ABSTRACT
The task of development administration is to marshal resources to bring about substantial change in an uncertain and fragile environment. Organization theory has tended to focus on internal procedures or on relations with the environment. While organizations generally are vulnerable to the uncertainty and conflict in their environments, decentralized systems are particularly so. The cry “let a hundred flowers bloom” is often echoed, albeit in less colorful terms, suggesting that some degree of decentralization is necessary to ensure responsiveness and variation and to mobilize the public around development opportunities. The dilemma cannot be resolved ideologically; regimes of both the Right and Left have struggled with the premise of decentralization, and the solution is as perplexing to Western industrialized nations as it is to the third world. A learning model of coordination is based on the assumption that no single level of government has sufficient information to design and execute a project.
