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P O I N T O F V I E W Open Access
Gaps in the structuring of organizations in
the graduate employment context in
Uganda
Peter Dithan Ntale
1*
, Jude Ssempebwa
2
, Badiru Musisi
2
, Genza Gyaviira Musoke
2
, Kimoga Joseph
3
,
C. B. Mugimu
3
, Ngoma Muhammed
1
and Joseph Ntayi
1
* Correspondence: pntale@mubs.ac.
ug
1
Makerere University Business
School, Faculty of Graduate Studies
& Research, Plot 21A, Port bell Road,
Nakawa, P.O Box 1337, Kampala,
Uganda
Full list of author information is
available at the end of the article
Abstract
The complexity of global challenges requires that organizations collaborate with one
another. To do this, stakeholders need flexible structures that are designed in a way
that allows organizations to collaborate. However, it is not known whether Uganda’s
organizations are structured in a way that allows them to collaborate with one
another, casting doubt as to whether they can manage the complexity of global
challenges such as graduate unemployment. Informed by Hage and Aiken (1967), we
studied the structures of selected organizations in Uganda and found out that their
major components, i.e., centralization and formalization, are designed in a way that
may not allow collaboration to occur. We found out that the organizational
structures were exclusive in decision-making, had high power distance (HPD), jobs
were strictly codified, and organizations enforced stringent rule observation. These
gaps make it difficult for people interaction and involvement and deny them of their
freedom to relate with one another, making it difficult for a collaboration between
different agencies to occur. To enhance organizational collaboration, it is
recommended that organizations should be restructured to become more inclusive,
interactive, and democratic since organizations structured in this way have shown
collaboration success and greater achievement of society needs.
Keywords: Inter-agency collaboration, Graduate employment, Organizational
structures, Uganda
Introduction
Working in collaboration has become common for organizations throughout the
world. The political, economic, social, environmental, and technological needs of the
twenty-first century are complex that an individual organization may not have the cap-
abilities to meet such complex demands. Therefore, organizations that consistently
persist on pursuing individualistic mandates more often fail to adapt to emerging
conditions which makes their survival in a competitive and volatile complex business
environment quite difficult (Helgesson et al. 2018). They lack resources and synergy to
not only contribute to their individual organizational mandates but also to the collect-
ive needs of society. According to Kraak (2011), organizations that work in silos are
characterized by duplication of work, huge public expenditure, competition, and
© The Author(s). 2020 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
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indicate if changes were made.
Ntale et al. Journal of Organization Design (2020) 9:3
https://doi.org/10.1186/s41469-020-0066-5
conflict over organizational mandates while pursuing their individualistic mandate to
which they do not fully achieve, worse still undoing each other’s achievements.
According to Hage and Aiken (1967), the individualistic tendencies displayed by orga-
nizations in the execution of their mandates are normally a sign of organizations whose
structures are centralized and formalized. Centralized organizational structures define
the extent to which organizations are centralized. This looks at two major constructs:
decision-making and hierarchy of authority. Formalization defines the extent to which
organizations are formalized. This looks at two more constructs: job codification and
rule observation. Despite the fact that scholars such as Ruekert et al. (1985) confirm
that centralization and formalization lead to greater organizational effectiveness and ef-
ficiency; recent scholars such as Huxham and Vangen (2013), Nylen (2007), Ramus
et al. (2017) indicate that centralization and formalization of organizations do poorly at
bringing people/organizations to work together which fails them in their effort to
achieve the complex organizational and societal needs of the twenty-first century.
Centralization
The extent to which organizations are centralized is determined by the extent to which
decision-making is done either centrally determined or inclusive to everyone. Organiza-
tions that centrally make a decision are less democratic, less inclusive, and more au-
thoritative in the way their organizations are managed (Dryzek 1997). According to the
Leadership Judgement Indicators (Faraci et al. 2013), organizations whose decision-
making mechanism is authoritative have minimal chances of promoting interactions
between different partners upon which collaboration may be developed. On the con-
trary, organizations that are decentralized and horizontally structured tend to bring
people together and promote cross-functional interaction, which makes them inclusive
in their decision-making, a strong hypothesis that promotes collaboration between dif-
ferent parties (Kim 2005).
Organizational centralization can also be seen from the way organizations are hier-
archically structured. According to Hofstede et al. (2014), organizations that have
power and authority concentrated at the top of the leadership have high power distance
(HPD) and those with less power between leaders and subordinates have low power
distance (LPD). Organizations with high power distance are less inclusive in terms of
decision-making, have less interactions between different management layers, and have
stringent rules and regulations that the lower employees need to observe. Organizations
structured with high power distance normally provide little or no opportunity for ex-
change of ideas and relational building between different parties, a behavior that does
not promote collaboration for any meaningful purpose such as the creation of graduate
employment opportunities.
