Issue 2007 no2-3 contents:

The article evaluates the development of the transition economies’ potential in the area of the state administration system. The author points out the primary challenges the countries faced at the initial stage of transition and gives a thorough analysis to the peculiarities of the strategy options aimed at developing potential and followed by various groups of countries afterwards. The article illustrates that the processes of developing and losing potential opportunities took place simultaneously. The author concludes that despite all the efforts to update the system of state administration taken by transition economies, these countries are still experiencing some difficulties due to the sluggish development and lack of potential required in some areas of the state administration system. The final part of the article outlines the possible reasons for such failures and the basic experience gained in the developing of the state administration potential in the period of transition.

For the last decades the majority of developed countries have been witnessing state role strengthening with national product distribution, which manifested itself in a marked increase in public expense financing. Therefore, public institutions came to putting forward new requirements for the effectiveness of the decisions implemented by the government authorities and for the consequences of the regulatory actions taken in various economic sectors. In this context many countries were forced to revise operational principles and mechanisms of one of the most significant constituent elements of government – the system of public finance, with the government efficiently carrying out its economic functions being a key issue in reforming the system. The article “Finance of Law-based State” dwells on the role of public finance in  a contemporary law-based state. The authors consider the institution of state as a subject for grasping the operational logic of public finance. Regarding the conception of a state, the new institutional theory turns back to J. J. Rousseau’s theory of social contract, provided for people to give up some rights to a government. The article draws a comparison between “market failures” and “government failures” in the light of the present-day public finance updating issues, aimed at transition to a result oriented budgeting. The public finance updating results in reducing negative consequences of both economic “failures” (market and government) with permanent control from public and state institutions. The authors give a thorough analysis of the French budget system reform model with the Constitutional Bylaw on Budget Acts as a key element. It should be noted that the government bodies’ performance objectives in the reform being implemented are viewed from the perspective of a citizen, taxpayer and consumer of the state services. The state budget is expected to become a document open to public scrutiny as a result of reform efforts. This will make it possible to estimate accurately the amount of finance being allocated by the government to any area and to correlate it with the achieved results. It is essential that not only executive bodies, but parliament and financial institutions participated at the initial stage of reform implementation.

The article considers the key factors of increasing international migration of experts  and students, the basic trends, evaluation of socio-economical  onsequences of migration of “brains” and classification of state policy measures in this area. The key factors determining the increase of migration of “brains” include: emergence of knowledge-based economies, development of globalization trends in higher education and research and development area, widening application of information and communication technologies (ICT) in these areas. The article says that sci-tech human resources from all over the world are still brain-drained by the richest states, first of all, the USA, Canada, Australia and Great Britain, though the last decades saw experts’ massive return to their homelands. Foreign scholars are fully engaged in innovative businesses, including transnational ones, and widely employed with research and educational centers. The records show an increase of foreign nationals among the researches working for the developed  countries. Besides the scientific scope, they greatly contribute to high technology areas of economy and social infrastructure, shaping the basic trends in social development, mainly, in ICT and healthcare system. An increase of educational internationalization and providing educational services facilitates an upsurge in student migration, which is considered to be the most rapidly growing one in human migration. The last thirty years witnessed a number of foreign students in the world increasing by 4.5 times and reaching the amount of 2.73 million by 2005. The developed countries, such as  the USA, Great Britain, Germany, France and Australia are the basic destinations of student migration. These countries show a great number of foreign students, study ing natural and technical sciences, including agriculture and engineering. The vast majority of foreign students study general theoretic courses in universities and higher education institutions. However, a considerable number of foreign students do postgraduate studies, particularly, for the scarce professions in host countries, such as agriculture, engineering, mathematics and computer science. Despite their relatively small amount in overall migration flows, the influx of qualified experts and students makes valuable contribution to science and innovative potential development of the host countries, an increase in their hi-tech sectors and knowledge-intensive service industries, such as education, healthcare, communications etc. and economy on the whole. The significant contribution of foreigners in sci-tech development of the USA is clearly indicated by a great number of award winners, including the Nobel Prize, among European and Asian scholars. Generally, foreign researches are characterized by higher capacity, as compared to their local colleagues, which manifests itself in a greater number of academic publications, completed theses and thesis defenses, and quite often foreign scholars earn a higher wages. Income derived from providing educational services is an important part of the services exported by the developed countries. Foreign students are not only the source of extra financing for higher education institutions, but also facilitate their structural modernization and development, emergence of new curricula, trends and departments. If the consequences of foreign experts and students’ admission are unambiguously beneficial, then the profits of the sending countries are not that clear. However, the recent researches, registering a high  ercentage of returning migrants, emphasize a beneficial impact of brain drain on donor states. There is a real competitive struggle for certain groups of students and experts began in the world. Universities, research centers and sci-tech companies located in the USA, Canada and Great Britain struggle more desperately to gain the most gifted foreigners. In order to attract foreign brains, incite experts and students going abroad for education to come back, and stop brain drain the majority of governments are striving to make their living conditions more attractive and professional advancement more promising within their territories. And to achieve the desirable goals the governments, first of all, pursue certain migration, sci-tech  development and education policies.

