Resumen

GORBANEFF, Yuri. The agency problem and Stalinist corporate culture. Innovar [online]. 2004, vol.14, n.24, pp.28-38. ISSN 0121-5051.

The agency problem is one of the obstacles hampering organisations' efficiency. The theory suggests two solutions: private property and corporate culture. However, isolating culture's effect on organisations is no easy matter. Stalinist social engineering provides interesting material for evaluating corporate culture's effects on an economic system. The hypothesis is as follows. Soviet management, when confronted by growing agency costs, had to invent another method for reducing agency losses which could not be private property or direct democratic control over the means of production. They had recourse to nationally implanting the heroic corporate culture. It was successfully applied and generated the necessary conditions for industrialisation during 1920-1930 and for the Soviet economy's high performance during the Second World War. The heroic corporate culture's disappearance after Stalin's death awoke the ghost of agency. Having performed effectively from the 1960s onwards, the Soviet economy began to decline, ending with Perestroika at the end of the 1980s. The second hypothesis consists of the ghost of agency, banished from 1920-1950 by heroic Stalinist culture, returning to devour the planned economy.

Palabras clave : Agency theory; organisational culture; property.

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