ABSTRACT
The general aim of this chapter is to analyse on a historical and comparative basis the process by which alternatives have been created to the centralised model of enterprise management developed in the Soviet Union in the 1930s and transferred to other countries after the war. (As in Chapter 2, the unit of analysis is the enterprise, its internal structures and some of its mechanisms.) The assumption is that since the Soviet model was transferred to other socialist countries as well as Bulgaria, the evidence on the development of the Bulgarian alternative presented in the preceding chapters needs to be compared with developments in some other countries and in the Soviet Union in order to show the significance of the similarities and differences in the various models. The previous chapters on Bulgaria have shown how attempts were made to increase enterprise autonomy and to redesign the structures and mechanisms of management and labour relations from the late 1970s. The process of decentralisation which was attempted was intended to establish a self-management model. In comparing the processes in different countries it is argued that there are two basic alternatives to the centralised model: a managerial model and a labour-managed model. In both models there is some increase in enterprise economic autonomy, so that there is a shift in the pressures which provide the external source of its dynamics from those of the central planners towards some pressures from the market. Internally the essential difference between the two models is in the basis of power and authority in the enterprise. Thus, as explained in Chapter 3, the model established in Bulgaria from 1982 to 1988 was a labour-managed model whereas the model introduced in 1989 was a managerial model. In practice, neither is a pure model, but in the labour-managed model there is a clear concept of accountability to the general assembly at the base as well as upwards to the higher bodies whereas in the managerial model power is explicitly conferred on management and the role of the general assembly is primarily consultative or advisory. The two models imply different models of the labour process and labour relations. It is an aim of this chapter to show the processes by which such alternative models came to be designed since 1950.
