Ian McDonald
I REMEMBER when I was at the Guyana Sugar Corporation in once making strong representations to a senior ministry official about action that needed to be taken urgently on behalf of the corporation if it was to protect its interests in a swiftly developing situation. I pointed out that this was a matter of vital importance for the corporation.
The official did his best to be helpful, but his final remark revealed the underlying difficulty: "Mr. McDonald," he said pleasantly but firmly, "you have to understand: your high priority may not be the minister's high priority."
That perfectly describes a weakness in the relationship between governments and businesses. Of course, the minister's priorities are not the same as the company's priorities. A minister has, and rightly has, different and higher priorities. He is operating, and has to operate, in a quite different sphere of activity. But that does not mean that in its own sphere of activity the company's priorities are not as urgent and important in their own way as the minister's. Yet, action is delayed because the company's priorities get muddled into the minister's portfolio of priorities and there they naturally take a lower place than they would for the company. Thus, the delay is not a reflection on either the minister or the company, who are both doing their jobs as best they can. But it is serious reflection on the system.
What happened in my encounter with the senior official also suggests a fundamental difficulty in arranging the relationship between the higher up and the lower down in any organisation wanting to achieve maximum efficiency in performance.
INDIVIDUAL INTERPRETATION
Half the art of good administration is to set up a system whereby a prompt decision can be taken at the level appropriate to the decision itself. Major decisions left too low down in the system, or minor decisions accumulating too high up, can equally lead to a breakdown in good administration. It is not for a counter-clerk to decide pricing policy in a shop, nor should his manager come to tell him how to wrap his parcels.
Sometimes, undoubtedly, trouble comes when vital decisions are left to be taken at too low a level. Policies that should be coordinated at the top are then open to widespread individual interpretation down below with the result that soon everyone is doing his own thing and the muddle can become appalling.
UNIVERSAL TRUTH OF HISTORY
That certainly is a danger. Indeed, it is such an obvious danger that the measures taken to cure that particular disease often turn out to be worse than the disease itself. The fact is that over-concentration of decision-taking at the top tends to be in developing countries a far more deadly disease than its opposite.
Powerful men inevitably want to gather more power for themselves. It is in their nature and in the nature of the hierarchical organisations which they set up. And gathering power means concentrating more and more decisions close around the gatherers of power.
That is a universal truth of history and of human nature. Paradoxically, however, in that also lies a great danger for the powerful. This is because more and more decisions, by a sort of reverse force of gravity, float upwards to be taken at or near the top. Empty hands and empty minds are left below with less and less worthwhile to do. The filter at the top becomes too finely meshed to permit an even flow for the countless decisions necessary to run anything, much less a country or a big business, properly. The system, therefore, gets hopelessly clogged.
The objective is to prevent this happening. This seems fundamental to me. It involves not only practical but even philosophical and moral considerations. It really comes down to how society should best be organised - how much weight should be given to the dignity and independence of the individual working man and woman at whatever level he or she is performing. And because there is morality as well as practicality in it, it is perhaps not so strange that the best words I have found on the subject are contained in a Papal Encyclical, Pope Pius XI's Encyclical called 'Quadrigesimo Anno' of 1931. There, I think, a profound truth not only about natural justice in society but also about administration is clearly written:
"It is an injustice, a grave evil and disturbance of right order, for a larger and higher association to arrogate to itself the functions which can be performed efficiently by smaller and lower associations ... The state should leave to smaller groups the settlement of business of less importance - it will thus carry out with greater freedom, power, and success the tasks which belong to it alone."
That, it seems to me, is not only a good prescription for ordering society but also an excellent guide for administrators who seek out efficiency.
Ian McDonald is an occasional contributor who lives and works in Georgetown, Guyana.
