphasises the positive aspects of performance management, measurement and evaluation in the USSR , which have often been under-appreciated by Western observers.
