Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

The overall objective of this chapter is to reinvigorate interest in the configurational approach to organization design. Configurational analysis developed in promising ways in the 1970s and 1980s and then stalled. We believe, however, that the configurational approach can be improved such that it will serve the interests of scholars, managers, and organizational designers alike. We discuss four research initiatives that can be combined to produce a theoretically and practically useful approach: (1) adding the configurational elements of organizational capabilities and management philosophy; (2) incorporating into theory development a mechanism for anticipating future organizational forms and helping managers to consider those forms; (3) developing valid quantitative measures of capabilities and other intangible assets; and (4) improving the model of change that underlies the redesign process.

Contingency theory presently provides a major framework for organizational design. There are, however, several major challenges to it. Contingency theory is said to be static. However, the SARFIT formulation of structural adaptation, with the Cartesian approach to fit, provides a theory of organizational change. Moreover, difficulties become opportunities for theory development, in the new concepts of quasi-fit and hetero-performance. The contingency theory of organizational structure is said to be obsolete because of new organizational forms, but this lacks credibility. A rival theory of organizational structure is institutional theory, however it is problematic. Challenges and opportunities in methodology are also discussed.

Recently, organization design has been confronted with divergent demands. Whereas many organizational forms recommended to enhance organizational performance build on trust, control-oriented forms are suggested to assure compliance with an increasing number of regulatory norms. Companies face the challenge to meet both requirements concurrently. Against this background, this chapter examines whether the contrasting demands do in fact involve trade-offs and if so, whether and how they could be reconciled. Reconciling different demands may benefit from considering the following steps: Distinguish functional demands from concrete structural forms; analyze behavior which is critical for achieving the functional requirements; analyze contingencies of critical behavior and arrive at an informed behavioral assumption; design the organizational form by deliberating alternative structure building and structure flanking measures which are effective for facilitating critical behavior. If different demands have to be met simultaneously, the design elements must be thoroughly balanced.

This contribution presents the idea that we need to look at the professional bureaucracy and design mechanical structures with lateral knowledge liaisons when exceptions are generated on a continuous basis. By decreasing the information processing need and replacing autonomy with formalization and centralization, individual knowledge workers assigned to organizational tasks can concentrate on specific tasks and will be released from the information-processing demand for more organic structural designs.

This chapter delimits and discusses design considerations within the field of Strategic Human Resource Management (SHRM). The relationship between human resource management (HRM) systems and strategy types is investigated and predictions are made about a simultaneous horizontal and vertical fit. In a conceptual model for SHRM the key argument is that the fit between business strategy and HRM strategy is determined by task characteristics of the strategy type and internally consistent HRM practices, i.e. a matching hypothesis.

We hypothesize a fit between national cultural environment of the organization and contingency variables subject to managerial discretion. Such a hypothesis implies that national culture is a contextual variable in contingency theory and uses empirically derived culture contingency theory (Hofstede, 1980) to argue that national cultural characteristics affect management’s choices as to how to organize and manage people. A tightly matched population of 4400 city managers from 14 Western countries constitutes strong material for the analysis as cultural and behavioral variables were directly analyzed. Findings suggest that bureaucratic tools of management are positively correlated with uncertainty avoidance and masculinity and negatively correlated with individualism. In addition, relationship management is negatively correlated with power distance but positively correlated with individualism. Normative aspects of management are negatively correlated with uncertainty avoidance. We derive a number of important implications for organization design theory and practice.

We compare market returns associated with firms’ creation of new units focused on e-business. Two aspects of organization design - governance and leadership - are considered with regard to exploitation- and exploration-oriented organization learning. We find that exploitation in governance (high centralization) is associated with a lower mean and variance in returns; that exploitation in leadership (appointment of outsiders) is associated with the same mean yet higher variance; and, among units exhibiting both modes of learning, the variance of returns are equal.

The profile deviation perspective on fit (Venkatraman 1989; Drazin & Van de Ven 1985; Donaldson 2001) has been used frequently in organization design to investigate how design affects performance. Because most studies have opted for empirical profiles, its theoretical underpinnings are underdeveloped. This, in turn, may lead research to underestimate the true impact from organization design on performance. In order to address such shortcomings, we use the information ‘processing view’ (Galbraith 1973, Tushman & Nadler 1978; Burton & Obel 2004) to develop a theoretical profile. We then use this profile to consider how three currently unresolved issues concerning external vs. internal misfits, the relative importance of different misfits and asymmetric misfits may be understood and tested in terms of the profile deviation perspective.

This chapter provides an extension and refinement of the information processing model of organization design (Galbraith 1973, Tushman and Nadler 1978). In the paper, I suggest that organization design constrains firms’ realized strategy, and thus influences organizational performance: I suggest that the choice of design becomes crucial for performance since organizations may face different functional demands that are determined by environments and strategic intentions, and since organization designs require costly and irreversible commitments.

What is a good measure for an action-oriented leadership style to employ in the Multi-contingency Model? We develop leadership dimensions of delegation and uncertainty avoidance using factor analysis and test its implications, here on strategic implementation. An explore-exploit view of strategy is similarly confirmed using factor analysis. Using these complementary measures, we test four misfit hypotheses. Of the four, the data from medium-sized Danish enterprises support two hypotheses: a strategy of low exploration is a misfit with a leadership style of high delegation; a strategy of low exploitation is a misfit with a leadership style of high uncertainty avoidance. For researchers, an action-oriented leadership approach is integral to the multi-contingency theory and greatly enriches our theory of organizational design. For CEOs, leadership is made operational and action-oriented to solve problems and resolve misfit conditions for good performance.