Where Did This Debt Come from? Organizational Change, Role Ambiguity and Development in Rural Khorezm, Uzbekistan

Abstract

We investigate the transformation of the agricultural service organizations in the post-Soviet period of transition. By means of an in-depth study of three types of agricultural service organizations in Uzbekistan’s Khorezm province, and a careful mapping of their regional and national environments, we demonstrate how the complex succession of collective farms, in combination with a series of inconsistent policies, created a situation in which organizations are forced to transform themselves and their methods of mobilizing resources in order to adapt to the new environment. In this process, reliance on hierarchies, family, clan, and administrative boundaries can help the organization to sustain itself, but in the long run, leaves the organization vulnerable. In such an environment it is extremely difficult for organizations to introduce the economic transparency and western-style accounting that would enable them to practice western-style capitalism.