In the article the attempt is made to identify and to ‘compare’ some of the basic principles on which the intergovernmental and interorganisational setting of France and Germany has been traditionally built as well their recent development. A promising approach for such a discussion is seen in drawing on the ‘territory’/’territoriality’ and ‘function’/’functionality’ as underlying basic organisational principles and premises. In the constitutional and institutional design of the intergovernmental setting and arrangement of a country the concept of ‘territoriality’ focuses on the establishment, in the intergovernmental space, of territorially defined (horizontal) arenas to which a plurality of functions may be assigned and, inasmuch as these arenas are established as self-standing political and administrative entities, the actors may be put in charge of carrying out that plurality of functions. By  ontrast, the concept of ‘functionality’ focuses on single and specific tasks which are carried out in the intergovernmental setting by a single actor/institution or a vertical chain of actors/institutions. A key question is to what extent ‘territory’ and ‘function’ are still guiding principles, separately and combined, how these principles are operationalised, and what the main tendencies are within and between France and Germany. On the one hand, notwithstanding their different ‘starting conditions’ and their different constitutional and institutional contexts, France’s and Germany’s politico-administrative systems show a striking commonality and, in this sense, ‘convergence’ . This becomes visible particularly in that the (multi-functional)  territoriality’ principle has been strengthened and the (single-purpose) functionality principle has been concomitantly attenuated, particularly in order to ‘simplify’ the actor systems and to improve the ‘co-ordination’ capacity. On the other hand, however, the politico-administrative worlds of the two countries continue to exhibit conspicuous differences and (persisting) ‘divergence’ not least with regard to the question how strongly the ‘single purpose’or ‘limited purpose’ functionality remains in place. Firstly, France, it is true, has, through the 1999 Loi Chevènement, undertaken an important step to ‘simplify’ and ‘structure’ the institutionally mushrooming inter-municipal bodies (‘ intercommunalité’) by introducing essentially three types of intercommunal formations that are meant to serve as crucial territorial arenas. However, this process still stands at its beginning. Secondly, whereas  France has, in two rounds – following 1982 and 2003 – embarked upon, no doubt, secular measures to decentralise the previously highly centralised (‘Napoleonic’) State, thus transferring significant responsibilities particularly to the départementsas local government level (collectivité territoriale/locale), the traditional ‘dualism’ (‘dualisme’) has been essentially retained according to which central government and its sectoral ministries, continue to be organisationally and personnel-wise ‘present” at the regional and local levels through their vertically and hierarchically  organised sectoral (that means essentially ‘single-function’) administrative units. Hence, the decentralisation policy, has been accompanied (and marred) by the continuation of basically ‘single-function’ vertical administrative chains (‘silos’), all but epitomising the ‘functionality’ principle. This stands in glaring contrast with Germany’s State organisation where the central (that is federal) government is constitutionally forbidden to have field offices of its own on the regional and local levels, while the Länderhave restricted establishing and maintaining ‘single-purpose’ administrative units to a limited number of fields – with some of the Länderhaving begun to dissolve the relatively few hitherto existing ‘single-purpose’ field office of their own.