Formalization
The extent to which organizations are formalized is manifested in the way jobs are de-
scribed. Jobs that are strictly specified normally infringes on employees to associate,
interact, and communicate with people at different hierarchical layers. Therefore, strin-
gent job description falls short of relation building and interaction ingredients that
bring people together which makes it difficult for employees to initiate any
Ntale et al. Journal of Organization Design (2020) 9:3 Page 2 of 10
collaborative efforts (Folgheraiter 2003). However, organizations that are not restrictive
in job codification always give a chance to employees to communicate within and
across organizations, which further enhances collaboration (Hsieh and Hsieh 2003).
Rule observation is another way through which organizational formalization is mani-
fested. Formal organizations are characterized by strict rules and regulations that
should be observed by different stakeholders. Such rules and regulations define the dos
and don’ts of employees in an organization. For example, in some organizations, rules
and regulations bar lower-level employees from interacting with employees at higher
levels (Tierney et al. 1999). There is a clear communication channel from the top to
down, and normally, there is a specific person from the top that does this kind of com-
munication. This does not only infringe on the freedom of employees to interact with
one another which strains any collaborative efforts between the intending partners but
also restricts innovativeness and creativity that may come as a result of the cross-
functional collaboration between different employees within or across the organizations
(Lu et al. 2019). However, organizations that are flexible on rules and regulations al-
ways promote cross-functional interactions between different employees which pro-
motes collaboration between different employees within and outside the organization
(Ramadass et al. 2018).
Demonstration of centralization and formalization in the case of employment in the Oregon state, USA
In a bid to create more jobs for the unemployed people in the Oregon state, the top management in the state
Adult and Family Services (AFS) agency decided on an aggressive strategy of collaborating with 3 other large
hierarchical and bureaucratic organizations. These organizations included the community colleges, the JOBS
Council, and Employment Division. AFS top management further decided to devolve more power and
responsibility to its district offices, numbering about 15 around the district and to line staff. By 1995, all the 18
different organizations with similar mandates but previously acting independent of each other had transformed
into a single collaboration with a single objective of creating more employment opportunities for the youth in
Oregon City. By collaborating, they broke down the centralized and formalized organizational structures of the
3 major organizations, preferring to collaborate more interactively with other organizations including the 15
district offices that were now part of the collaboration.
The major outcomes of this collaboration were cutting down the inefficiencies that came as a result of having
multiple organizations doing a similar activity but achieving very little, minimization of competition and conflict
over resources, power and authority, high-level involvement and interaction of all stakeholders across different
organizational layers bringing in high levels of individual employee responsibility. State funding became bigger and
permanent, even when the state legislature of cutting state agencies’budgets during the general fiscal crisis of
1995–2000 became real. There was cross-functional communication between the different organizational layers
and finally reduced organizational rules and regulations making it easy employees’freedom to interact within and
across the organizations. This collaboration turned the statewide system into a relatively high performing operation,
creating a number of employment opportunities for unemployed people.
Source: Bardach (1998)
The case highlights two major issues that hindered the creation of employment
opportunities in Oregon prior to the decision of AFS to collaborate with other agencies.
These issues stem from the way these organizations were structured. They are
centralization and formalization of the 3 big employment organizations including the 15
district offices. According to Gray (1989), Huxham and Vangen (2013), and Thompson
(2013), centralized and formalized organizations have the following characteristics which
make it difficult for organizations to collaborate with one another. These characteristics
are evident in the above case study. By being centralized, decision-making is done at the
top of the leadership which excludes lower- and sometimes middle-level managers in
decision-making, yet the day-to-day operations of the organization are hinged on their ef-
forts. By excluding them from the decision-making mechanism, organizations risk having
Ntale et al. Journal of Organization Design (2020) 9:3 Page 3 of 10
demotivated employers whose trust, commitment, and interest in their organization are
negligible (Bardach 1998). Therefore, organizations that are structured in this way may
not give collaborative opportunities to their employees which provide less opportunities
to achieve organizational goals. Due to the hierarchical nature of centralized organiza-
tions, there is always a high power distance between different layers of authority. The
most top layers wield too much power, authority, and respect compared to lower em-
ployees. This makes it difficult for people interactions on a number of things that concern
organizational development. Where high power distance exists, it is difficult to create col-
laborations between different agencies (Hofstede et al. 2014). When power distance be-
tween leaders and employees is minimal, there are greater cross-functional interactions
which are a recipe for greater collaborations. In fact, according to the power distance
index by Hofstede et al. (2014), some developing countries such as the USA, Canada,
Australia, and the UK rank highly in terms of low power distance. These are countries
that have shown greater collaborations between different agencies while most Asian coun-
tries such as Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Singapore have a high power index
and indeed little or no greater collaboration success stories are known in those countries.
