Abstract

Traditionally, trustees or board of directors reinforce governance mechanisms (Smillie & Hailey, 2001). In the case of an organisation that has made deliberate efforts to avoid hierarchy, and implement a participatory, decentralized collectivist structure, traditional governance can be challenged. The literature suggests that non-governmental organizations (NGO), even those that intentionally want to maintain a collectivist structure, when subject to growth and accountability from funders, turn to adopt bureaucratic governance features (Kassam, Handy & Ranade, 2000). However, ‘The Chinmaya Rural Primary Health Care and Training Center ’ (CRTC), in India, a rapidly growing rural development NGO, has intentionally remained a collectivist organization. Its structure fits the holographic design for organizations developed by Morgan (1986). Every staff member has a sense of the whole organization, but more importantly all staff work in emerging holographic structures that represent the whole NGO. This design has created a space to foster non-traditional governance features, whereby staff and constituents actively participate in the framing of NGO policy/vision, driving the organizational governance bottom-up. By critically examining governance at CRTC through the lens of traditional governance systems, and explaining its structure using the holograph as a metaphor for organizational design, the authors propose a non-traditional

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