Public service reform in Russia is inevitable, otherwise the problems will continue  to pile up for public service and this may result in further public administration deterioration. But how to tackle these problems and how to conduct public service reform? Should the world experience be applied or not? It seems that the Russian experience of the past decade gave the answer. The initial attempts to reform public service in Russia are already based on the world experience, with parts of it applicable to Russian practices being used. To stabilize the reforming process it is imperative to give due consideration to the risks of reform, based on their historical analysis, a thorough study of their roots and a search for possible ways to eliminate these risks. It seems, it is true not only for Russia but it also applies to every country conducting public service reform. Speaking of Russia, it is public administration incompetence to launch and conduct such researches, and, especially, to take the achieved results into account, that puts the current public service reform at risk. Neither “lessons of the past”, nor modern negative trends, changes in the structural and functional profiles of public service (ageing staff, gender discrimination, low payment, lack of continuity and etc.) receive adequate consideration in the course of reform. Inattention to the risks of public service reform along with the existent political, social and economic, organizational and legal risks is likely to set back a reforming process. Frequent local initiatives can serve as an example for spontaneous reforms being carried out under the existing circumstances with simultaneous federal initiatives. It means that a number of local or even municipal bodies set up working groups to launch their own programs on modernization of the state apparatus without federal center coordination and timely and systematic control by the expert community preparing reforming initiatives at the federal level. These facts signify a lot. The positive side includes the emergence of civil society and social responsibility, with grass-root pressure making the government improve itself, but on the other hand, it may result in the loss of control, the disintegrated and fragmented public service, including legislation. In addition, due to the neglected risks, systemic top-down reform initiatives face serious challenges and as a result the pace of the reform is very slow. The Concept of Civil Service Reform of the Russian Federation, ratified by the President of the Russian Federation in 2001, appears to be the legal regulation that reflects the expert community consensus on the goals and the course of the reform. But, at the same time, public service reform, as a process of complex and structural changes, confronts substantial risks. The protection of vested bureaucratic interests at any time may jeopardize the activity of the large expert groups, including highranking officials, deeply involved in the reforming process. Thus, the main idea of the reform is featured in the Program. The basic goals ofthe reform may be formulated as follows: to optimize the federal public servant headcount; to define powers and responsibilities of public servants; to create conditions for openness and accountability of state bodies’ administrations and public servants to civil society; to develop public service resources; to improve the efficiency of personnel policy and the quality of employee structure of the federal public service;to implement mechanisms for identifying and solving public service-related conflicts of interests, to introduce a legal regulation of professional ethics of public servants; to develop a public service administration system. It is almost impossible to predict the outcome of the reform in terms of ideals of a democratic society, as the Program lacks definite criteria for  atching the goals and the results. Only in the process of the Program implementation it is envisaged to establish such criteria. However, the permanent social and expert monitoring of the process is crucial to achieve it. Evidently, there is a good chance of the risk of turning public service reform into a technocratic project. In order to avoid it the following is essential: 1) to apply positive foreign experience by introducing a kind of political patronage over public service reform; 2) to ensure openness (publicity) of the reforming process which is imperative for the positive outcome of public service reform.

