POLITICS AND TECHNOLOGY IN THE SOVIET PETROLEUM INDUSTRY: THE RECORD OF THE SEVENTIES AND THE CHALLENGE OF THE EIGHTIES

This dissertation assesses the prospects for technological development in the Soviet petroleum industry. The focus of the study is on the ways organizational, bureaucratic, environmental, and other systemic factors affect the innovative process. Chapters I and II are devoted to defining the technological development process in terms of concepts drawn from political systems analysis, to describing the major policy approaches to innovation, and to highlighting the major organizational relationships in the petroleum industry. Chapters III and IV examine the ways systemic factors affect technological development in the petroleum extraction, drilling, and exploration functions. Chapter V assesses the impact of foreign technology on the innovative capability of the industry. The study concludes that the prospects for increasing the pace of technological development are poor. The prime causes of technological lag are found in the economic system of the industry and in the organizational and bureaucratic relationships derived from central planning. Soviet leaders have required that technological development be pursued without significant modifications to the economic system--a system which places more emphasis on achieving planned targets than on technological development. The petroleum industry responds primarily to the quantitative incentives of central planning and only secondarily to the technological needs of the industry. Petroleum managers have attempted to integrate innovation and central planning by modifying the planning system, by changing the incentive system, and by reorganizing the industry. To date, the desired results have not been achieved because the underlying structures and relationships have remained intact. The failures of modest internal reform to spur technological development coupled with an unwillingness to pay the political price implied in more fundamental reforms have caused the Soviets to seek out foreign technology. But the same factors which have retarded indigeneous innovation also have prevented the development of an effective technological acquisition program. Most purchases have been directed toward overcoming a few key bottlenecks in the industry, not toward establishing a better innovative capability. The foreign technological acquisition program has had little effect on long range production of petroleum and even less on indigeneous innovative capability.