Galina Tokunova, Dean of the Faculty of Economics and Management, Professor at the SPbGASU Department of Management in Construction, is working on such topical issues as how to increase the efficiency of interaction between participants in the investment and construction process, minimize the consequences of the pandemic and sanctions pressure.

We asked Galina Fedorovna to tell us about her scientific path and promising directions for the development of the construction industry.

– I have always been interested in learning, I liked research work. When the question arose of what to do after graduation from the university, I decided to continue my studies for PhD. My supervisor was Olga Alekseevna Lomovtseva, head of the department of management at Volgograd State University. Her personality, her approach to PhD and doctoral students largely influenced the decision to stay in this field.

My PhD thesis was devoted to the regional economy. I considered strategic planning for small towns. At the beginning of the 2000s, there were already quite a lot of developments in the field of regional management in Russian and foreign practice. However, they did not take into account the specifics of small towns, the features of transformation processes in the Russian outback. This determines the need for further study of the mechanisms and directions for improving management processes based on strategic planning. Having studied the experience of dozens of cities, I proposed directions for the development of my native Uryupinsk and developed a targeted comprehensive program for it.

– Did you continue studying this topic at SPbGASU?

– Initially, the topic of my scientific research was at the intersection of sectoral and regional management. In the course of further work, I came to the conclusion that a balanced combination of sectoral and regional management activates the technological potential of the territory. Therefore, when I came to work at SPbGASU in 2006, I began to study regional clusters in construction and integration processes in the construction industry.

Aleksandr Alekseevich Petrov, at that time the head of the department of management, was my scientific advisor when writing my doctoral dissertation. This is a recognized scientist dealing with the issues of strategic management of the sustainable development of construction organizations, the development of a methodology for the formation of their organizational structures.

I am very grateful to all the specialists of our university, who, to one degree or another, influenced the formation of my scientific views. I got some scientific ideas from the works of Anatoly Nikolaevich Asaul, professor at the Department of Construction Economics and Housing and Utility Infrastructure, which dealt with the methodology of building clusters in construction. In addition, I relied on the developments of Yury Pavlovich Panibratov, in those years the head of the SPbGASU department of construction economics, concerning the methodology for improving the management efficiency of organizations in the investment and construction sector, and Veronika Viktorovna Asaul, currently the head of the Department of Construction Economics and Housing and Utility Infrastructure, devoted to the methodology of forming developed competitive advantages in the construction industry.

If we talk about the range of my scientific interests, then the cluster concept is by its nature not new. These or those elements were considered from the position of various scientific schools and trends both in Russia and abroad. Cluster means “group”, “bunch”. This term means a set of objects that are functionally similar to each other and are assembled into one bundle. An economic cluster is a group of companies and organizations that are located on the same territory and are interconnected. They can compete, but at the same time, they can complement each other, enhancing the competitive advantages of both individual companies and the cluster as a whole.

The peculiarity of the regional investment and construction cluster is that it has a discrete nature and is a spatially localized set of organizations in the investment and construction sector, credit, research and educational institutions, as well as market infrastructure enterprises that are in relatively stable interaction in the process of creating industrial and non-industrial facilities.

– What is your main conclusion?

– Construction clusters are necessary, they need to be grown. Now there are many independent partners in the construction industry. While implementing projects, they are in a state of stable formal relations. By involving more participants in clusters, including integrating universities into them, we can improve the interaction between subjects.

In my opinion, a regional construction cluster should include many participants. All subjects are legally isolated, they function within certain limits. But in the course of their activities they exchange information and experience, unite in associations, form a professional community.

The benefits of this approach have been proven in practice. For ten years I have been participating in the organization of the Consumer Trust contest. Rivals compete in it, and at the same time they interact, share best practices, improve the quality of their product.

– What are your future plans?

– My plans are to continue working in the dissertation council in the scientific specialty "Regional and sectoral economics". To assist three of my PhD students in their work on the theses, which examine various aspects of the development of the construction industry. Artur Osipov is engaged in the improvement of relations between the participants in the investment process in housing construction, Matvey Andriyanov works on the regulation of the low-rise housing market, and Aleksey Komarov studies relations between the participants in the investment process in construction.