Multiregional reform processes typically suffer from the fact that regional  administrative and political units try their best in doing the reform work, but never know if their activities are really effective and what effect they really have. So sometimes a lot of efforts are made and a lot of staff capacity and money invested in projects with little effect. And whilst there is of course an exchange of information between the regions, this exchange is often unorganized and incomplete. So for many managers of regional institutions the question “how well are we really doing, compared with other institutions” is not yet solved. Also the Implementation of reforms once decided upon is not subject to a consequent follow up, which might go on for years and identify problems not solved in the initial reform approach and need further attention. In the private sector, numerous instruments have been invented and established to optimize such information- and learning processes. Some of the best known approaches are Benchmarking Information Exchange Circles. Such instruments have also been more and more introduced in the municipal and regional practice. German “Bertelsmann Foundation” for example started about 10 years ago numerous projects related to Benchmarking and information exchange in German municipalities. For example the performance of libraries, other cultural institutions, social services and so on was analyzed in the framework of information exchange circles. Those circles worked over years in very “hands on” and “down to earth” processes and provided the involved administrations with a lot of ideas for optimization of their services. KPI in the same time developed a process to follow up reform processes, identify bottlenecks and malperformance and elaborate “revolving” reform strategies. It seems important to design such models in a way that makes it sure that a) learning from each other can be established b) “important” and “less important” services can be distinct c) optimization of “important” services or important quality elements can be prioritized d) a long-term feedback model makes the progress (as well as unsolved problems) clearly visible e) the cost efficiency of reform measures is safeguarded. The article demonstrates an easy-to use methodology and the example of an 8-year ptimization process in a regionalized German institution with 6 regional offices. With over 80 regions and federal services / agencies running numerous regional offices and, on the other hand, a large number of middle size municipalities, the approach would be suitable to the RF too.

Town planning regulation is a system of legitimate activities of public bodies aimed  at regulating separate elements of town planning. Town planning regulation integrates and interacts with all the institutions of management and economics: institution for planning, land-utilization, technical inventory, state cadastral registration of immovable property, state registration of title deed and institution for granting land plots for construction and others. The registration of the key principles of town planning regulation in the legislation on town planning is aimed at establishing a precise, transparent and in fact legal system of procedures and limitations for the Russian property market. The basic legislative innovations in this area are as follows:1.Municipalities should adopt land-utilization and development rules. Until 2005 the head of the local administration had the sole right to determine or change the authorized utilization form for each particular land plot. In its turn, the land-utilization and development rules, formulated in a regulatory  ocument, provide population with the precise and clear-cut “game rules”, containing legal town-planning regulations, which determine the list of some authorized forms of property utilization. Thus, the Rules encourage activity and at the same time impose some limits on investors and property owners.2.A ban on granting land plots under investment agreements will come into force in 2008. Actually, an investment agreement is nothing else but a promise made by the authorities, entitled to manage land plots, to grant a land plot to an investor since he frees such a plot from third-party rights. However, while there exist registered private owners of a land plot, the law says that the plot belongs to these owners and no other person has the right to manage it. Consequently, an investor has no legal guarantees to act when signing an investment agreement and meeting its conditions to clean the title. From now on, land plots can be granted only by competitive tendering. Evidently, one can either lose tender, or win it, but pay much more for the land than it is stipulated in an investment agreement. Thus, most probably the law implementation might come up against stiff opposition from investors and the administrations, already signed long-term agreements. 3. The transition from simultaneous procedures of planning and  acquiring land rights to a clear-cut sequence is completed – first, land rights should be acquired, then comes planning and designing. Thus, it helps the investor, spending money for planning, to reduce the dependence on the officials who may or may not grant land. Land rights are univocally declared primary. 4. The process of working out planning requirements was given publicity. All the planning requirements should not be worked out behind closed doors, but should be framed openly and publicly for a territory planning. It means that planning requirements are not being formulated for each particular land plot and investor, but for all the plots within a territory and should be represented in town-planning schemes of land plots – documents open to public and available to everyone. 5. All types of expert commissions on project documentation were integrated into the joint state expert commission. All ten types of departmental or specialized expert commissions on project documentation were abolished and a system of the joint state expert commission was established. It checks the compliance of project documentation with all the requirements in the area of building, sanitary, fire, industrial, nuclear and other safety. Consequently, this move greatly saves investors’ time and money to undergo an expert examination. 6. By analogy with expert commissions, all types of building inspections were united (including fire inspection, sanitary and epidemiological inspection, ecological inspection and so forth) into the joint state building inspection. A unified body of the state building inspection was established (Rostekhnadzor). 7. Furthermore, the administrative procedures for some types of construction projects were simplified. For instance, the elaboration of project ocumentation is not necessary for private accommodation construction. Private houses and some other projects (of specified area, number of storeys, purpose etc.) do not require the state expert commission on project documentation and the state building inspection. There is no need to undergo the state expert commission’s examination, when project documentation is reapplied. Also, some construction projects do not require building permission, for instance, summer cottage construction in the country. Thus, the proposed legislation measures took a considerable step towards lifting all the identified administrative barriers in property market. And now it is essential to ensure the effective and successful implementation of the legislative regulations.

