Bulletin of the Tomsk Polytechnic Institute named after S. M. Kirov, holder of the Order of the October Revolution and the Order of the Red Banner of Labor

Vol. 299　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　1976

IMPROVING MANAGERIAL WORK

IN GEOLOGICAL ORGANIZATIONS

P. I. STEPANOV

(The article was presented by the scientific seminar of the Department of Industrial Economics and Enterprise Organization)

Management of geological exploration work is a multi-tiered process. The principal performers of the work are geological parties, which, as a rule, are combined into specialized expeditions, and the latter into territorial geological administrations. Territorial geological administrations carrying out work on the territory of the RSFSR are subordinate to the Ministry of Geology of the RSFSR, and the latter to the Ministry of Geology of the USSR. The Ministry of Geology of the USSR is a union-republican ministry.

Under these conditions, questions of the proper distribution of duties, rights, and responsibility both along the hierarchical ladder and within management staffs, the determination of the level at which individual functions are to be decided, and also the organization of the labor of employees of management staffs, are of great importance.

In the country’s geological service, work is being carried out to create normative-organizational documentation aimed at improving managerial work.

Standard regulations concerning individual structural subdivisions and leading officials of territorial administrations, expeditions, and parties are being created, approved, and brought to the attention of the executors. This work is being carried out both in a centralized and in a decentralized manner. Along with the Ministry of Geology of the USSR, territorial geological administrations and expeditions are engaged in drafting regulations; they specify the standard regulations and also develop new regulations and instructions for subdivisions and officials for whom no standard regulations exist. Analysis shows that the existing and newly created regulations and job descriptions have substantial shortcomings, especially with respect to the clear regulation of rights.

Without the proper and clear definition of rights, regulations and job descriptions lose much of their value and do not fully eliminate shortcomings in the organization of managerial work. Duplication and lack of responsibility in the performance of official functions continue to occur; structural subdivisions and leading officials are turned into functionaries who passively carry out the orders, directives, and instructions of the one-man manager.

The one-man manager, in accordance with paragraphs 92 and 93 of the “Regulations on the Socialist State Production Enterprise,” distri-

when distributing duties among his subordinates, must also transfer to them part of his rights in the sphere of organizing labor and production, material and moral incentives and penalties, and also in the sphere of independently making decisions on individual functions.

In developing provisions on the duties, rights, and responsibilities of structural subdivisions, as well as of officials of the West Siberian Geological Administration, we changed the commonly used structure of such provisions. Instead of three sections—duties, rights, and responsibility—two sections were introduced: a) performance of duties with the right to make a final decision and with full (individual) responsibility for the quality and results of the decision made; b) performance of duties with the right to prepare proposals for decision-making by a higher-level manager, with responsibility for the timeliness and soundness of the materials submitted for analysis.

Taking this into account, the sections of provisions and job descriptions for officials that concern rights and responsibility are abolished, while questions of rights and responsibility acquire concrete expression and meaning. At the same time, the volume of provisions and job descriptions is substantially reduced, since in the sections on rights and responsibility it had been necessary to list, albeit in brief form, the principal duties, but only from the standpoint of rights and responsibility.

It should be noted that experience in drawing up provisions for geological parties, expeditions, and territorial administrations shows that the heads of these subdivisions are reluctant to decentralize rights and, at the same time, strive in every possible way to increase the scope of responsibility. However, such an approach cannot be regarded as correct. In one expedition of the West Siberian Geological Administration, the heads of brigades and shops were granted the right to impose penalties up to and including a reprimand, and to make decisions on the size of bonus payments within the limits of standard provisions for the fulfillment and overfulfillment of planned targets. However, this procedure did not take root through the fault of both the managers and the performers themselves. The latter find it more convenient when penalties and decisions on the size of bonuses are adopted by higher management, since in that case, in all unfavorable situations, the immediate supervisor remains on the sidelines, referring to the decision having been made by higher management. At the same time, higher management did not make persistent efforts to ensure that the heads of brigades and shops made use of the rights granted to them, fearing abuses and also arguing that they supposedly did not have sufficient qualifications to make the correct decision.

Along with improving the provisions, it is necessary to properly organize the performance of the duties defined by them. Observations show that, in the absence of strict control, performers of all ranks work according to established tradition, very often without making efforts to fully carry out the duties defined by the provisions. Here, properly organized operational planning and operational control must play a major organizing role.

