As Soviet industrial management enters the 1980s, the search for a viable management system has had ambiguous or marginal results. Initially, the problems addressed by the various strategies of rationalization are complex and deeply rooted. Burdened from its inception with pervasive and chronic problems of operation, the system of centralized administrative controls has served as a powerful instrument for socioeconomic development. There is clearly serious reason for questioning whether the complex of formal and informal organizations which has become highly institutionalized over the past half century can respond with sufficient coherence and rationality to the challenges accompanying industrial maturation.

An assessment of these changes should be approached circumspectly because the process of rationalization has proceeded in an uneven and contradictory fashion. In many respects, the most interesting and perhaps in the long run most important aspect of the effort to develop more effective systems of decision making and control has been intellectual. Theoretical concerns have played and presumably will continue to play a significant role in redefining the problems of management and prescribing solutions. The search for a systemic, technically effective theory of management, however, has been heavily burdened by ideological and institutional interests and severe complexity. The major contribution of the search for theory appears in its often trenchant criticism of the administrative model and the growth of cybernetics as a general theory of management.

Quite clearly, there is a strong presumption that urban industrial societies are far too complex and dynamic to be captured within a single, integrated empirical theory.