Anant R. Negandhi

A Contingency Theory of Organization Re-Examined in the Context of a Developing Country

The “Contingency Theory” of organizations holds that the “optimum” organization structure is primarily dependent on the external environment of the enterprise. Stable environmental conditions call ...

Comparative Management and Organization Theory: A Marriage Needed

An avenue for integration between two seemingly related areas, namely, cross-cultural comparative management, and organization theory, is provided as a result of an examination of recent developmen...

Correlates of Decentralization: Closed and Open Systems Perspectives

This study examines the impact of size, technology, dependence, market condition, and organizational concern toward task environmental factors on decentralization. The results show that the degree ...

Strategies of Administrative Control and Organizational Effectiveness

The results of a comparative study of thirty manufacturing firms in India indicated that the most effective organizations tended to choose a unidimensional strategy of administrative control. This strategy consisted of the use of formalized procedures to control decentralized decision-making with respect to both human and material resources. The least effective firms chose a similar strategy of control, however they emphasized mainly those procedures involving the control of material resources and tended to neglect their human resources in this respect. These results are interpreted as evidence in favor of normative theory of administrative control in organizations. The most effective strategy for maintaining indirect control over a decentralized decision-making process appears to be one which effectively integrates the rational material resource controls with the more intangible human resource control mechanisms.

Applicability of American Management

The Indian Government as well as the business community has realized the importance of advanced management know-how in our economic and industrial efforts. The awareness and actions taken so far are reflected by several factors discussed in Chapter 3.

Relevance of Western Theories

Perhaps the most revolutionary change in the modern civilization started with the so-called Industrial Revolution which got underway in the western world and is now spreading to the “underdeveloped countries” of Asia, Africa, and South America which by any definition still comprise about \({3 \over 4}\) of the world’s population. “Technology” can be regarded as the main outcome of the Industrial Revolution.1 In an anthropological sense “technology” can be construed as a vital aspect of culture. Then of all aspects of culture such as social organization, religion, art, and philosophy, it has been technology from which elements have been most readily diffused from one country to another or from one society to another. This diffusion has been facilitated by at least three factors. The first is the conducive “environment” or set of values (or the scientific or sociological basis); the second is the fact that technological elements are more amenable to objective, comparative evaluations than are the elements from other aspects of culture. Thus in a society which has been exposed to a new tool, technique, or knowhow, people can make reasonably fair evaluations of the advantages of adopting it. Such is not the case, for instance, when a new art style or motif has been introduced in an alien society.

Private Foreign Investment and Economic Development

Like many of the developing countries, India’s economic and industrial development heavily depends on the availability of foreign exchange and advanced technical and managerial knowhow. Foreign aid from the various industrially advanced countries has thus far remained the main source in meeting these needs and fortunately India has received a huge amount of such aid from foreign countries. However, it is clearly realized by now that foreign aid alone is not enough to satisfy India’s needs of foreign exchange and managerial and technical know-how. Particularly since the 1958 foreign exchange crisis, India’s balance of payment position has been rapidly deteriorating. At the present time, her foreign exchange reserves are at the lowest ebb, and they might have slipped through the floor several times if the government had not borrowed some

A cross-cultural comparative study of management

200 million from the International Monetary Fund. Indeed, as the Finance Minister, Mr. Sachin Chaudhuri, pointed out in his recent budgetary speech, the shortages of food grains and foreign exchange are the two most important factors hindering India’s economic and industrial development.1 It is therefore imperative that the government do solve these two chronic problems.

Communications. Comments: “The Comparative Management Theory Jungle”

This paper discusses a conceptual scheme and the research findings of an empirical study recently completed in six developing countries. The main purpose of the study was to examine the feasibility and effectiveness of transferring advanced management practices, know-how, and techniques from the developed to the developing countries. The research design and approach utilized in this study can be best classified as a micro-macro approach.

The New Breed of Managers

The article presents a letter to the editor in response to the article “The Comparative Management Theory Jungle,” from the March 1969 issue of “Academy of Management Journal.”