25 YEARS – IS IT A LOT OR A FEW? THE DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY OF ORGANIZATIONS AND MANAGEMENT AT THE MOSCOW UNIVERSITY

Abstract

The a rticle briefly describes the history of the Department of Sociology of organizations and management at the Moscow University. It highlights the important stages of the department’s development: its formation as a Russian-American unit, the period of mass paid education in the field of management and a modern stage, which is characterized by the search of innovative educational synthesis of sociology and management. The article highlights the role of heads of the Department – S. Rayn-smith, S.R. Filonovich, G.N. Butyrin – in shaping educational and scientific strategies. Department history is correlated with the most important changes in the economy and society, as well as in the education system. In particular, we consider the or-ganizational and socio-political difficulties of cooperation with Western scholars in the field of education. From the very beginning of its development the Department focused on the comparative analysis and the complementarity of domestic and foreign approaches to management. Today, managers of successful Russian companies are not inferior to their foreign colleagues as regards knowledge of modern management concepts, appropriate training and the relevant slang. At the same time over the years there has been a radical change in the assessment of the Western role in the development of the national economy as a whole and individual organizations. Management education in modern conditions increasingly resembles learning the art rather than classical science. Artist learns some kind of craft practices, it is impossible to make a great master using even the most perfect system of education. A manager during educational programs visits an exhibition of ideas with which he / she can agree or not, which may be perceived as adequate to the situation of his / her company or not. For this reason the Department started studies of specific relationships between management and literature, sociology and art. In the article the problems and prospects of management education’s development are distinguished. Management education, along with the economic and legal, has become “mass production” in recent years. At the moment two segments clearly manifest themselves – ordinary education for office plankton and elitist program. The first is increasingly given to private “commercial” universities, while the leading universities and their divisions focus on the programs of the latter kind. Analyzing of the contradictory development of management education the author repeatedly emphasizes that at in this field even failures, groundless demands and false premises, if take place in the conditions of the competent guidance and free discussion, can always bring a positive result.