Abstract

This article examines the ways in which the future as a dimension of goal‑oriented behaviour was used to organise and legitimise informal practices of management and planning in the Soviet Union. This study introduces the hitherto unexplored history of reflexive management under an authoritarian regime, focusing on the work of Russian philosopher and management guru Georgii Shchedrovitskii. Drawing on the cybernetic notion of teleology, which posited reflexive goal‑setting as a key condition for control, Shchedrovitskii taught Soviet managers to formulate their own goals, thus contributing to the erosion of the Communist Party’s monopoly of goal‑setting. Furthermore, through the means of organisational‑business games this new teleology not only transformed bureaucratic administrations into informal collectives, but also provided informality with an unprecedented legitimacy, emancipatory in the Soviet context, but highly ambiguous in the post‑Soviet era.