The Problems of Coordination and Control in Womens Community Development Programs

Introduction

Increased complexity of functions of an organization necessitates the activity commonly referred to as coordination.

Coordination is a key word that helps an organization to survive. This is true of Women in Development (WID) organizations in our societies today. An organization becomes complex if its activities manifest into several programs that require specific but different areas of expertise and expert ideas to actualize. These different programs are regarded as part of a common whole, and their purpose is to achieve the general goal. It will then be foolhardy for the management of an organization to allow the different programs to pursue their different goals without cooperating with one another. Such an action is referred to as irrational because it lacks coordination, and surely, the central goal will be difficult to attain.

In some organizations, the various subgoals necessitate the division of the whole organization into departments, all of them working toward the attainment of the central goal of the organization. This results in what is called a complex organization because of the differentiation into departments that had occurred within the department. In such a case, there is a great need for coordination in the organization. In sum, the central ingredient for any organization's success is the effective coordination of the activities geared toward the central goal of the organization. The ability possessed by different managements of different organizations toward effective internal coordination marks the difference between the success and failure of organizations.

Coordination activities are particularly important in a women's development organization because its programs are geared toward women's enlightenment. One of the major aims is to make women become active participants in their own and their society's affairs so that their contributions to economic development will be understood and acknowledged.

This goal is central and unique, but the activities required to achieve the goal are numerous. First of all, the WID program needs to exist, and existence means that there must be adequate resources and investments to back it up. To achieve this goal, the WID program should generate funds. The program therefore needs to engage in fund-raising activities. Fund-raising activities also need coordination because there are different types of fund-raising exercises that can be achieved with different methods. The overall activities need to be coordinated effectively in order to produce results.

Apart from fund raising, WID goals include the emancipation of women from the shackles of ignorance and poverty. This means that women need to be educated and made aware of their problems through awareness campaigns and women's education programs. Women need to be trained to have skills to ensure their independence. Women need to develop leadership skills through training. It is through adaptation that energy is obtained from the environment for the upkeep of the organization. An organization usually lines up activities to aid it in its adaptation process, but these activities alone cannot keep organizations going. They need to be coordinated with other activities in the organization for the realization of the total goal of the organization. For WID programs, adaptation requires that fund raising has to be harmonized with other activities

The second problem a successful organization should confront is goal attainment. Parsons explains that adaptation is important, but it will only end up in the planning stage if there are no activities geared toward the achievement of the goal of the organization. In most organizations, this function is seen as political. It is political in the sense that it relates to the ability of the organization to effectively utilize power to get what it wants from the environment. In case of WID programs, the goal-attainment function relates to how the activities of the various women's institutional and noninstitutional organizations are coordinated in order to acquire the needed resources — how the various women's development organizations (such as Family Support, Women in Nigeria [WIN], and other organizations) coordinate and relate to the source of power to get what they want. Without a proper goal-attainment activity, the WID program will be adversely affected. But as the theme of this chapter says, no function can, by itself alone, achieve the goal of the WID without coordination with other functions.

The third function is integration, which is a system of rewards and punishments for the organization members. This function is based on the premise that all cannot always be smooth within activities and people in an organization. Some individuals are more zealous than others, while some are criminally minded, while some are really doing their work. There must then be a system of rewards and punishments to integrate the different elements. If there is no integration system in an organization, then there will be anarchy, and everybody will be doing what he likes. To achieve this function, rules and regulations — usually referred to as organizational formalization — are instituted to guide the behavior of members. This can be noticed in the WID program rules and regulations.

Lastly, the pattern must be maintained by settling new entrants into the system. This function refers to how members are recruited to the organization.

This is very crucial to the coordination of the WID program. It refers to how the program gets its new converts among women and even men, young and old, in society. If patterns are not maintained, then the organization may cease to exist in due course. This activity in WID requires various propaganda, awareness campaigns, and training (including workshops, conferences and seminars) to acquaint people with its programs. By doing so, the pattern will be maintained.

In discussing the theoretical explanations, it is discovered that each of the systemic problems is very important, but it cannot stand on its own. If the organization concentrates alone on anyone without adequately coordinating all of them together, it will be difficult for the organization to achieve its goal. This underscores the importance of coordination and control in the WID program in Nigeria. As explained in this paper,...