Word: researchers
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...CHIEF OF RESEARCH: Betty Satterwhite Sutter...
...managers live in a financial fantasy land. "Right now factory managers don't know when they're doing a good job. They can say they're profitable even though they're selling tractors for $2,000 when they should be selling them for $5,000," says Judy Shelton, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution in California and author of a new book titled The Coming Soviet Crash. But Moscow is cautious about letting plants determine prices for fear that the move would spark a burst of inflation and consumer outrage...
...shots from Moscow. For example, the government has ordered far more computers than factories can produce without sacrificing strict quality standards, instead of allowing the plants to set their own targets. Western economists think Moscow should give individual managers more discretion to experiment with new technologies and independent research. Says Philip Hanson, a Soviet-economics specialist at Britain's University of Birmingham: "The fundamental role of the market in weeding out unsuccessful technological processes and forcing firms to innovate is something that a lot of Soviet officials don't really grasp...
...ways of doing business will be just as hard to replace as the rusting machinery. "It is not that they aren't going to make some progress, but it's much more difficult than starting out with a clean slate," says John Hardt, a Soviet specialist at the Congressional Research Service...
Such worries have not slowed the managers at the Elektrosila plant. They have teamed up with ten other factories and six research centers in Leningrad to form a consortium to explore new manufacturing methods. They plan to sell their equipment in package deals so that customers can sign up for an entire power plant with a single stroke of the pen. Elektrosila hopes for a substantial boost in exports to raise the foreign currency the plant needs to buy up-to-date Western machinery. At the moment the factory has only 7 million rubles ($11.2 million) in hard currency...