THE ECONOMIC, SOCIAL, AND SPIRITUAL EFFICIENCY OF THE ECONOMIC SYSTEM: APPROACHES TO ASSESSMENT

Abstract

The article considers the categories of social, economic, and spiritual efficiency. The emphasis is made on the crisis of modern economic processes. The subject of the article is the contradictions arising in the process of increasing economic efficiency. Existing methodological approaches to the study of these categories are critically reviewed. The main goal of the article is to create the author’s concept of overcoming the contradictions between the growth of economic and social efficiency in the conditions of modern economic organizations. The concept is based on the conflict paradigm. The methodological basis of the study consists of the concepts of foreign and domestic researchers dealing with the effectiveness of social reproduction. The main theoretical concept is neo-Marxism. The purpose of the article is to determine the methodology for reconciling contradictions arising in the process of managing the economic efficiency of an economic system. The thesis of P. Drucker on the inevitability of aggravating the economic crisis is considered as the cause of the conflict. In combination with the totality of such general scientific and special methods of cognition as dialectic, systemic, descriptive, theoretical modelling, the article reveals the main contradictions in the assessment of the growth of the economic and social efficiency of the economic system. The main conclusion of the article is the need to abandon the use of singlefactor methods for evaluating the effectiveness of the functioning of economic systems. The main problem is the fact that the growth of economic efficiency most often has a non-linear effect on the change in social and spiritual efficiency. Therefore, it is necessary to use at the same time changes in all three specified directions of efficiency, so one can determine the general vector of changes in the economic system. As a final conclusion, it was proposed to apply the efficiency rule proposed by Pareto to this assessment, according to which the system state is optimal when the value of each particular criterion describing the system state cannot be changed without deteriorating other system indicators. The article presents a table, in which the contradictory changes that are the result of a number of managerial influences are demonstrated for economic and social efficiency. A logical formula for determining the effectiveness of changes in the efficiency of the economic system, based on the indices of changes in individual quantitative indicators, is proposed. Criteria are defined that make it possible to quantify each of the blocks determining efficiency: economic, social, and spiritual. An assessment of possible indicators at the macroeconomic and microeconomic level is given. The article formulates a model for establishing the balance (optimum) of individual indicators of the total efficiency of the economic system. This model is based on the balance of economic interests of employers (owners) and social interests of workers, coordinated through culture, which is defined as one of the priorities of spirituality. A formula is proposed that enables the analytical establishment of the optimal (balance) state of the efficiency of the economic system. On the basis of the conducted research, it becomes possible to talk about a fair (reasonable) distribution of value added. In fact, at the theoretical level, an economic model for managing the socio-economic efficiency of the economic system is proposed, which creates the prerequisites for the effective management of the socioeconomic development of an organization in a permanent crisis environment.