Formalization of the 3 organizations and the 15 district offices was seen in terms of
job codification and rule observation. The jobs in all these organizations were
described in a way that allowed employees to concentrate on their work and mindful of
the different organizational layers. The job description restricted communication
within and outside the organization and only preserved this privilege to the top
management (Ntale et al. 2019). There were rules and regulations to enforce discipline
in all the 3 organizations. Therefore, employees were kept mindful of the rules and
regulations. These deterred them from collaborating with one another within and
across the organization for fear of consequences that may arise out of this (Daugherty
et al. 2006).
AFS took a decision to collaborate with other organizations in the same industry
after realizing the dangers of running fragmented organizational operations vis-à-vis
the benefits that accrue to them when they work together. After collaborating, they
were able to attract enough funding from the state even when there was legislation to
cut down the agencies’budgets due to the economic downtime of 1995 to 1998. There
were interactions within and across organizational boundaries with necessitated
collaboration between different agencies. Employee’s freedom to participate in
organizational decision-making was realized making it easier for the collaboration be-
tween agencies possible.
It would seem from this case and several other cases such as the fight against drug
trafficking (Ledebur and Youngers 2013), healthcare (Chuang and Wells 2010), road
network (Bryson et al. 2015), and creation of employment opportunities (McQuaid
2010) that organizational collaboration is driven by a desire that far goes beyond their
individualistic agenda and capacity to achieve. This is demonstrated in several other
success stories such as in the UK (Audretsch and Belitski 2019), Australia (Butcher
et al. 2019), and Canada (Bullock et al. 2018) that the more developed countries are
driven by a desire to deliver collective needs of society such as the creation of
employment opportunities. This drives them to look for innovative solutions through
which solutions to such problems can be solved. According to Hood et al. (1993), the
collaboration of organizations is one of the creative and innovative solutions that can
Ntale et al. Journal of Organization Design (2020) 9:3 Page 4 of 10
easily solve collective problems which individual organizations may not afford. This is
attributed to the early development of democratic and inclusive governance in the
national and local management of political, economic, and social affairs which ushered
in a culture of accountability to all the involved stakeholders. It is this culture of
accountability that normally makes organizations think about their deliverables as
demanded by the society which makes them collaborate with one another to achieve
societal needs. The culture of accountability and inclusive governance advocates for
inclusive decision-making, freedom of actors to participate freely in all organizational
activities, reduced power distance between employees, and maximum interaction
between different stakeholders at different organizational levels (Knoke 2019; Künzel
2012; Woods 2004). Organizations that are structured in such ways more often
collaborate with one another so as to deliver common objectives.
In the less developed countries, however, observable practice shows limited
collaboration among organizations, yet there are many challenges that would have
been solved if organizations collaborated (Chiu et al. 2016). Challenges such as
high unemployment levels, high illiteracy levels, poor governance, insufficient
resources, poor health services, lack of adequate infrastructure, and poor
governance cannot be solved by individual organizations since they lack adequate
resources and synergy to solve such problems, yet there seem to be individualistic
tendencies among the organizations in the developing countries. The literature on
the issue of why organizations shun collaboration remains elusive as there are no
sufficient studies done to elicit this debate. It is, therefore, the goal of this study to
write about the structure of organizations, particularly the centralization and
formalization of an organization, as the first step in identifying gaps that disallow
collaboration between different agencies in a developing country context like
Uganda.
The problem
Organizations that promote the creation of graduate employment opportunities
through their different mandates have tried a number of activities aimed at creating
employment opportunities in the country. For example, the Ministry of Agriculture,
Animal, Industry and Fisheries has provided several incentives (e.g., tax exemptions,
free inputs like seeds and extension services) to support graduates to take up
employment opportunities in the agricultural sector. For example, 99 billion shillings
has been allocated to the National Agricultural Advisory Services (NAADS) to provide
more agriculture extension services to different youth groups. The Ministry of Labor,
Gender and Social Development implemented a 10 billion Youth Livelihoods Program
under whose auspices the youths, including graduates, are given start-up capital to take
up projects where they might work and provide opportunities to other people (State of
the Youth Report, 2016/2017). Microfinance institutions and civil society organizations
are also providing credit facilities that are tailored to the needs of youth borrowers
(e.g., village savings and loan associations, group lending) with the view to spur their
entrepreneurship potential and thereby gain employment while creating opportunities
for others. With the support of multinational organizations like the United Nations
Development Program (UNDP), non-governmental organizations and private sector
Ntale et al. Journal of Organization Design (2020) 9:3 Page 5 of 10
organizations like Enterprise Uganda, The New Vision Publishing Company, The
Uganda Private Sector Foundation, and Standard Chartered Bank Uganda Limited are
also providing various forms of support towards youth entrepreneurship development
(United Nations Development Program report 2015). Several government and private
sector organizations like Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA), Meera Investments,
and UAP Properties have also built expansive social infrastructure in the form of com-
mercial buildings, stores, and markets to support the creation of employment oppor-
tunities for youths. With funding from the African Development Bank, for instance,
KCCA invested USD 5 million into low-cost markets in which youths in various parts
of the city could trade (African Development Bank Report 2017).
