final decision. Personnel problem abounded. At the apper level,
expatriates were recruited as product division managers and for
many of the Head Office posts. Market rates were paid to recruit
these people on the argument that qualified men could only be ob-
tained through competitive salaries. However, the high degree of
centralisation in the Corporation obviated the possibilities of
responsibility being placed in the hands of those who were
theoretically hired to shoulder it. This led to widespread
demoralisation and a feeling among managers that they were of-
ten treated like clerks. At the branch level too, managers had vir-
tually no say in either product salection of the quality or quantity
of goods they received from Dar es Salaam. The elaborate per-
sonnel machinery extended the time it took to recruit or promote
people to nearly six months. It was almost impossible, therefore,
to recruit the highly skilled people required at all levels of the Cor-
poration; qualifted Tanzanians would simply not wait that long for
the final confirmation of their appointment or promotion and took
other jobs readily available in Tanzania. Moreover, the com-
plicated system installed by McKinsey led to faulty manpower
planning. At one point the personnel office calculated (and was
not corrected by management) that from 1970 to 1973 S KG:
would require over 1200 Form I'V and FormV1 graduates to fill its
needs.

Fifth, the Director of Trading Operations (D.T.0.) had an enor-
mous amount of power concentrated in his position. Not only was
he involved in Head Office policy decisions, but controlled all
product divisions, the sales division and the branches. Further,
most credit, pricing and stocking decision either rested with this
man or were influenced by his. Accounts were also centralised in
the office of the D.T.O., where the manager of the trading
operations accounts personally had to supervise eleven accounting
sections. All the branches’ accounts also fed into this accounting
office.

Owing to the high degree of centralisation in the Corporation,
management’s reactions over the period of disintegration were
critical. In fact, they accelerated, rather than stemmed, the
problems. In general, particularly at the level of operations,
management reacted to problems and crises by taking direct con-
trol of decisions. This had a multiple effect. It further demoralised
those with titular responsibility. It placed technical decisions in the

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