no formal link, and little co-ordination, among the product
divisions, even at the managerial level. This, even though several
product divisions were purchasing similar items for the same
ultimate customers.

Policy

The second main cause for S.T.C.’s failure was that policy fell
short of what was required. This was true of S.T.C.’s decision and
policies directed at S.T.C. from outside bodies. Unlike the
organisational and systems problems, it is not possible to point to
a single policy mistake, or even a pattern, which did major
damage to the chance for success. It is also not possible to
separate the structure of S.T.C. from the policies, especially in-
ternal, that effected it.

Within S.T.C. itself there were policy gaps, several of which
were indicated in the previous section. The absence of per-
formance and 'evaluation standards for any level of the Cor-
poration, a lack of financial guidelines and controls on the
divisions, and the omission of a mechanism for internal co-
ordination among product divisions, all made it very difficult for
the various parts of S.T.C. to know where they, were expected to
go and, ultimately, much of the activity was reduced to a day-to-
day operation.

There were no purchasing or pricing policies, although various
attempts to provide the later were made from time to time. This
meant that product divisions only had broad budgetary projections
within which to work when making purchasing decisions. There
were no guidelines as to whether to emphasise certain kinds of
purchases and de-emphasise others, whether to make concerted
efforts to change consumer tastes towards cheaper imports, or
whether to promote local products and under what conditions.
Markups were determined in Dar es Salaam. In some cases prices
were to be uniform throughout the country and in others they
varied according to distance; accounting problems rendered cost

calculations inaccessible. Price reductions to clear overstocked .

items were decided on a case-by-case basis and branch managers
had no discretion in such matters.

There also seems to have been a fairly general management
paralysis when it came to implementing Government policies. For
example, a rather elaborate set of difinitions was worked out and

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