|
Soviet Union [USSR] SOVIET INNOVATION: PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS
Central to an understanding of Soviet science and technology is
an understanding of the innovation process. Innovation, which is
the transfer of a scientific discovery (new product or process)
into production, has long been a problem for the Soviet Union.
Despite a strong scientific base, the country has had a mixed
record of innovation. Although in some--particularly defense-
related--industries Soviet scientists and engineers have scored
major technological successes, in many other--particularly
consumer--industries they have failed to implement useful
innovations. In the late 1980s, the status of innovation was a key
concern of the leadership, which sought new policies and
institutional arrangements to facilitate the process.
In the 1980s, several key problems affected Soviet innovation.
One was that factory managers had little incentive to introduce new
products or processes. Innovation in a command economy differs
greatly from innovation in a market economy. In the latter, the
drive to introduce technological change emanates from the
producers, who attempt to satisfy consumer demand before
competitors do. In the Soviet economy, production of innovative
products and processes has been assigned by government planners.
Producers have been directed by top-level planning organs to
incorporate in their plants' output a newly innovated product or
process. Yet in the Soviet economy a plant's success has been
measured by the gross output required by the annual plan. Factory
managers have strived to fulfill the plan in terms of the quantity
of goods produced. Managers have viewed introducing a new product
or process, which may result in a slowdown in production, as an
impediment to their goal of plan fulfillment. They generally have
been unwilling to forgo certain success in exchange for potentially
greater, yet unguaranteed, future capability.
Another problem dealt with pricing policies. In the Soviet
economy, prices of goods have been determined by central planners
rather than in response to market demand. To boost innovation,
planners sometimes permitted factory managers to charge higher
prices for newly innovated products. These prices often were set
too low to compensate for the increased cost of production and for
the risk of failure. Therefore, prices have done little to
encourage innovation. In fact, according to one Western specialist,
this pricing mechanism often has been counterproductive. It
promoted a practice whereby managers tended to exaggerate the
degree of novelty of a new or improved product to central pricing
authorities in an attempt to receive permission to charge higher
prices and thus boost profits. Incentives given to industrial
research development personnel on the basis of the expected return
from a new innovation also have failed to improve the process.
Yet another problem has been the organizational separation
among the various facilities engaged in research, development, and
production. The separation occurred because Soviet scientific and
technological facilities have tended to specialize in one phase of
the research-to-production cycle. Research institutions, design
organizations, testing facilities, and production facilities
operated independently from one another. As a result, the transfer
of a scientific discovery from the necessary development and
testing phases to final production has necessitated crossing
multiple organizational boundaries. To be successful, such
transfers required stringent interorganizational cooperation to
ensure proper timing and exchange of information. Soviet and
Western observers agree that this cooperation has been generally
lacking in the Soviet Union, where institutional interests have
tended to override other considerations and information exchange
among scientists and engineers has been limited.
Organizational separation, however, was not limited to the
successive stages of the research-to-production cycle. Soviet
facilities also were separated in terms of their organizational
affiliation. The results of scientific research and design work
often must cross organizational boundaries to enter production.
This has imposed yet another layer of bureaucracy, which has done
little to encourage innovation. The most difficult barrier has been
that existing between research institutions subordinate to the
Academy of Sciences and production facilities subordinate to an
industrial ministry. Even within the industrial ministry system,
production facilities subordinate to one ministry have been
hesitant to cooperate with those subordinate to a different
ministry.
The ability to innovate also has been hurt by a lack of
research and development equipment and of experimental testing and
production facilities. Equipment has been inadequate in quality and
quantity. The absence of appropriate testing facilities has
affected all science and technology organizations but has been
particularly evident in the Academy of Sciences organizational
network. Academy scientists generally have had to rely on industry
to make available testing and production facilities, but, as they
often stated in the 1980s, industry did not comply. As a result,
academy officials, especially those in the Siberian Division and in
the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, initiated the development of the
academy's own experimental facilities.
Funding has been another key factor adversely affecting
innovation. In theory, one of the advantages of a command economy
is the ability to concentrate resources in a given area. Over the
years, the Soviet Union has repeatedly taken advantage of this
ability by focusing resources on technologies and industries
considered to have strategic importance, e.g., the military. Yet
priority allocation, by definition, has been limited. Not all
industries can receive the same attention. Indeed, the Soviet
experience has been one in which selected industries and
technologies were developed at the expense of others.
To some degree the innovation problems in the 1980s were a
result of deliberate choices made in response to conditions arising
after 1917. According to Ronald Amann, a Sovietologist affiliated
with the University of Birmingham in England, the early decisions
made by Soviet leaders to overcome technological backwardness
significantly influenced the long-range development of technology.
