Faculty at Moscow University, also notes, "Today vir- 

 tually all questions of any importance — and above all 

 the key problems of S&T progress — have become inter- 

 branch in nature." "This is why," he explains, "im- 

 provement of the mechanism of interbranch coordina- 

 tion is one of the core problems of management." As 

 regards this problem, Politburo member M. S. Solomen- 

 tsev, who is also Premier of the Russian Republic, 

 acknowledges flatly, "There is nothing of greater ur- 

 gency.""-^ Indeed, the administrative machinery en- 

 counters its greatest challenges in dealing with com- 

 plex S&T problems. At a time when the importance of 

 this class of management problems is rising, the de- 

 ficiencies of the existing system of coordination are 

 becoming all the more apparent. 



Official concern with surmounting these shortcom- 

 ings provides, in fact, the impetus behind the grow- 

 ing systems movement in the Soviet Union today. Sys- 

 tems technology is fast becoming the final word in 

 organization, planning, and management as the leader- 

 ship seeks more effective methods of integration and 

 control. 



Taken together, developments in the areas of or- 

 ganization, planning, and management indicate, to a 

 large extent, the efforts being made to bring space- 

 age management perspective and technique to the Krem- 

 lin. The current emphasis on setting objectives, de- 

 veloping action plans, determining the means to ac- 

 complish them, and appraising performance on the ba- 

 sis of results is the essence of modern management. 

 The "programmed-goals approach" is basically Soviet- 

 style "management by objectives," "results management," 

 and "systems planning, programming, and budgeting," to 

 use equivalent Western terms. Much like leaders of 

 complex organizations the world over today, in gov- 

 ernment and business, Brezhnev and company are at- 

 tempting to use these tools to improve managerial 

 performance and effectiveness as well as to ensure 

 Party control. 



In the organization of management, two problems in 

 particular are being singled out. The first is the 



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