COST-ACCOUNTING, PATERNALISM, EFFICIENCY, INNOVATION: LESSONS OF SOVIET DISCUSSION (Part 2)
The work is the second article by R. Nureyev and P. Orekhovsky, which presents a retrospective analysis of the views of Soviet economists on the problems of cost accounting, the efficiency of social production and innovation. The main hypothesis of the work, combining the first and second parts, is the existence of a collective cognitive structure of economic science, within which Soviet economists needed to create a system of incentives and sanctions that would allow them to achieve the desired results. This approach was at the heart of the cost accounting models, and in the management of research and production associations, and in stimulating the work of workers in scientific organizations. The article characterizes the differences between the decentralized mechanism for the development and implementation of innovations under capitalism and the centralized mechanism under socialism, as J. Schumpeter understood them. Despite the adoption of the normative provision on scientific and production associations in the USSR in the mid-1970s, the Soviet mechanism for the development and implementation of innovations remained centralized, which excluded the emergence of the institution of intellectual property and the decentralized acquisition of resources for innovations. Nevertheless, both in Soviet economic science and in the views of the political leadership, ideas about the need for a decentralized R&D mechanism and subsequent innovations dominated. It was assumed that a correct assessment of the effectiveness of research and production associations, as well as the work of scientific workers, would accelerate the rate of scientific and technological progress, shorten the cycle «science - production». Already in the 1960s. in the USSR, experiments with scientometrics begin. With external neutrality, the indicators of the effectiveness of scientific work fit into the cognitive structure associated with the algorithm of the behavior of an economic person. At the same time, scientometrics removed the political responsibility for the results of R&D and the setting of goals from the party and economic leadership and shifted it to scientists who did not have the necessary resources or authority. In conclusion, it is concluded that there is no reflection of the Soviet experience, which leads to a repetition of previous illusions about the effectiveness of scientometrics and mistakes in the formation of a national innovation system.