Unfortunately, despite the activities of these organizations, the graduate
unemployment problem is still persistent, raising concern over the structure of
organizations that deal with the creation of employment opportunities. Scholars
such as Huxham and Vangen (2013) confirm that organizations that are structured
in ways that promote individualistic agenda may lack resources to execute large-
scale programs through which many youth graduates may be employed. This is be-
sides the wastage of available resources through duplication of work, competition,
and conflicts over operational and strategic mandates (Cashore et al. 2019). This is
the characteristic of Uganda’s organizational structures, a cogent hypothesis that
their centrally and formally hierarchical formations may hinder organizational
collaboration and ultimately affect any opportunity towards the creation of employ-
ment opportunities.
The proposed solution to the problem
We propose an organizational structure that allows people interaction, inclusive
decision-making, low on power distance, and less on organizational rules and regula-
tions. A shared/collaborative governance structure responds well to traditional hier-
archical bureaucracies whose exclusive decision-making, high power distance, and
stringent rules and regulations make it difficult for people and organizations to freely
interact and develop effective and beneficial collaborations (Agranoff 2012). Therefore,
collaborative governance brings public and private stakeholders together in collective
forums with public agencies to engage in consensus-oriented decision-making aimed at
solving collective needs (Vangen et al. 2015). This is enabled through decentralized and
horizontal structures which bring different stakeholders more closely and involve them
in decision-making while allowing them the chance to communicate and interact cross-
functionally.
Different scholars and practitioners in multiple disciplines have embraced the
emerging structure of collaborative governance, for example, in political science (e.g.,
Ansell and Gash 2008; Dryzek 1996,2012), public administration (e.g., Bingham et al.
2008; Emerson et al. 2012), public management (e.g., Agranoff and McGuire 2003),
planning (e.g., Forester 1999; Innes and Booher 2003; Margerum 2011), conflict
resolution (e.g., Costantino and Merchant 1996; Susskind et al. 1999), and
environmental studies (e.g., Koontz and Thomas 2006; Scholz and Stiftel 2005;
Susskind et al. 2010). These scholars and many others agree that there are many
benefits that organizations achieve when they adopt collaborative governance
Ntale et al. Journal of Organization Design (2020) 9:3 Page 6 of 10
structures. Such benefits may include greater collaboration between different
organizations, improved coordination of activities, better leveraging and pooling of
resources, increased social capital, enhanced conflict management (prevention,
reduction, and resolution), better knowledge management (including generation,
translation, and diffusion), increased risk-sharing in policy experimentation, and in-
creased policy compliance (Agranoff 2008; Agranoff and McGuire 2003; Leach and Sa-
batier 2005; Milward and Provan 1995). However, as indicated in different literature,
scholarship on collaborative governance seems to be well developed among developing
countries such as the USA, Canada, Australia, and the UK. According to Hofstede et al.
(2014), these countries are democratic, inclusive, and have low power distance between
leaders and subordinates which makes them work as a collective than individuals in the
achievement of greater collective needs than individualistic agenda. However, scholar-
ship on collaborative governance is not well developed in most of the developing coun-
tries such as Uganda. This makes it difficult to assess the extent to which democratic
governance may allow collaboration between different agencies and the extent to which
collective needs such as the creation of graduate employment opportunities may be
created.
Therefore, the question to ask is whether organizations responsible for the creation
of graduate employment opportunities in Uganda are ready to collaborate amidst the
prevalence of centralized and formalized organizational structures. According to the
reviewed literature, the answer to this question is that collaboration in a centralized
and formalized organization structure happens to a lower extent due to the non-
interactive, non-inclusive, and non-democratic nature of such organizational structures.
In response to this, an interactive and inclusive organizational structure is proposed to
deal with the gaps that come along with the centralized and formalized organizational
structures if organizations are to benefit from organizational collaborations particularly
the creation of graduate employment opportunities in developing countries.
