From Illyria towards Capitalism: Did Labour-Management Theory Teach Us Anything about Yugoslavia and Transition in Its Successor States?

Abstract

This paper explores whether labour-management theory provides significant insights into the operation of the Yugoslav economy and into the process of transition in the Yugoslav successor states. It concludes that the literature offered only modest insights into the operation of the Yugoslav economy, primarily because Yugoslavia did not satisfy many of the basic assumptions of the model. The socialist features of the Yugoslav economy remained dominant, suppressing many of the elements of economic democracy. The most significant contributions of the labour-management literature were theoretical, concerning supply responses of worker-controlled firms in a decentralised source allocation mechanism and the incentive, organisational and efficiency aspects of labour-management.