Decentralisation, Management Development and Organisational Performance in a Developing Country
| Date | 01 March 1985 |
| Pages | 33-38 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb055521 |
| Published date | 01 March 1985 |
| Author | Roger Mansfield,Khurshed Alam |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour |
Decentralisation, Management Development
and Organisational Performance in a
Developing Country
by Roger Mansfield and Khurshed Alam, UWIST, Cardiff
Introduction
Until recently empirical research in organisational behaviour
and personnel management had tended to be based, to a very
large extent, on work situations in the United States and Bri-
tain. However, in recent years there has been a noticeable
increase in studies reported in the literature carried out in
other parts of the world. There has also been a quickening
of interest in cross-national comparisons of management and
organisation. These trends have without doubt occurred part-
ly as a response to the growing internationalisation of
business and management. They have also stemmed partly
from a desire to examine Anglo-American management prac-
tice in a sharper
relief,
by adopting a wider, less culture-
bound, perspective.
However, perhaps most importantly, the tendencies noted
above seem to have developed from a genuine recognition
that much of the academic approach to the problems of
management and organisation had been too narrow and that
this could only be rectified by a determined effort to widen
the data base. Such a move allows one to begin to examine
the important question of the extent to which management
could, or should, vary significantly from country to coun-
try round the world. In particular, recent attention has been
focused on the particular situations found in developing
countries, as opposed
to,
or compared with, those in the more
industrialised nations.
The issues raised by the results of this widening body of
empirically based research are of importance not just to
social science academics, but also to managers and policy
makers around the world. The present article is written in
an attempt to contribute to an understanding of these pro-
blems by examining data from a study of 50 organisations
operating in Bangladesh. The particular questions which are
addressed here concern the relationships between decen-
tralisation of decision making, the extent and nature of
management development and organisational performance.
Decentralisation
There is considerable evidence that the design of organisa-
tional structures is subject to somewhat different constraints
and pressures in different countries. In particular, there seems
to be clear evidence that this is the case when organisations
operating in developing countries are compared with those
situated in the industrially more advanced nations. One area
where this seems especially apparent concerns the extent to
which decision making is centralised or decentralised.
Child[1] suggests "that cultural effects will be most power-
ful in the processes of organisation relating to authority, style,
conduct, participation and attitudes, and less powerful in
formal structuring and overall strategy".
Certainly there
is
considerable evidence that decision mak-
ing in organisations operating in developing countries tends
typically to be more centralised than in their counterparts
in more industrialised settings
(e.g.
Harbison and Myers[2],
Davis[3],
Negandhi[4], Badran and Hinings[5], Shenoy[6]
and Mansfield and Zeffane[7]. A number of reasons have
been suggested for these largely consistent
findings.
The most
frequently suggested logic underlying these results relates to
the relative lack of
education,
training and experience of mid-
dle and junior managers in most, if not all, of the world's
developing nations. This problem, it is claimed, makes senior
managers unwilling to delegate decision making authority
down the organisational hierarchy.
If this argument is valid, it implies that organisational
designers in such countries are constrained by the shortcom-
ings of certain grades of staff from adopting the structural
solutions in terms of decentralisation of decision making that
would seem desirable in terms of the organisational logic
stemming from other parameters of the situation. It would
follow from this that, where such circumstances prevail, the
development and training of middle and junior managers
would provide a double benefit for the employing organisa-
tion. First, it would lead to the better performance of ex-
isting work roles. Second, and perhaps more importantly,
it would make it possible for a more optimal organisational
design to be adopted, and hence lead to an improvement in
overall organisational performance.
As has already been mentioned, the foregoing is not the
only line of explanation which has been proffered concern-
ing the typically more centralised structures observed in the
organisations of developing
countries.
Generally there would
seem to be a greater tendency towards state planning and
control of industrial organisations in the developing nations
as compared with the industrially more advanced countries.
Obviously this is a complex issue in which factors other than
the state of economic development have a considerable im-
pact. Despite this complexity, and the considerable variation
to be found both between different industrialised countries
and different developing countries, the general trend seems
fairly pronounced. This is likely to create pressures on senior
managers against the delegation or decentralisation of deci-
sion making, at least with regard to any decisions whose im-
plications might be relevant to such government interven-
tion or state planning objectives.
It should also be noted that, in many cases, developing
nations have, at best, only short histories of political and
PR 14,3 1985 • 33
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