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"At least one leading practitioner of organizational design has come, like myself, to the conclusion that organizaton theory does not have much to offer on the question of appropriate design. William Smith, who in 1980 wrote a long paper called 'The design of organizations for rural development—-a progress report', which set out a very abstract framework for that purpose, has in the intervening years come to the conclusion that no generalizations are possible about appropriate organizational arrangements. The only plausible generalizations are those to do with the process by which an appropriate form of organization may be discovered for each unique case. But that is to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Smith's generalist method seems to rule out drawing upon generalizations about experience with different forms of organization elsewhere, as well as (such as credit, fertilizer, agricultural extension). Others at the other extreme say that it should be a single-purpose agency, concerned only with the supply of water and maintenance of the water supply facilities. We could call these two camps the 'integrationists' on the one hand, and the 'specializationists' on the other. I shall discuss these issues of horizontal organization first, and come back later to the important but less contested questions of vertical organization." |
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