The decisions were those that focused on replicating Western models
instead of developing indigenous technology, that concentrated
resources on industries considered by the leadership to have
strategic importance, and that compensated for the shortage of
skilled manpower by developing specialized and centralized research
and development organizations in each branch of industry. These
decisions contributed to the evolution of a system that in the
1980s was characterized by uneven technological progress and by the
separation of science and production facilities.
From the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s, Soviet leaders' response
to these innovation difficulties has been a series of economic and
organizational reforms. They have introduced measures aimed at
improving planning and at providing greater financial incentives to
organizations engaged in innovation. They also have tried to
overcome the barriers separating research, development, and
production facilities. The implementation of reforms accelerated
under Gorbachev, who viewed the improvement of Soviet science and
technology as crucial to his goal of economic restructuring
(
perestroika--see Glossary).
In September 1987, the CPSU Central Committee and the Council
of Ministers issued called decree "On the Changeover of Scientific
Organizations to Full Cost Accounting and Self-Financing."
Basically, the decree changed the way in which all types of
scientific organizations were financed. Instead of receiving state
funds allocated to finance the operation of the entire
organization, scientific establishments would be financed on the
basis of specific research, planning, and design projects. These
would be arranged through contracts with other organizations,
primarily industrial
enterprises (see Glossary). The theory behind
this change was to encourage scientific organizations to generate
a "product" more useful to industry and to assume more
responsibility for the applicability of their output. To increase
the incentives for assuming greater responsibility, the decree also
stipulated that the basic source of an organization's wage and
incentive funds would be the profits earned by that organization.
A similar decree, the Law on State Enterprises (Associations), was
issued at approximately the same time. It granted to industrial
enterprises greater authority to manage their own operations and
established a closer link between funds for worker benefits and
enterprise profits.
The organizational remedies instituted under Gorbachev expanded
several arrangements to attempt to bridge the gap between
scientific and production entities. The first involved the
scientific production associations (nauchno-proizvodstvennye
ob"edineniia--NPOs), which were introduced in the late 1960s.
NPOs combined under one management all facilities involved in a
particular research-to-production program--the research
institutions, design organizations, testing facilities, and
production facilities. Soviet leaders considered this arrangement
more conducive to innovation because it enabled one leading
component, usually the research institution, to coordinate the work
of the other components engaged in the process. Although officials
admitted that NPOs have had operational problems (such as poor
planning and lack of an experimental base), they rated NPOs as
successful overall. In 1986 they began an expansion in the number
of NPOs. Whereas in 1985 there were approximately 250 NPOs (roughly
the same number that existed in the early 1970s), in 1986 there
were 400, with an additional 100 projected for the following year.
A similar organizational remedy was the formation of the
interbranch scientific-technical complex (mezhotraslevoi
nauchno-tekhnicheskii kompleks--MNTK). Based on so-called
engineering centers established in the Ukrainian Academy of
Sciences, MNTKs were initiated in 1985. MNTKs differed from NPOs in
that they encompassed, as their name implies, facilities
subordinate to various administrative authorities, including the
Academy of Sciences. MNTKs were also larger than NPOs; in fact,
some MNTKs included several NPOs and industrial production
associations. In January 1988, Soviet officials reported that more
than twenty MNTKs, including approximately 500 organizations and
enterprises and elements of more than sixty ministries and
departments, had been formed.
MNTKs were charged with coordinating and performing all the
research and development work in their given area, from basic
research to production. To facilitate their work, MNTKs were
empowered to request resources in addition to those allocated by
the plan; to receive priority in establishing pilot production
bases and in ordering materials and resources; and to have the
right to demand full delivery of the ordered amounts.
In an assessment of the MNTKs published in January 1988, two
Soviet economists discussed the accomplishments of the "Rotor" and
"Mikrokhirurgiia glaza" MNTKs. The former had expanded the
production of automatic rotary and rotary conveyor lines in 1987
and expected to more than double production in 1988. The Rotor MNTK
also developed a rotary conveyor line for the injection molding of
items made of thermoplastic materials. The Mikrokhirugiia glaza
MNTK was credited with developing a new technology for performing
higher quality operations that significantly shortened overall
treatment time. On the negative side, however, the economists
listed several problems hindering the operation of MNTKs: lack of
cooperation of superior organs, substantial lag in the development
of experimental facilities, shortage of designers and manufacturing
engineers, insufficient authority to make financing, absence of a
unified plan for an MNTK, and confusion regarding the composition
of MNTKs. Despite these criticisms, Soviet authorities in the late
1980s repeatedly stated their support of MNTKs and presented them
as a promising link between science and production.
Data as of May 1989
|
