ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on trade-offs among alternative structures for administering development. It examines the role of local-level administrators, those who interact directly with the public—extension agents, health workers, teachers, those organizing cooperatives and credit unions. The chapter explores development and its management problems from the perspective of local administrators, their incentives and roles. Lower-level administrators are strategically important in determining the success of development programs and projects. The daily activities of extension agents, teachers, and local administrators in clinics become crucially important. Field staff function on the boundary of the organization, which means they are directly caught up in two conflicting pressures, from the organization and from the public. Local bureaucrats or field agents are appropriately viewed as functioning on the boundary of an organization. A final influence on the behavior of local bureaucrats is their own value commitments and convictions about the development task and about the role of the public.
