IMPROVING THE ECONOMIC TRAINING OF ENTERPRISE MANAGERS THROUGH THE METHOD OF SOLVING PRODUCTION PROBLEMS

A. S. BERDNIK, M. R. TEST

(The article was presented by the scientific seminar of the Department of Industrial Economics and Enterprise Organization)

In order to carry out the measures for improving the management of the national economy outlined by the Twenty-Fourth Congress of the CPSU, one of the necessary conditions is to increase the scientific validity of managerial decisions.

The resolution of the CPSU Central Committee “On Improving the Economic Education of Working People” notes that certain production managers have a poor command of the skills of economic analysis and are unable to substantiate the effectiveness of the managerial decisions they make.

As is known, the foundations of economic knowledge are laid in higher education. However, university training of a specialist does not form skills in the analysis and synthesis of concrete production indicators; the ability, from a mass of factors, to choose the main one; in the routine of current affairs, to solve problems of the future; persistently to shape the unity of personal, collective, and public interests; clearly to determine the course of action of the collective, mobilizing its interests into a unity of will toward achieving nationwide goals.

Therefore, under the conditions of the new system of planning and economic incentives, the problem of the practical mastery of economic methods of management, based on systematic economic analysis of indicators of production and economic activity, has arisen acutely and urgently before the managerial personnel of enterprises. In the current five-year plan this area of personnel work is acquiring exceptional political and national-economic significance.

An analysis of the initial level of economic education of managerial workers, conducted at the Tomsk Cutting Tools Plant (see table), shows that all managers of production shops and sections, as well as the absolute majority of managers of functional departments, do not have a specialized economic education. Moreover, even the heads and their deputies in economic services often have a technical education. Therefore, practical mastery of the methods of an economic approach to the adoption of managerial decisions is the primary task of the system of economic education for organizers of production.

The existing system for improving the qualifications of managerial personnel, in our opinion, has a number of substantial shortcomings:

1. It is oriented toward traditional methods of instruction. The positive experience in using active methods of instruction, accumulated—

Table 1

Structure of managerial personnel by education and length of service

Number of employees, in %, relative to the number in the corresponding category

...with the Higher Courses for the Advanced Training of Managerial Personnel of the Scientific-Methodological Center for the Scientific Organization of Labor and Management under the State Committee of the Council of Ministers of the USSR on Labor and Wages, is spreading very slowly.

1. The throughput capacity of the existing courses and faculties for advanced training is extremely insufficient: “...the capacity of institutes and courses for advanced training must amount to no fewer than 48 thousand places, and each year the institutes of advanced training and the courses must train 240 thousand managerial workers. In the institutes currently operating under ministries and departments, in 1970, according to data of the Central Statistical Administration of the USSR, only about 63 thousand people underwent training, and at the advanced-training faculties attached to higher educational institutions, 26.3 thousand people” [8].

As can be seen from the table, over 5 years (from 1968 through 1972), on average only 23% of the total number of production managers improved their qualifications with release from work. In the absolute majority of cases these were managers without secondary or higher education who underwent 2–3-week training at sectoral courses for engineering and technical personnel or monthly foremen’s courses in Novosibirsk, Moscow, Voronezh, Gorky, and other cities.

Thus, the existing system of advanced training does not satisfy the most important requirement of technical progress—systematic replenishment and renewal of specialized knowledge.

1. The existing system of advanced training does not satisfy the requirement of forming the working stereotype of a specialist, regardless of his profile, in an environment natural for him. We have no doubt that the mastery of a physician, teacher, or engineer is formed and nourished by his working environment.

The practice of forming production organizers is based on natural selection from among enterprise specialists who have substantial length of service and experience in production work. Naturally, a manager with experiential-intuitive training, or a candidate for managerial positions, needs further development not only of a general theoretical economic outlook, successfully carried out through the system of universal economic education, but, above all, of practical mastery of the methods of systemic analysis and synthesis of technical-economic indicators, as well as the acquisition of skills in a scientific approach to managerial decisions.

In our opinion, advanced training of managerial personnel without release from production should be based on active methods of instruction. In recent years these methods of instruction have been gaining ever wider dissemination in our country.

Unfortunately, experience in their application within the system of universal economic education has not yet been generalized and is little published in print. Considerable interest in active methods of instruction is shown by production organizers at many industrial enterprises.

In recent years in Tomsk, on the basis of creative collaboration between a group of staff members of the Faculty of Management and Organization of Production of the TPI and the collective of leading workers of the Tomsk Cutting Tools Plant, a search has been under way in the area of adapting certain active teaching methods to an in-plant form of advanced training for managers of the middle and lower levels of management.

The most promising method, from the standpoint of forming skills of systemic economic analysis and, on its basis, making managerial decisions, is the solution of production problems constructed on concrete production situations of the given enterprise. This method of training production organizers under the conditions of factory economic seminars has its own distinctive features.

1. It helps to identify the initial levels of theoretical education and practical skills in making managerial decisions, gaps in knowledge in economic, social, and other disciplines, with the aim of specifying curricula and production problems for particular groups of trainees.

2. It creates the prerequisites for continuous improvement of qualifications up to the level determined by the requirements of the job description in the qualification handbook or by the job instruction.

3. It educates the manager through practical work, i.e., in an environment natural to him.

4. It provides the possibility of continuous individual monitoring, objective assessment of the results of advanced training, systematic certification, selection for promotion, and incentives.

5. It ensures the prompt implementation of collective decisions.

Despite the evidently high effectiveness of training by the method of solving production problems constructed on the basis of concrete production situations, its broad application under the conditions of factory economic seminars is restrained by a number of problems and difficulties:

1) the need for systematic research work to collect information for the preparation of production problems;

2) the formation of an active attitude among trainees toward solving production problems in order to overcome the inertia of traditional teaching methods;

3) the absence of qualified teaching personnel;

4) the shortage of instructional time for conducting seminar sessions in the standard curricula of the system of economic education;

5) the wide range of initial levels of education and experience in managerial work, requiring a particular approach to the formation of study groups;

6) the shortage of methodological literature and information on advanced experience.

Solving the indicated problems of mastering active teaching methods under production conditions requires centralization and coordination in the search for ways to implement them.

LITERATURE

1. L. I. Brezhnev. Report of the Central Committee of the CPSU to the XXIV Congress of the CPSU, sec. II. Moscow, 1971.

2. A. N. Kosygin. Directives of the XXIV Congress of the CPSU on the Five-Year Plan for the Development of the National Economy of the USSR for 1971–1975, sec. IV. Moscow, 1971.

3. Organization of Management. Issue 1. Moscow, “Ekonomika,” 1971.

4. Organization of Management. Issue 2. Moscow, “Ekonomika,” 1972.

5. Fundamentals of Economics and Production Management. Edited by I. I. Sigov. Moscow, “Ekonomika,” 1972.

6. USA: Contemporary Methods of Management. Edited by B. Z. Milner. Moscow, “Nauka,” 1971.

7. Management of the Socialist Economy. Edited by V. A. Protopopov. Moscow, “Moskovskii rabochii,” 1972.

8. “Socialist Labor,” 1972, Nos. 1–12.