Managing director Mr. Sisyphus – Romanian industry leaders facing the absurdities of a state-socialist economy
Dirk Bunzel, Keele University
Mihaela Kelemen, Keele University
This paper explores the ambiguous status and ambivalent identity of managing directors in socialist-socialist enterprises. Torn between political imperatives, imposed by the omnipresent authority of the Communist Party, and economic predicaments of a state-socialist economy, these executives struggled with the absurdities of ‘real existent state-socialism’. While often portrayed as ideological simpletons or obedient technocrats, we draw on secondary data and interviews to demonstrate that their status eschewed simplistic classifications of state-socialist apparatchiks. On the contrary, their subordination to a double line of political and economic authority rendered them versatile arbitrators among different rationalities, obligations, and coalitions. Faced with economic targets set by a central planning committee and confronted with the flawed allocation and the inefficient use of resources, they not only had to negotiate with between demands of the state-bureaucracy and the expectations of their workforce; they also had to keep their factory, plant, or mine running under conditions of endemic shortages of raw-material, equipment, and labour. In the light of this ‘mission impossible’, many of them turned cynic or corrupt and succumbed to the common manipulation of plan figures and illegal practices of an increasingly fictional and greyish state-socialist economy. Yet, there were also those who – against all odds – still subscribed to the communist ideal of building a better future for all working people. The latter combined a strong work ethos, idealistic values, and paternalism and with innovativeness, creativity, and genuine concern for their staff. As our data illustrate, they turned into `kings of improvisation’ and they struck ‘compensatory deals’ with workers to meet the imposed target figures.
Given the primacy of politics and the ensuing power of party executives and given the economic inefficiency and the failure of state-socialism to produce continuous economic growth, these industry leaders faced an uphill clime when trying to reconcile political imaginary and socio-economic realities. In fact, their subordination to incompatible political and economic imperatives and their lack of planning authority and economic sanctioning power turned both their status and the aspiration absurd. Consequently, we explore status and aspirations of managing directors in Romania in the light of Albert Camus’ ‘Myth of Sisyphus’ to illustrate that the situation of state-socialist business leaders resembled Camus’ depiction of the absurd as evolving from a tension between the meaninglessness of the world and the desire of wo/man to make sense of this predicament. We also suggest that some of these leaders accepted their fate by dedicating their lives to an idealistic but unfeasible cause. In other words, we shall portrait economic leadership as relentless revolt against the absurdities of state-socialist reality.