A tribute to Acad Veljko Rus

 
Picture of Vera Vratuša
A tribute to Acad Veljko Rus
by Vera Vratuša - Saturday, 21 September 2019, 11:46 AM
 

A tribute to Acad Veljko Rus

co-founder of ISA RC10 in 1978 and Chair-person 1979-1983

Dr. of sociological sciences, professor emeritus of sociology of work and social development
of the Faculty of Social Sciences, Ljubljana Univerisity, retired, full member of the
Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts since June 6 1995,
born on December 8. 1929, died on February 26. 2018.

http://www.sazu.si/clani/veljko-rus:
Veljko Rus graduated the First High School in Ljubljana, the Department for Pure Philosophy at the University of Belgrade, and got his Ph.D. in the Department for sociology, University of Zagreb. 1957 – 1958 carried out specialisation in Poitiers and Paris, preparing a doctorate in the field of labour philosophy. A year later, he was removed from the university due to inadequate "moral political" position. A year later he was employed at the senior staff School in Kranj, where he lectured sociology of work and carried out empirical research in the field of organizational democracy. 1968 – 1969 he was in the U.S. specialising in Columbia, New York, Ann Arbor and Berkeley. Upon his return he defended the doctoral thesis responsibility and power in working organizations at the Department of sociology in Zagreb and was employed in the Department of sociology in Ljubljana, where he lectured and studied various topics in the field of sociology of the organization. After five years of teaching at the Faculty of Social Sciences, he was re-removed from the university for "inadequate ideal political" positions. After a change in the political regime he returned to the Faculty of Social Sciences, where he founded postgraduate studies for the management of non-profit organizations.
The member of the Slovene Sociological Society, the Ambassador of Science and co-founder of the Research Committee No. 10 (for Participation, Industrial Democracy and Self Management) at ISA (International Sociological Association).
Veljko Rus became associate member of SASA in May 1991, and a regular member in June 1995.

Veljko Rus participated in longitudinal international research, most importantly: Industrial Democracy and Europe, Decision-making and organizations and Quality of working Life. As a professor or/and researcher, he visited and lectured at the universities of Uppsala, Copenhagen, Berlin (west), Tokyo, Columbia and Wassenaarju. Alone or in cooperation with colleagues published 192 professional articles and 30 books, including:
Man, work and structure, Horizons, Maribor, 1970;
V. Rus and V. Arzenšek (1984) Work as the Fate and Liberty, Liber, Zagreb, 1984;
Rus V., Drenth P., Heller F., (1988) Decisions and organizations, London, Sage;
Rus V., Adam F., (1989) strength and powerlessness of self-management, Zagreb, globe;
Rus V., (1990) Social State and Society of Prosperity, Ljubljana, Domus;
Rus V., (1992) (editor) Ownership and Participation, Oxford Univ. Press;
Rus V., (2001) Corporatization and socialization of the state, Ljubljana, faculty;
Rus V., (2009) The third route between Anti capitalism and Post socialism, Ljubljana, Sophia.
For his first book work Man, work and structure he received the prize of the fund Boris Kidrič.

http://www.sazu.si/clani/veljko-rus

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Picture of Vera Vratuša
Re: A tribute to Acad Veljko Rus
by Vera Vratuša - Saturday, 21 September 2019, 11:25 AM
 

 

Obituary written by György Széll, University of Osnabrück, June 2019.

