Looking into inter-organizational coordination from a cultural perspective: A study on public organizations at the subnational level in Bangladesh

ABSTRACT

This paper analyses inter-organizational coordination from a cultural perspective at the sub-national level, focusing on Upazila in Bangladesh. A case-oriented qualitative study reveals that organizations with similar cultures are likely to be more successful in ensuring coordination than others who do not. The study also finds that the lack of cultural computability among different public organizations at the Upazila level has ensured coordination among them is problematic. The study also identifies several factors that create barriers to cultural compatibility. These factors include colonial legacy, different working procedures, lack of similar choices and preferences, history of the development of public organizations, inequality among public officials, societal influence on public officials, and lack of inter-organizational learning programmes.

KEYWORDS:

• Inter-organizational coordination
• organizational culture
• cultural compatibility
• public organization
• Bangladesh

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Sub-national administration is divided into three tiers, i.e. division, district and Upazila. Of these, the division is apex tier and below the division is the district. Upazila is the bottom tier.

2. Civil servants can broadly be categorized according to whether they are generalist or specialist or functionalist.

3. It means that the same questionnaires were administered for the government officials in both 2009 and 2016. However, slight changes were made in questionnaire for other categories of the respondents. For instances, a question like ‘how does coordination take place in upazila while multiple departments are involved in policy implementation’? was asked to public officials, not to contractors or general people. Similarly, question like the disbursement of funds is hampered due to the lack of coordination among public officials was asked both to contractor and public officials.

4. When “Rules of Business” are in place, one could ask how the lack of a standard operating procedure could affect performance variation. Of course, the rule of business directs officials to discharge their responsibilities. However, the mechanisms for maintaining inter-organizational coordination are not explicitly specified in the rules of business. This reasoning is consistent with Panday and Jamil’s (2011) conclusion that the lack of institutionalized norms and regulations creates difficulty in policy implementation in Bangladesh.

5. This is an identity of civil servants, which indicates who has joined the civil service at what time, and determines the seniority of these civil servants in terms of length of service. To date, 42 batches of civil servants have joined the civil service.

6. Bangladesh civil service consists of 27 cadres.