During 1970-1980s the Soviet Union already launched investigation of the effects  of new equipment and technology introduction, with a socio-cological expert commission on large technical and economic projects initiated. The advisers, knowing specific methods, were assigned with lending information support to their chiefs in reasonable and rational decision making. That time it was widely talked about a systemic analysis and forecasting of large technical, economic, ecologic and other system and industry development in the context of a planned economy system, and about long-term plans for scientific and technical, economic and social development. Social projecting or social development planning was viewed as political advising to the governing bodies and officials involved into decision making. These practices, in a sense, may be regarded as an ancestor of the social evaluation of scientific and technical, and economic development. At that point, the attention was mainly focused on the proper location of plants and whole cities, ensuring workforce availability, and on the essential social sphere development. Also, approximately that time the conception of global challenges of humanity development was formulated. These global challenges, being of fundamental importance for the world on the whole, irrespective of its division into various social systems, lie within the scope of science and practice rather than theory. And to tackle these challenging problems it is essential to launch interdisciplinary and comprehensive researches, and ensure public evaluation of the challenges posed. Then it was admitted that global challenges also encompass environmental ones, which initiated conscious implementation of ecological policy. A long time passed before the USSR introduced an ecological expert commission as an effective instrument for ecological policy implementation. The introduction of procedures for environmental impact evaluation contributed to establishing mechanisms of environmentally sound managerial decision making, required for the effective implementation of the outlined economic, scientific and technical plans. However, there is no higher level of relatively independent evaluation of the technical effects on political decision making in present-day Russia. In recent years elaboration of a systemic analysis is closely connected to the study of social, economical, environmental and other effects of new technologies, as ignoring negative impacts of new equipment and technology introduction may lead to disastrous consequences for humanity and environment. However, such terrible consequences of nuclear power industry development as the Chernobyl disaster can not always be forecasted. But, we must try to do it, when launching new projects. It is imperative to conduct relevant researches, seek the opposition opinion before making a final decision, establish legal mechanisms for regulating these issues. The developed western countries name this set of measures a “social evaluation of science and technology”. Social evaluation of technology is a systematic and regular research into technology’s conditions and ways of development, an investigation of direct and indirect technical, economic, healthcare, environmental, social and other consequences of new equipment and technology introduction and possible options of this development. It is all the abovementioned that should become a foundation for reasonable decision making, with subsequent implementation by appropriate social institutions. Such social evaluation of technology is an interdisciplinary challenge, which requires experts with wide knowledge of not only technical and natural  scientific, but also social and humanitarian aspects. Classical science was merely focusing on study and explanation of natural phenomena. Contemporary science is often forced to participate in practical decision making, for instance, in shaping public opinion in the course of political decision making. Furthermore, science is one of the largest social institutions, which want to be beneficial for society and require from contemporary society and state, if it wishes to remain among the forward-looking states of the world, increasing expenditures, with subsequent development of new evaluation options of its operation and potential. The process of acquiring scientific knowledge should integrate into economical and political decision making, which, in its turn, makes scientific research more valuable for economic development (as an innovation introducer) and for political problem  solving (as a supplier of topics, challenges and knowledge, essential for decision making). Today technology as a background and, at the same time, a result of scientific researches, supported by economic and government agencies, developed into a world power, based on the “principle of making” everything. Ultimately, scientific and technical progress turns out  to be a step backwards for nature and humanity, as it pollutes the environment and destroys human body defenses. The system technology is dealing with this challenge by focusing attention to consideration of risks and improving safety of contemporary technology and equipment. At the current state of science and technology development it became clear that scientific knowledge is unable to foresee every detail, though it is only possible to predict definite degree of risk posed by new scientific discoveries. Actually, a new pattern of science and technology development is being elaborated.

