Solution 7: Splitting the organisation.

Splitting the organisation in two or more parts is not a very self evident solution, but nevertheless sometimes a good one. It should be considered an option if going on implies weakening the whole, or if staying implies renouncing new developments.

The big endeavour in splitting the organisation is to keep the dividing parts intact, and, if possible to keep in touch. Quarrelling, blaming, and mutual efforts to destroy the other part should be avoided.

Splitting is no last choice. Splitting up may be a very wise and mature decision, made for the best interests of both (or all) parts.

Considerations concerning splitting up the organisation.

What could be indications NOT to split up the organisation?

If various activities develop within one organisation, just the fact of variety should not be a reason for splitting the organisation. In the contrary. Different activities meeting each other in one organisation can be a rich breeding ground for linking and learning. The art of managing an organisation with divergent activities is to create an atmosphere of curiosity and receptiveness. Even if one part of the organisation houses activities for which a donor or funder is paying and the other part is producing for the market, even then both parts could go together in one organisation.

The hybrid organisation.

The organisation combining both kinds of activities is called a hybrid organisation. It is not completely a task-organisation, in which a superior body -government, donor-  gives a task and a budget to carry it out, neither completely a market organisation, in which clients buy products. (If an organisation depends massively on one big client, it functions de facto as a task organisation.)

Both types of organisations have their own culture. Characteristics of the organisational culture of the task organisation are for instance: obedience, loyalty, absence of pursuit of gain, orientation at continuity. The characteristics of the culture of a market organisation are: externally oriented, innovation minded, appraisal for assiduousness, eager to invest in survival, entrepreneurship, independency.

The major difference is that the decisive factor for continuity in task organisation  is not output but the appraisal of the assigner (who judges the organisation on more than only output). While in market organisations the output is the one and only decisive factor for survival.

To combine both sets of values is not easy. The law of Gresham says: market transactions will drive out task oriented processes. Members of the organisation involved in market transactions will experience themselves as being somehow more valuable because people apparently want to pay for their products or services. Client centeredness, a balanced relationship between investment and profit, it all comes naturally with market orientation.

If the management is not conscious of this dynamics, first and second rate workers and first and second rate activities will emerge. Another risk is economical pollution (f.i. overhead costs of the market part are accounted to the task part).

(Who wants to know more of the cultural differences between the commercial and the public domain, read: Jane Jacobs: Systems of survival. A dialogue on the moral foundations of commerce and politics. Random House, 1992. Jacobs describes two systems of values which define people's behaviour at work: the guardian syndrome -especially in the public sector- and the commercial syndrome -especially in the private sector-. A mix of these syndromes is, according to Jacobs, very unwanted and will lead to all sorts of anomalies. She offers ways to preserve integrity.)

If the management succeeds to manage a hybrid organisation, both parts can learn a lot from each other.

Splitting up the organisation.

What could be indications to split?

• Incompatibility of working methods. Maybe the operational activities belonging to one part of the work are not compatible with the rest of the organisation. For instance: a safe house needs security, invisibility and stability. As a consequence of the work in the safe house some professionals develop new strategies to raise awareness with battered children. The work needs a lot of publicity, visibility and action. In such a case it could be a logical decision to split.
• Externally motivated splitting. A donor organisation may be willing to fund an activity if it is executed in a new organisational structure.
• Growth of members. Sometimes it is not healthy for people involved to stay in the same organisation. If for instance some professionals desperately want to begin their own organisation, eager to be an entrepreneur themselves, to spread one's wings and to be responsible for the whole process, why try to stop them? Unfortunately this wish is often experienced as betrayal of the mother-organisation. But another viewpoint could be to explain it as a mature wish to act independently. The NGO could choose to deal with this wish, by agreeing on a certain division of labour, future cooperation and mutual assistance.