ious impact on management. Soviet managers developed a management style that David Dyker refers to as the ratchet principle. Managers of state operated enterprises (SOEs) had no interest in significantly improving output or in considerably surpassing their centrally assigned objectives. Soviet managers endeavoured to increase production moderately each year and safely meet, but not noticeably exceed, their assigned production assignments: In other words, they ratcheted up production one notch each year. (Dyker, 1992, P26) In a similar fashion, centrally assigned production goals discouraged Soviet management from developing or employing technological innovations. (Dyker, 1992, P29)The excessive emphasis on central planning discouraged both managerial and technological innovation, as a consequence of this emphasis on steady mediocrity, and an excessive emphasis on centrally assigned production goals, a style of management that encouraged complacency and consistency at the expense of productivity and innovation developed.Under state socialism the economy is subject to rigid control from a central planning agency. This permits the concentration of effort on specific sectors of the economy and the Soviet Union repeatedly demonstrated and ability to make significant production advances in targeted sectors of the economy.However, the innumerable negative aspects of state socialism counteract these positive aspects. In the case of the Soviet Union illustrative, if not comprehensive, examples of these problems have been demonstrated in the body of this essay. Agricultural collectivisation during the 1930s was only accomplished at the cost of extensive coercion and violence. In the years after the Second World War significant productivity gains were made in heavy industry, but they were only achieved at the expense of neglect of the consumer sector and deplorable agricultural productivity. Thus, throughout the state socialist period ...