The collapse of the Soviet administrative system and the break-up of the Soviet Union brought about the considerable changes within the Russian academic community. Now it is perfectly evident that it was absolutely unprepared for the new market environment. The Russian science turned out to be almost unable to adapt to and develop in the new environment. Thus, as a result, for the last fifteen years it has been witnessing a rapid systemic deterioration, which is often characterized as a crisis or catastrophe. A decline of the Russian academic community is mistakenly explained by a lack of funding. But, actually, there exist a systemic crisis, where a lack of funding results from the more important underlying reasons. The thorniest aspect of the problem is that the historically aggravated situation makes it impossible to carry out the reform of the Russian science for the last fifteen years, though the reform is vital for the country and the science itself. There are two social powers, knowing exactly what they want, in present-day Russia. These are officials and businessmen. Of course, there are rudiments of civil society, but, unfortunately, it serves as a background for these historical characters, rather than acts as an independent actor of the drama. The scientific scene is identical. There are government officials and businessmen, having their own interests and views on scientific and technical development. Also, there are academic aristocrats and bureaucrats (calling themselves as “academic elite” or “elite of the academic community”), who, in fact, represent nomenclature class, having their own particular interests. And, lastly, there is an academic community, not the “elite”, but the academic community proper, which encompasses scholars and academics who conduct scientific researches. It should be noted that the mentioned groups express rather diverse and contradictory interests. There may be distinguished four shaped trends of science development in Russia. They reflect the standpoints of the major social forces, which have a particular interest and take a sensible position on fundamental science and emphasize either preserving, or using and developing a scientific potential. The understanding of the essence of the science management differs greatly within these social forces, with the emphasis laid on either the idea of science monopolization, or controllability, or self-organization. For a forward-looking state policy on fundamental science formulation it is essential to combine the idea of controllability and self-organization, i.e. it is crucial to achieve and constantly maintain the optimum balance between government control over science and self-organization of the academic community with active business participation. This implies emergence of a competitive environment and setting out its behaviour rules; establishment of a system of competitive selection of projects and programs; setting up independent expert commissions; introducing a project form of the fundamental research organization; defining state’s and science’s priorities; and overcoming isolation of the separate aspects of fundamental science. With seemingly considerable diversity of options, in fact, there are four feasible scenarios of science development in Russia: inertial (sluggish), revolutionary, radical reformatory and evolutional reformatory. The inertialscenario, though there are some options, implies preserving the basics of the existing organization in research and development area, the mechanisms of controlling and funding scientific researches. The revolutionaryscenario is quite the opposite to the inertial one (scenario of preservation) and offers to substitute the obsolete national system of  science with a new one, built up not basing on the old system, but parallel to it. The revolutionary option is based on the assumption that the Russian academic community, first of all the Russian Academy of Sciences, is impossible to reform. The radicalreformatory scenario involves transferring of fundamental science potential to the consumer, interested in its use and development, – higher school, innovation structures, a set of governmental   departments. This option encourages the establishment of an efficient mechanism of coordinating all the aspects of fundamental science at the state (government) level. The evolutionalreformatory scenario provides for a qualitative change and strengthening of both government control over fundamental science and selfcontrol of the academic community. The evolutional reformatory scenario is considered the best as applicable for present-day Russia. It proposes sensible swift actions and has a set of definite advantages, as follows: consideration of the Russian cultural and historical raditions, due to the fact that historically science in Russia developed and shaped as a “state business”; consideration of the basics of contemporary world’s and Russia’s peculiarities, which imply a change of organizational forms of fundamental science, complying with competitive market environment; consideration of contemporary short-term conditions and factors in Russia, first of all – the compliance of the changes being carried out in the organization of fundamental science with the strengthening of the state; retaining of the competent and prolific part of the academic community and the development of the advanced and efficient forms of project and program organization of fundamental researches; budget support focusing on the most advanced and qualified scientific potential, which is in high demand due to competitions, independent  expert commissions and government order; elimination of nomenclature and corporate management by a considerable part of fundamental science potential, which made it impossible to implement any reform of the fundamental research organization for the last fifteen years in Russia.

