A common problem for administrators who have not organized responsibilities into unified but decentralized hierarchies is that:

• A. the organization fails to develop administrators capable of independent action
• B. issues will not be posed at the level where decisions should be made
• C. relationships with the public will not be satisfactory
• D. it will be difficult to achieve administrative control or agreement on departmental action

Answer: (D)

When responsibilities are organized into unified yet decentralized lines of authority, the organization can maintain overall direction while letting parts of it act close to the issues they handle. Without that structure, there’s a risk of fragmentation—each department or unit pursuing its own priorities and procedures. That makes it hard to exert consistent administrative control or to reach agreement on what actions departments should take together. You end up with conflicting policies, duplication of effort, and slow or inconsistent decisions across the organization, which reduces overall effectiveness.

That explains why the difficulty in achieving administrative control or agreement on departmental action is the most accurate consequence of not having a unified-but-decentralized hierarchy. The other possibilities describe related concerns (independence of administrators, escalation of issues to the wrong level, public relationships), but they don’t capture the central coordination problem that arises when there isn’t a coherent structure guiding both unity and local decision-making.