Pribytkova Karina P.,
Candidate of Historical Sciences, Independent Researcher, Barnaul, Russia, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
“To Fulfill the Plan at Any Cost”: The Problem of Motivation for Quality Work on Machine-building Enterprises of Altai Territory in the 1940s–1980s
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2020-1-7
The article investigates the practices of motivating workers for high-quality work on the machine-building enterprises of the Altai Territory in the 1940s–1980s. The research was carried out on the basis of microhistorical approach. Three machine-building enterprises were chosen as objects of study: the Barnaul Transport Machinery Plant (Transmash), the Altai Tractor Plant (ATZ) and the Barnaul Railway Car Repair Plant (VRZ). Microanalysis was implemented in combination with the study of state labor policy. It is shown that the problem of high rejection rate and poor-quality output associated with the poor-quality labor on the Altai enterprises was not solved during the period under study. It is established that during the Great Patriotic War coercion occupied a leading place in the state incentive system for high quality work, while reducing the rejection rate wasn’t declared as the main objective for the administration of enterprises. At the turn of the 1940s‒1950s the state payed attention to the problem of the poor-quality labor of industrial workers. But only moral inducement wus strengthened to solve this problem. The decrees of the Kosygin economic reform in the second half of the 1960s and Acceleration and Perestroika Policy set the goal of improving the quality of industrial products through incentive compensation for quality work and severe penalties for production rejects. Under the real operating conditions of industrial enterprises production managers were unable to actively use incentives for improving the quality of work. Due to the high turnover, wage funds at the enterprises were distributed to increase average earnings for retention of labor force. Under the conditions of non-rhythmic Soviet production, middle and lower-level managers refused to apply strict penalties for production rejects, because reducing quality requirements for the production was an effective way to fulfill the established plans.
Publishing: 28/02/2020
How to cite: Pribytkova K.P. “To Fulfill the Plan at Any Cost”: The Problem of Motivation for Quality Work on Machine-building Enterprises of Altai Territory in the 1940s–1980s // Historical Courier, 2020, No. 1 (9), pp. 81–91. [Available online:] http://istkurier.ru/data/2020/ISTKURIER-2020-1-07.pdf
Links: Issue 1 2020
Keywords: labour motivation; work incentives; Soviet industry; Altai Territory; microhistory