An analysis of the state of planning of managerial work in the administrative offices of a number of territorial geological administrations and expeditions shows that there is no unity or system in this matter. Thus, a questionnaire survey of employees of the administrative offices of the West Siberian Geological Administration and the trust “Kuzbassuglegeologiya” showed that approximately one fifth of employees do not plan their work at all, one fifth plan their work only for the day, one fifth—for...

month and the remainder for the quarter and the year. The situation is the same with deadlines for monitoring the fulfillment of assignments. A check showed that the departments have only quarterly work plans for the department as a whole. The plans are approved by management, but, as a rule, there are no notes on their fulfillment. The quarterly plans reflect the principal types of work for the department, and do so without indicating the time required to carry out the measures. These plans do not cover, and indeed cannot cover, the entire volume of the department’s work.

Such a planning method creates an atmosphere that does not help focus employees’ attention on solving current tasks. Apparently, it would be more correct if, along with quarterly plans, weekly individual plans were drawn up by each employee and approved by the head of the department. In these plans, along with the types of work, the volumes of work, deadlines for completion, the expected result, and a note by the head of the department on completion should be indicated. Weekly individual plans should be systematized and kept in a separate file. The availability of weekly individual plans will make it possible to introduce regularity and evenness into the organization of managerial work in the performance of the functions assigned to the department. Analysis of weekly plans will make it possible to evaluate more objectively the work of employees in carrying out the established duties, rights, and responsibilities.

One of the reserves for improving managerial work is records management, in terms of organizing the receipt and distribution among executors of incoming correspondence, as well as the preparation, collection, processing, and dispatch of outgoing correspondence. Analysis of the state of records management showed that in a number of offices of territorial geological administrations the basic recommendations on records management are very seriously violated.

Records management is part of the auxiliary operations in managerial work, and this work should be performed by auxiliary technical personnel. In practice, along with these workers, records management is handled by qualified engineering and technical personnel. This situation has arisen because of the insufficient number of auxiliary technical personnel and the improper organization of their work.

In 1971, the expenditure of working time by engineering and technical workers of the office of the West Siberian Geological Administration was studied in order to obtain data for analyzing the nature of the work being performed and identifying time spent on performing work not characteristic of their qualifications. Observations showed that engineers and technicians mainly perform work corresponding to the positions they hold. They spend up to 11–15% of their working time on work not characteristic of their qualifications. These losses consist mainly of time spent reading, correcting, stitching together, and dispatching outgoing correspondence: letters, telegrams, and radiograms.

Engineering and technical workers, having prepared a draft text of a letter, themselves carry it for approval to the head of the department, and then to the typist; afterward they themselves pick up the typed text, proofread it, obtain the management’s signature, register it in the outgoing-correspondence book, which is kept in each department, and finally take it to the records clerk, receiving from him, on the second copy, a receipt for acceptance of the letter for dispatch. Telegrams and radiograms follow the same route.

This work could quite well be performed by a courier working under the supervision of the records clerk, who could collect, deliver, and prepare

send out outgoing correspondence in passing while distributing incoming correspondence. However, many employees and heads of departments do not wish to disrupt the established practice, arguing that under this procedure the speed of preparing outgoing documents will slow down and that this procedure will allegedly lead to the loss of documents.

Records-management personnel also do not insist that the courier carry out the movement of outgoing documents in passing while distributing incoming correspondence among the departments. The reason is that, under the existing practice of registering incoming correspondence, the records-management unit, with its current staffing, is not able in timely fashion to perform the work of processing outgoing correspondence. At present, in almost all administrative offices of geological organizations, all incoming correspondence is registered. At the same time, an analysis of incoming correspondence shows that about 60% of the letters and documents received need not be registered and may be handed over to the executors without an entry in the register acknowledging receipt. These include replies to letters from employees of administrative offices, materials arriving for storage in collections, periodicals, invitation cards, abstracts of dissertations, and so forth.

Consequently, by reducing the volume of work involved in processing incoming correspondence, it is possible to increase the time and amount of work that the records-management unit devotes to outgoing documents.

Putting the organization of records management in order will make it possible to free up the time of qualified engineering and technical personnel, which they need so much in order to perform their principal official duties and responsibilities at a higher level.