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Management Practices and Organisational Behaviour

Notes Under centralization, even the agencies of the parent organisation do not enjoy any authority of
decision-making and hence are fully dependent on the central authority. The agencies are required
to implement the decisions in accordance with the pre-determined guidelines as handed down
to them by the headquarters operating as the central authority.
Centralisation acquires its acute form when an organisation operates from a single location i.e.,
when it does not have any field agencies.

In the words of Harold Koont, Centralisation has been used to describe tendencies other than
the dispersal of authority. It often refers to the departmental activities; service divisions,
centralised similar or specialised activities in a single department. But when centralisation is
discussed as an aspect of management, it refers to delegating or withholding authority and the
authority dispersal or, concentration in decision making. Therefore, centralisation can be regarded
as concentration of physical facilities and/or decision making authority.

Task Take example of a centralised organisation and analyse whether the advantages
of centralisation to it.

5.3 Decentralisation

The term decentralisation is understood differently by different individuals or groups. Louis A.
Allen refers to it as one of the most confused and confusing of the administrative techniques that
characterises the art and science of professional management. To quote Pfeiffer and Sherwood,
''In some respects decentralisation has come to be a 'gospel' of management.''

Firstly, it is regarded as a way of life to be adopted as least partially on faith;
Secondly, it is an idealistic concept, with ethical roots in democracy,
Thirdly, it is in the beginning a more difficult way of life because it involves a change in behaviour
running counter to historically-rooted culture patterns of mankind.
That is why the new literature of decentralisation dwells on how to bring about change in
organisation behaviour. Men find it difficult to delegate, to think in terms of the abstractions
required by long-term planning, to listen rather than to give orders, to evaluate other men and
their work in terms of overall results instead of irritations and tensions of the moment. Yet this
is the very key to the behaviour required of leaders in a decentralised organisation".
It is amply clear that decentralization is not only a device for the delegation or dispersal of
administrative authority, but it is also a democratic method of devolution of political authority.
Further, in a decentralised organisation it is also essential to adopt the democratic norms. Such
norms help the various levels of the administrative organisation to develop a reasonable
capability for the exercise of authority to reach the most desired decisions. Moreover, they help
to assimilate in them the virtues of greater interactions not only among the various organisational
levels but also between the organisation and the clientele among the general public.
It has been opined that decentralisation refers to the physical location of facilities and the extent
of dispersal of authority throughout an organisation. Hence, it is an arrangement by which the
ultimate authority to command and the ultimate responsibility for results is localized in units
located in different parts of the country. It is argued that assigning of functions and responsibility,
for their efficient and effective performance, to the subordinates or sub-divisions is the essence
of decentralisation.
We may say that in a decentralised organisation lower levels are allowed to decide most of the
matters matters and a few cases involving major policies or interpretations are referred to the
higher levels of the organisation. Decentralisation covers the political, legal and administrative
spheres of authority.

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