How should Mercy Corps decide which functions should be performed by the operating units and which functions should be the responsibility of headquarters? What should drive these decisions?

Mercy Corps is a adaptive organization as
Logistics,-cntral
Planning
Training- Centrl as it newly Hirerd resources require development and support before they are ready to take responsibilities in the field
Communication-
The standard practises and guidelines of communication should be centralized so that people across the organizations communicate in a standardized manner and there would be less ambiguity in communication for eg. People were copying multiple names in email and not getting required answers because it was ambiguous to whom the email was addressed. Also this would help in increasing communication between different operational units and the headquarters. This practises can be communicated via messages through digital library to collect and make available the key organization documents

consolidating and refining innovations, so people know whom to address their problems and questions, roles-responsibility and lines of authority and reporting organizational chart for guidelines by central so that field staff can access goals, objectives and activities, activities for the programs whehther they are meeting their objectives in line with the organizational goals and design, monitor and evaluate programs. In this manner employees in the field staff wil not be overloaded with responsibilities when programs expanded as in the case of White and Renken and employee turnover will be less as reponsibilies can be shared by multiple people from various parts of organization
People were not uptodate with actions and decisions taken by others in organization
Civil society
Administration-central
Program operations- review proposals, write reports -units and maintain relationship with donnors, authority to submit proposals ,adjust conracts and hire field staff
Technical directors according to passion and skills, economic development, emergency operations, material aid and civil society-cintraiized
Recruiting centralized so that people with appropriate skills and temperament which suit the organization are hired. And it would be easier for the headquarters to centrally with the Third Party which administers resume reviews and recruitment electronically to field managers so they can take decisions when to hire employees depending upon the need. when , human resource management, monitoring and evaluation of systems, documentation and dissemination of lessons learned, staff development and training, internal communication of finances
Procurement, logistics standardized, centralised inventory systems so that probability of failure of large programs is minimized.
Finance
Financial functions such as payroll are standardized and need to be centralized and left to headquarters. Fundraising should be centralized as funds are generally allocated to the organization based on the brand name of organization and thus should be kept with headquarters.Allocating of funds to different programs in each operational unit should be handled by the operational unit since field people are the best ones to decide on allocation of resources but allocation of funds to operational units should be centralized.

Performance appraisals- goals, objectives and responsibilities can be documented and people know whom should they report to, and message can be communicated across the organizaions
Should be centralized
New initiatives
Global emergency operations
Technical folks not part of team, they report to varety of managers it is not clear to field members how to access their assistance communication as people in organization were not upto date with others activities respnosibilites and comunication lines not vertical too much loose systems no standardization of core processes less support structures no sharing of ideas and relations- civil society programming toolbox and electronic forum for sharing ideas so that ideas and innovative solutions can be refined and reused for simila situations and digital library to collect and make available the key organization documents all innovation no improvement process for innovation environment uncertainity is high-lexible and loose structure so that field management has the flexibilty to drive decision

Centralized
Fund raising-development-central and operational
Program- strategy- operational so that accountability lies with country directors for strategic decisions since it is subjective of what is important , so it is best left for those who are on field as it would be difficult for central program directors to understand local priorites and program officers were loaded with too mch responsibilities who could be delegated to country directors as people in the field understand the conflict situaions and are the best one to make decisions on programming and not some [technical] person in the headquarter as in Afghanistan field people understood that primary need of people of Afghanistan was food and jobs and so they could derive a ‘cash for work’ program which could address the concerns of civil people in afghanistan which probably would be difficult for centralised people to understand problems and come up with programs to address the problems.

Finance-central
HR-Basic Guidelines of performance appraisals- goals, objectives and responsibilities can be documented and people know whom should they report to, procedures for firing and systems for paying resources and roles and responsibilities should be set centrally so that can be disseminated to every employee in organization via messages from the online systems, but subjective matters such as extending home leave should be left to operational units because field members are the best ones to judge the requirement of an employee on particular times.