Introduction

Abstract

Last month's issue, which was devoted to the status of management education in the Soviet Union, contained articles on a variety of management programs and curricula that have recently been developed. This month's issue focuses on some of the new methodologies being used to teach management skills. These novel subjects and innovative instructional methods are dramatically different from those that existed before perestroika. They are worlds away from what I experienced as the only non-Soviet participant in an executive management program at the Plekhanov Institute of the National Economy in Moscow in 1979-80. The one hundred executives from all corners of the Soviet Union who attended the three-month in-residence program listened to lectures for five hours a day on management subjects such as planning, production, and business law, as well as international communism and civil defense. While some managers stated that they benefited from the program, many others said that the material was not new: they had to know it in order to have been appointed to their positions.