ABSTRACT
The familiar is not necessarily the best, and public enterprise is not in duty bound to copy private enterprise’s forms of organisation. In private enterprise, the Board of Directors runs the undertaking on behalf of the shareholders. It has final responsibility for policy decisions, for the appointment of lower-level personnel, and for financial results. The ‘functionalist’ argues that, in the main, policy ought to be decided by persons each of whom has an expert knowledge of some aspect of the undertaking’s business and the responsibility for taking the top-level decisions in his particular sphere. In a large private enterprise, the base of the hierarchy is the ‘management team’ consisting of a number of officials with specific executive responsibilities, perhaps under the leadership of a General Manager. One of the factors that seems to point in a very definite direction is the powerful tendency, which most underdeveloped countries experience, towards excessive administrative centralisation.
