Strategic Developmental Organizations: Some Behaviourial Properties

OB research in the Third World has not been sufficiently socially responsive. It can make amends by focussing on the organizational behaviour of strategic developmental organizations. The latter are organizations that have or adopt responsibility for the growth and development of their operating domains. Three types of SDOs are identified, namely, the apex, the spearhead, and the catalytic ones. In the Third World they generally share missionary, developmental goals, resource dependency on the government, and pioneering, risk-laden, uncertain tasks. These characteristics lead to some unusual strategies, such as of getting the domain’s compliance, learning to cope, innovation diffusion, autonomy seeking, and domain devices to be simultaneously organic and mechanistic and entrepreneurial and conservative. The successful ones tend to fuse proactive and professional modes of management. The intrinsically schizoid character of SDOs tends to breed high intrapersonal and interpersonal blocks and difficulties. A style of leadership marked by accentuation of superordinate goals, intensive communications with stakeholders, credibility building through a stream of quick pay off actions, task oriented but nurturant supervision, utilisation of national or local cultural mores, and spirituality may be particularly relevant for SDOs. The study of the organizational dynamics of SDOs should lead to large gains for all of OB.