Discussions and recommendations
The top-bottom decision-making/tell decision-making approach is not amenable to
inter-agency collaboration. It is therefore recommended that organizations responsible
for graduate employment should be restructured to allow employees with freedom to
participate in organizational decision-making. The employee motivation that comes
along with this employee involvement is likely to change the dynamics of public and
private organizations’performance from autonomous actions to interactive dynamism
which according to Western (2019) is associated with organizational creativity, innova-
tiveness, agility, and concern for societal needs than individual needs. Reducing
hierarchical organizational structures and introducing flat and relational-based organi-
zations require individuals who collaborate effectively.
High power distance organizations are associated with autocracy, negative
organizational progress, less employee involvement, low employee motivation and
empowerment, and poor organizational health (Khatri et al. 2009). According to
Hofstede et al.’s(2014) model, high power distance organizations’employees cultivate a
culture of not participating in decisions and the general preference to leave decision-
making and all organizational matters to their superiors to decide on what to do. The
employers also prefer it that way and take it upon themselves to take advantage of this
Ntale et al. Journal of Organization Design (2020) 9:3 Page 7 of 10
to wield powers, command respect, and decide on organizational matters the way they
want. Employees are normally instructed on what their actions should be of which they
are mandated to follow passively. Communication between different layers of
organization is vertical downwards with no or little horizontal communication. This ex-
plicitly widens the gap between superiors and their subordinates since it makes it hard
for the lower echelon employees to express their views to the upper echelons. Accord-
ing to Cockburn et al. (2019), organizations that are vertically organized in layers of
varying power and influence offer no or little opportunity for collaboration for institu-
tional collaboration. With little or no collaboration opportunities for organizations that
are hierarchically structured, we recommend that organizations should be restructured
in a way that reduces the power distance and establishes more relational approaches
between employers and employees. Leaner networked organizations based on
interaction and networks should be adopted to shorten the power distance by allowing
more cross-functional interactions which will develop trust and mutuality hence
collaboration.
Stringent job codification deters employees not only from performing their tasks
effectively but also from relating with each other (Organ et al. 2006). This is in line
with Bryson (2018) who found out that if individuals cannot relate well due to the way
their jobs are specified, they cannot perform internal organizational matters and thus
cannot collaborate across organizations. Hoyet et al. (2012) reported a significant
relationship between employees’freedom at work and collaboration. Their study
resulted from 2500 school teachers in the USA in which teachers expressed resentment
for the way their jobs were described. The jobs were described in a way that limited
their internal and external association with other key stakeholders, which promoted
worker’s alienation and thus disallowing professional collaboration. We recommend
that institutions in Uganda should codify employee responsibilities in a way that allows
them to interact and work with each other within and across organizations. As put by
Aktouf (1992), modern organizations should replace the traditional unitary work
paradigms that are restrictive to employees’freedom to pluralistic, humanistic, caring,
and interactive work paradigms if they are to sail through the competitive challenges of
modern society.
Finally, we recommend that the current organizational structures be restructured
from hierarchical and centralized organizations to collaborative governance structures.
Collaborative governance deals with removing hierarchies, empowering employees to
become more involved in organizational matters, and breaking down the stringent rules
and regulations while allowing interaction within and outside the organization. This
brings people closer and interactive hence allowing them to become more collaborative
in what they intend to achieve either as individual organizations or as collectives. This
may require training and developing capacity in collaborative intelligence. Collaborative
intelligence refers to the ability to build, contribute to, and manage power found in
networks of people. This kind of training is necessary for all organizational employees
regardless of the positions they hold. It equips employees with practical knowledge on
relational communication, negotiations, and emotional intelligence in a collaborative
environment. These will cut down hierarchical organizational structures and reduce
power distance while making organizations more flat, relational, and inclusive, capable
Ntale et al. Journal of Organization Design (2020) 9:3 Page 8 of 10
of collective negotiations and collective decisions to achieve the desired organizational
or societal outcome.
Authors’contributions
All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
Competing interests
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
Author details
1
Makerere University Business School, Faculty of Graduate Studies & Research, Plot 21A, Port bell Road, Nakawa, P.O
Box 1337, Kampala, Uganda.
2
East African School of Higher Education Studies and Development, College of Education
and External Studies, Room A3, Makerere University, P.O Box 7062, Kampala, Uganda.
3
East African School of Higher
Education Studies and Development, College of Education and External Studies, Makerere University, P.O Box 7062,
Kampala, Uganda.
Received: 22 July 2019 Accepted: 15 January 2020
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