Enterprises in Yugoslavia as a Specialty of Workers' Self-Management System During Socialism (1945-1990) (original) (raw)

Yugoslavia's labour-managed firms and labour-managed economy in the post-war period

1979

This thesis is concerned with the characteristics of the Yugoslav economy and the implications of the system of workers' self-management as it has developed in Yugoslavia. In the postwar period, the Yugoslav economy was gradually transformed from a centralized Soviet-type economy to a decentra lized 'market-socialist' economy. In the course of this transformation, the locus of decision making shifted from planning agencies to the enter Contents Abstract i Contents iii List of Abbreviations vi List of Tables v ii List of Diagrams x Introduction 1 Part One The Microeconomic Behaviour 8 Chapter One Organizational Structure and Decision Making Power 17 I Organs of Management 22 A. The Workers'Council 24 B. The Management Board 32 C. The Director 35 D. The Supplementary Organs 39 II The Technical/Administrative Strata and Decision Making Power 44 A. Who is Represented on the Organs of Management? The Professional Qualifi cation of the Members of the Workers' Councils and Management Boards 45 B. The Distribution of Decision Making Power Within the Organs of Management 53 IIII The Development of Self-Management and Its Effects on Industrial and Labour Relations IV Summary and Conclusions 65 Chapter Two The Enterprise Objectives and Behaviour I Theories of the Labour-Managed Firm A. Income per Head Maximizing Model B. Profit Maximizing Model C. The Shortcomings of the Theory of the Labour Managed Firm 1 Investment Policy 2 Labour-Management and Debt Financing 3 Diversity of Organizations 4 Application of the Models to Yugoslavia II The Objectives of the Yugoslav Firms and Some of Their Constraints 93 A. The Multiplicity of'Objectives-B. Environmental Factors C. Constraints on Enterprise Operation 104 1 Managerial Limitations 104 2 Financial Limitations 10 8 3 Limitations on the Distribution of Income 110 III Conclusions 112 I V-Chapter Three The Distribution of Enterprise Revenue and the Determination of Wages 114 A. The Central Planning Period (1947-52) 116 B.

Self-management in the Former Yugoslavia: From a Viewpoint of Corporate Governance

2013

Self-management is a unique system that communists in the former Yugoslavia first invented. The outline of its mechanism can be depicted as follows: The highest decision-making body of an enterprise was workers’ council, whose members were elected among workers of the enterprise. Workers controlled the management of their enterprise through the workers’ council. However, professionals of business administrators, who were daily engaged in management of the enterprise, were indispensable. Professionals such as directors were appointed by workers’ councils after calls for candidates for the posts and selections of the candidates by selection committees. A general director was empowered to represent his enterprise and was requested to endeavor to develop the enterprise. Workers’ councils had a power to relieve directors from their positions depending on circumstances. Between professionals and workers there was delicate relationship in which the former directed the latter in daily opera...

An analysis of the Yugoslav socialist system

Academic Journal of Business, Administration, Law and Social Sciences, 2015

The Socialist Yugoslav Federation established from 1951 to 1990 introduced the so-called system of “social ownership”. While in the system of planned economy, private property was negated from “means of production”, in the economic system of self-management of workers (Yugoslav Federation) an object (thing) that was in social property had no owner. In Yugoslavia, from 19741990, the “Basic organization of associated labor” was the institution which met the needs of the economic system of self-management and social property. The “Basic organization of associated labor” was defined in Article 14 of the Yugoslav Constitution from 1974 as “a workers union, in which workers fulfill directly or equally their social-, economicand self-administering rights, and decide on issues dealing with the socio-economic situation of the organization”. Based on Article 463 of the law “On associated labor” from 1976, this organization consisted of the Council of Workers, which was also the centraland the...

The self-managing factory after Tito : the crisis of Yugoslav socialism on the shop floor

2016

This dissertation investigates the altering ways in which Yugoslav blue-collar workers understood the recurring crises of Yugoslav socialism, as well as the changing nature of the relationship between different occupational groups inside the factories and the ruling party. It sheds light on regional specificities by systematically following and comparing the evolution of discussions and mobilizations inside two metal factories, based in Serbia (Industrija motora Rakovica) and Slovenia (Tovarna avtomobilov Maribor). The analysis begins with a short overview of the factory origins, the birth of workers’ self-management in the early 1950s, as well as the emerging industrial conflicts taking place in the liberalized political and economic system of the 1960s, highlighting how the two factories formed opposing interpretations of selfmanagement and attempted to grapple with the crisis of ‘market socialism’. The focus of the dissertation, however, is on the later turbulent period between t...

Self — Management and Requirements for Social Property : Lessons from Yugoslavia

2003

1. Problems with transitions in Eastern Europe have focused attention on alternatives to both central—planning and unregulated markets. Naive enthusiasm for the market has already begun to wane in the face of growing economic chaos and inequality, precipitating a search for more humane and stable forms of organization. Theoretically and in practice, worker self—management is being advocated as a system able to produce efficiently and at the same time distribute goods and power equitably. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the role of self—management in achieving equity and efficiency from both theoretical models of the self—managed economy and the experience of Yugoslavia, the one economy at least nominally self—managed on a system—wide scale. 2. Theoretical models derive from many different frameworks, distinguished from each other by assumptions about property rights, the level of competitiveness or openness of the economy and even the objectives of the worker—managers withi...

Industrial Democracy in the Former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

The focus of this paper will be on industrial democracy model existed in former SFRY, as one of the pioneer countries in realising the concept of workers’ participation to achieve the democratic working conditions. In order to understand better the model itself, I will provide a necessary short overview on the legal situation preceding it, considering the economic, social and political factors that were present in the countries entering the Monarchy of Serbians, Croatians and Slovenian (later the Monarchy of Yugoslavia) and general situation that Yugoslavia has been in that influenced creation of workers’ collective bodies following the timeline of different levels of industrial level and state systems that SFRY has passed through till becoming socialist country. In doing so, I will highlight the most important legal documents that played pivotal role in introducing industrial democracy in Yugoslavia, that were not always necessarily in direct relationship with collective workers’ participation, but rather have a role on explaining the conditions under which this type of participation was developing.

YUGOSLAV SELF-MANAGEMENT AND HIDDEN COGNITIVE MAPS OF CROATIAN LABOUR

This thesis is focusing on industrial workers in Croatia. First question that I am addressing is about ideological continuities and legacies of socialism in current period on the side of Croatian workers. I am trying to uncover hidden histories of labor and hidden cognitive maps of workers perspective on property, workplace and their approach to work. In short, what do workers think who built and who owns the factories? Secondly, I am trying to contribute to debates led about Yugoslav self-management and its empowering effects for workers. It stems from my research that self-management in Croatia indeed provided workers with certain amount of power over production process, and that it can be characterized as management-worker coalition in fight for market survival. Keywords: Labor power, Yugoslav Self-management, Legacy of Socialism, Social Property, Ideological and Institutional Legacies