How Managerial Learning Can Assist Economic Transformation in Russia

Abstract

Russian economic reform is still not effective at the institutional and individual levels, levels at which managerial learning is essential for success. In particular, Russian state enterprises, privatized or not, need to learn how to proceed with radical restructuring if they are to become effective. In doing this, they need to be dealt with as collectives in the Russian tradition rather than as corporations in the Western tradition. Russia also needs the managerial learning required to support a massive wave of entrepreneurship — especially in the creation of distribution and credit organizations. Finally, Russian managers need to be familiarized with a selected set of management skills and techniques relevant to dealing with the challenges of a competitive market, even though their skills in a number of other important management areas are fully recognized.It is no secret that the transformation of the Russian economy is still not effective. Nor is it a secret that the success of the reforms is a matter of global importance. The chief reason for the slow progress is, in our view, that reforms at the institutional and individual levels have been neglected. It is at these levels that managerial learning is a key to success. To be effective at the institutional level, educational programmes must provide the know-how so that state enterprises can restructure themselves into smaller market-oriented firms. To be effective at the individual level, managerial educational programmes must help Russian managers transform themselves from shortage-focused managers operating in a planned economy, to profit-focused managers operating in a competitive market economy. Developing such programmes will be especially difficult since Western teachers of management and Russian enterprise managers have a limited base of shared management knowledge and organizational culture. To understand the managerial education challenge in Russia, the status of the economic reform effort must be briefly reviewed. -, .~~ .

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