 

Veljko Rus

was the second president of the  RC 10 created in 1978, from 1979 to 1983. He was a Slovenian, born in 1928 near Ljubljana, and passed away in 2018  <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veljko_Rus>. He started his studies of sociology at Belgrade University and obtained his PhD with the thesis Power and Responsibility in Working Processes at the University of Zagreb. He was always a critical intellectual, and got therefore in trouble with the Titoist regime. In 1958 he became assistant professor at the University of Ljubljana. In 1960 he was dismissed from the university, and continued to work at the School of Organizational Sciences in Kranj, and later again at the University of Ljubljana. In the early 1970s he was dismissed again from the Faculty of Social Sciences, but continued to work at the Institute for Sociology and Philosophy, before reintegrating the Faculty of Social Sciences in the early 1990s, where he ended his career. These ups and downs are a reflection also of the fate of self-management in Yugoslavia. Its law has been changed six times during this period. He was visiting professor in Poitiers, at Columbia University, the Universities of California in Berkeley, Uppsala, Stockholm, Copenhagen, the Free University of Berlin, and Chuô University, Tokyo.

One of his most relevant contributions was with another 19 colleagues from 12 countries the creation of the International Research Group Industrial Democracy in Europe (IDE), which published three prestigious volumes with Oxford University Press in 1981. The group carried out one of the largest empirical studies in the field, with some 10,000 respondents, on ‘de facto’ and ‘de jure’ participation.

Without his commitment RC 10 would not be, what it was and what it is still today. So, RC 10 remains grateful to his most valuable work.

His most important publications in regard to RC 10 are:

Burns, Tom; Karlsson, Lars Erik & Veljko Rus (eds.) (1979), Work and Power: The Liberation of Work and the Control of Political Power. London, SAGE.

Ishikawa, Akihiro; Martin, Roderick; Morawski, Witold & Veljko Rus (eds.) (2000): Workers, Firms and Unions, Part 2: The Development of Dual Commitment. Frankfurt a.M. et al., Peter Lang.

Koopman, Paul L.; Drenth, Pieter J. D.; Heller, Frank A. & Veljko Rus (1993), ‘Participation in Complex Organizational Decisions: A Comparative Study of the United Kingdom, The Netherlands, and Yugoslavia’, in William M. Lafferty & Eliezer Rosenstein (eds.), International Handbook of Participation, Vol. III, Oxford, Oxford University Press: 113-133.

Macur, Mirna & Veljko Rus (1998), ‘Return to Managerial Paternalism? – In the Slovenian Context’, in Roderick Martin et al. (eds.), Workers, Firms and Unions – Industrial Relations in Transition. Frankfurt a.M. et al., Peter Lang: 239-259.

Rus, Veljko (1967), ‚Institutionalization of the Revolutionary Movement’, Praxis, vol. 3, nr. 2, pp. 201-213.

Rus, Veljko (1975), ‚Problems of participatory democracy’, in Branko Horvat, Mihailo Marković & Rudi Supek (eds.), Self-governing socialism. A Reader, vol. 2, Sociology and Politics, Economics, White Plains/NY, International Arts and Sciences Press, pp. 101-111 [London, Routledge, 2nd ed. 2015].

Rus, Veljko (1984), ‘Yugoslav self-management – 30 years later’, in Bernhard Wilpert & Arndt Sorge (eds.), International perspectives on organizational democracy, Chichester, Wiley: 371-389.

Rus, Veljko (1994), ‚Symbiosis of work and ownership’, in Litsa Nicolaou-Smokoviti & György Széll (eds.), Participation, organizational effectiveness & quality of work life in the year 2000, Frankfurt a.M. et al., Peter Lang, pp. 69-93.

Rus, Veljko (1996), ‚The quality of decision-making’, in Pieter J. D. Drenth (ed.), Organizational decision-making under different economic and political conditions. Proceedings of a Symposium at the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1-3 June 1994, pp. 105-114.

Rus, Veljko; Ishikawa, Akihiro & Tom Woodhouse (eds.) (1982), Employment and participation. Industrial democracy in crisis. Tokyo, Chuo University Press.

Russell, Raymond & Veljko Rus (eds.) (1992), International Handbook of Participation, Vol. II, Ownership and Participation. Oxford, Oxford University Press.

 

His son, Andrej Rus, continues the work of his father as professor of sociology himself at the University of Ljubljana with the focus on good governance.


 
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