I agree with you completely, seems that the person who designed the database has no database experience....

In Oracle I would do:

create table organization(
orgid number not null primary key,
ordparent number,
orgname varchar2(40) not null);

alter table organization add constraint fk_parent foriegn key (orgpare
+nt) references organization(orgid);

-- start inserts for organizations
insert into organization  ....etc.
-- end inserts for organizations

create table orglevels(
levelid number not null,
levelname varchar2(20) not null);

insert into orglevels values (1,'Sector');
insert into orglevels values (2,'Department');
insert into orglevels values (3,'Division');
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You would probably get lots of data by running a query like this one (untested):

select orgid,orgname,orgparent,level,l.levelname from organization o s
+tart with orgparent is null connect by prior orgid=orgparent
left join orglevels l on l.levelid=level
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