tion stopped far short of the goal of a unified and 

 organic system. Amounting to little more than a me- 

 chanical conglomerate of autonomous units, the NPO 

 was transformed into "an administrative superstruc- 

 ture, a superficial link on the path from the minis- 

 try and glavk to science and production. "60 Even 

 among the earliest and most tauted NPOs institutional 

 consolidation was slow and incomplete. An investiga- 

 tion of nine major NPOs of this kind by the Academy's 

 Institute of Economics in 1974 found that a council 

 of directors had not yet been formed in three of the 

 complexes. One still lacked a scientific-technical 

 council for the association. 61 



On the other hand, centralization was sometimes 

 carried to an extreme. Constituent units of an NPO 

 were denied any autonomy, even in operational manage- 

 ment and control. This situation proved especially 

 debilitating when the association contained subdivi- 

 sions that were highly diverse and geographically 

 dispersed. As a result the NPO became unmanageable. 

 The decision process became frozen as each unit was 

 forced to go to the highest levels and much time was 

 lost in getting agreements and approvals. In short, 

 association members became caught in the familiar bu- 

 reaucratic chain from which they were supposedly to 

 be liberated. 



Of these two tendencies, the first was the most 

 dominant. The retention of autonomy by components 

 almost everywhere impeded, if not prevented, the de- 

 velopment of an integrated planning and management 

 structure for the association as a whole. Pressure 

 subsequently mounted on Moscow authorities to impose 

 greater centralization. Significantly, the official 

 statute on the NPO, which was finally approved by the 

 Council of Ministers on December 30, 1975, stipulates 

 that all units joining an NPO are denied any legal 

 autonomy. At the same time, the ministries and re- 

 public officials have been given some discretion in 

 applying this ruling and making exceptions .62 intra- 

 associational relations are likely to continue to re- 

 flect substantial diversity in practice, if not in 

 form. How successful the 1975 statute will be in 

 overcoming formal merger without leading at the same 



216 



