Week 1 post by Will

Management Theory As Applied to One USAID Implementing Partner in Afghanistan

American aid projects abroad present managerial challenges that Frederick Winslow Taylor, Henri Fayol and Max Weber would all appreciate. In Afghanistan, USAID implementing partners rely on an “Afghan First” hiring strategy, with Afghan nationals comprising 95% of the workforce. While this fulfills USAID’s goal of employing mostly local workers overseen by a small coterie of expatriate managers, it requires careful managerial structure to safeguard against corruption, worker apathy, absenteeism and inefficiency. In my two years working for agricultural stabilization projects in southern Afghanistan I’ve observed that a mixed managerial approach has evolved, one that shows the combined influences of Taylor, Fayol and Weber.

With some 200 Afghan employees, the office of the Southern Regional Agricultural Development (S-RAD) program is tasked with overseeing Program Support relating to the project’s four main components: seed vouchers, training, infrastructure development and agribusiness. The program components all fall under the auspices of an expatriate director who oversees a staff of some 20 Afghan workers. The directors answer to the Deputy Chief of Party (DCOP) who in turn answers to the Chief of Party.

With his emphasis on time study and worker productivity, Taylor’s scientific management system might seem to have little relevance to the functions of desk workers overseeing data management. Nor does Taylor’s principle that management should offer the maximum prosperity for both employer and employee seem on the surface to relate to a non-industrial setting. Our workers are not evaluated in terms that would be appropriate to the use of time study. However, the workplace psychology of Taylor’s theories still applies, particularly the principle of temporal contiguity, in which Taylor observed the importance of timing the stimulus and the response for conditioning behavior. Just as rewards and punishment influenced factory output standards in his studies, those same factors continue to influence worker morale. S-RAD workers receive wage increases that are pegged to specific job performances, and letters of reprimand tied to dereliction of duty, and in both cases the timing of the response has been found to be crucial in eventuating the desired behavior.  Also crucial to smooth office function is another Taylor observation, the importance of unity of command. Each worker has a clear understanding of the organizational structure, answering to a single supervisor.

Fayol emphasized the values of leadership over pure technical ability, and saw management from more of an upper-level perspective. His scalar chain can be clearly observed in the S-RAD organizational structure, whereby the division of work is delegated in such a way as to create specialization within each department. Ascending the scalar chain one finds less specialization and more reliance on the leadership qualities (mental, physical, moral, etc.) espoused in Fayol’s philosophy. The expatriate department heads rely on the work of their Afghan team leaders, who in turn delegate supervisory functions within their departments as needed, a nod to Fayol’s preference for a narrow span of control. Most of the specialized work is done at the bottom of the chain, with the expatriates serving to regulate the workflow and ensure that all paperwork is moving consistently upward. The most effective department heads exact a balance of fear and respect in their teams, remunerating employees who show merit and disciplining those who fall short of departmental goals. These department heads convene weekly staff meetings with the COP and DCOP so that each branch stays abreast of the doings of the others, a hallmark of Fayol’s participative management. And while the structure is vertical in design, employees work laterally with their cohorts in other departments, a structure similar to “Fayol’s gangplank” that reduces stress on team leaders and department heads.

Max Weber praised bureaucracy, in which the office took precedence over the person.  S-RAD office functions bear some similarities to Weber’s ideal, though often at their peril. Employees are trained to recognize and respect ranking superiors, regardless of the personality holding that rank. Our employees are protected by uniform rules that limit exploitation and ensure equal opportunity. All employees are aware of their recourses for grievances. But terminations often result in employees bringing forth legal challenges, and as Afghanistan labor law leans favorably toward the worker over the foreign employer, such terminations are few. This sometimes results in complacency and poor performance, particularly at the bottom of the scalar chain. In general only the most flagrant cases of poor performance or corruption are punished, a vexing problem for department heads and their team leaders.