The discipline of organizational behaviour along with organizational theory  and general management is essential in training of managers including those of public sector. However, it is a relatively new academic discipline for Russian higher education institutions. The article says that the main specific feature of this discipline is that it is founded on the complex of ideas and concepts belonging to various basic fields of knowledge. This, in its turn, poses a number of challenges in working up and delivering the course. Understanding of these problems is imperative, much of it is owed to the peculiarities of OB establishing as a separate research area in the 50-60ies of the last century. Therefore, the article rather comprehensively describes the establishment history of organizational studies in science and analyses the basic factors having the most significant influence on the process. Thus, the article gives a thorough consideration to a valuable contribution made by F. Taylor, who put forward a concept of scientific management; M. Weber, known as a founder of the bureaucratic form of organization, clearly differentiating between managers and executors; A. Fayol, who maintained his attitude towards the division of labour – practices assigning people with special tasks to their best ability; E. Mayo, who proposed the idea that social environment at work significantly affected productivity; K. Levin, who considered it was person’s personality as well as his/her environment that determined human behaviour. These scholars, first, contributed to grasping the idea that behaviour at work was shaped by a set of individual, group and organizational factors, second, with organizational behaviour studies generalized, to establishing a unified science. Extensive researches carried out, with the conclusions published in the article known as the “Gordon and Howell” report in 1959, were the key factors in establishing of OB as a science. Thus, it’s underlined that the present-day OB is a science generated from various social disciplines (psychology, social psychology, political science and anthropology). Thus, interdisciplinary character of OB presents one of the main challenges – while working out the organizational behaviour course, a teacher should adjust his/her approach and develop his/her area of competence in comparison to his/her basic education, and should ensure balance in core constituent elements representation, when describing phenomena and concepts of organizational behaviour. Otherwise, the course might turn into a summary of the “Psychology of Management” or the “Sociology of Management”, and might not fulfill its integrative function. Hereafter the article scrutinizes a list of topics studied by OB and concludes that there is a wide range of OB issues, even simple enumeration of the crucial issues proves it: individual behaviour management, group management, organizational process management, motivation of employees, organizational culture establishing. Thus, another challenge is being set forth – comprehensive presentation of all the aspects of this discipline in a study course poses a rather challenging task. Third challenge, from the author’s perspective, manifests itself in a fact that contemporary organizational theory studies both various types of organizational behaviour and manifold versions of organizational behaviour as well as means of interpreting them. For the most part it is determined by diversity of approaches to organizational theory in psychology, sociology and other behavioral sciences. Thus, psychological science distinguishes between at least six markedly different methodological aspects. The article pays most  ttention to the methodology of individual differences, behavioural, non-behavioural and psychoanalytical approaches. Sociological and social  nthropological approaches, which are the basics for interpretation of organizational behaviour variation, encompass much more – nine, at least. Taking  into account the abovementioned, the author formulates the forth challenge – how to share extensive knowledge acquired in the area of OB as  a managerial science, within managerial education study course in higher education institution and avoid conceptual narrowness resulting from teacher’s commitment to one or another approach. Lastly, we approached the fifth challenge. It is determined by the fact that OB rests upon the researches enriching the discipline of organizational behaviour. Unfortunately, in present-day Russia this discipline represents a “calque” from the American model. Both theoretical and practical researches in various aspects of organizational behaviour in Russian institutions are indispensable to overcome this drawback. Moreover, it is crucial to disclose national specifics of human behaviour at work and opportunity to apply it in order to  increase productivity. In support of the abovementioned, the author produces the results of the research conducted in the early nineties in Russia. This research is grounded on the approach to analysis of differences between nations, suggested by G. Hofstede, and goal of the research was – to determine how the Russian national culture affects human behaviour in an institution.