Central to the success of any decentralization effort is the orientation of bureaucracy; particularly bureaucracy at the ‘cutting edge.’ It is on the grooming, training, and motivation of the front-line functionaries or the customer-contact employees that the sustainability of a decentralisation plan will to a considerable degree depend. The vitality of the cutting-edge bureaucracy cannot, however, be considered in isolation; the matter ramifies into multiple directions. Illustratively, the degree of decentralisation an organization may internally achieve, the commitment of its top-brass to empowerment of the rank-and-file, and so on. These themes in return invoke yet broader dimensions connected with organisational culture, organization development, and strategies for continual organizational renewal. Within this overarching framework, the present book examines the processes through which public bureaucracies adjust their style and substance as they brace up to meet the challenge of decentralization. It is argued that a participation-centred dispensation confronts top-centric bureaucracies with requirements (eg. Client consultation, employee empowerment), which the latter, by virtue of being ordered along an archaic hierarchy, are unequipped to meet. And that this incompatibility will need to be removed through judicious HRD interventions to harmonise the postulates on which dcentralisation rests and the assumptions on which public bureaucracies operate.
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