Index of Paper Presentations for the Parallel Sessions - Academy of ...

the information generated at each level is channelized to a central party which assimilates,processes, and in turn re-transmits the information to a lower rank in the form of strategies,directives and/or guidelines (Moran & Ghoshal, 1996; Williamson, 1973, 1998). In our case, thecentral organization was NACO and the primary source of information was gathered by the vastsentinel surveillance system. As mentioned previously, the policies and initiatives were imposedon the states which on paper had discretion on health issues. It is worth mentioning as well thatthe WHO was instrumental in launching the NACP by providing technical support in theformulation of strategies and plans for HIV/AIDS prevention and control.By contrast, under a market system, information is decentralized; each party collects itsown information and is rewarded by its results measured at market prices. As an output-basedsystem in the sense that results and rewards are correlated, behaviour constraints are unnecessarybecause it is assumed that lower levels of the organization knows better than the upper level whatneeds to be done. So, opportunistic behaviour of stakeholders is reduced by linking output torewards (Moran & Ghoshal, 1996; Williamson, 1973, 1998). Our data indicates that NACO hasadopted a hybrid system. This is, NACO is delegating responsibility and empowering CBOs toparticipate in behavioural change in rural areas and among high risk groups that belong todifferent contextual situations (i.e. in north-eastern states the epidemic is driven by druginjections while in the rest it is driven by commercial sex). For this, NACO relies on theparticipation of lower levels of government (e.g. SACS), NGOs, SMOs, and CBOs, which havebetter understanding of the wider influence that local factors have on the success of HIV/AIDSprograms and initiatives (Campbell & Cornish, 2010).Each system indulges in different cost structures and therefore may produce differentresults. A contract relationship implies that the more costly the governance structure to police thecontracting parties, the less efficient the relationship. It follows that inefficient or costlycontracting relationships provide fewer opportunities for increasing social welfare—in our casean attempt to control the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Regardless of the governance structure NACO