Management Theory and Revolutionary Practice: The Evolution of Soviet Estonian Management Thought, 1963-1991

• In Event: The Dynamics of Socialist Technocracy: Governance, Management, and Expertise in the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia, 1960s–1990s

Abstract

The paper traces the life and legacy of Soviet Estonian management guru Raoul Üksvärav, following his academic year in the USA (1963–64) and his establishment of the chair of industrial management at the Tallinn Polytechnic Institute (TPI). In the 1970s, Prof. Üksvärav and his students developed TPI into a center for management innovation, bridging Western and Soviet approaches. The concepts borrowed from US management theory – leadership, self-regulation, strategy, consultation, scenario – formed a conceptual infrastructure that helped reimagine organizational relationships and facilitate market-socialist experiments. In that way, “Üksvärav school” created a shared language between TPI scholars and reform-minded officials, which illuminates why Estonia continued to be a laboratory for economic reform in the USSR. The paper pays special attention to how Üksvärav’s students Erik Terk and Tiit Elenurm introduced novel approaches like “innovation game” and “scenario method” in the mid-1980s. These ideas provided a methodological platform for Estonia’s self-management movement (IME) during perestroika (1987–89), when many TPI scholars became movement activists. Thus, the paper reveals how management theory, typically viewed as apolitical, served as a vehicle for political change in the late 1980s.

Author

• Juhan Saharov, U of Tartu (Estonia)