Knowledge that Transforms

The adoption of telecommuting raises concerns for both managers and employees: Remote supervision presents monitoring challenges, while physical isolation may impede the employee's opportunity for, and involvement in, determining valued organizational outcomes (organizational justice). This study of 191 employees examined the relationships among telecommuting, organizational monitoring strategies, and organizational justice perceptions. Results suggest that monitoring strategies were more strongly associated with organizational justice perceptions than with telecommuting, and procedural and interactional justice perceptions related significantly to telecommuting. We provide implications, limitations, and ideas for future research.

We define the complex system underlying organizational culture by incorporating the social-psychological principles of balance and information (B-I) into models of influence (changes in attitudes as a function of interaction) and selection (changes in interaction). We identify information based influence as a potential anchor for actors' sentiments so that they are not overwhelmed by normative influence. In the model of selection, we identify the pursuit of information as an important counterbalance to the effect of homophily (interacting with others like oneself). Using the tools of dynamic systems we show how our models generate the full range of equilibria of complex systems. Through simulations we also explore how our system responds to exogenous effects.

In this paper, we set out to investigate whether strategic leadership matters at a moment in the life cycle of the firm when a change is made in the top leadership. By far, most of the conceptual and empirical literature on the consequences of CEO succession involves United States companies. Therefore, in this paper, we set out to investigate the impact of CEO succession on strategic and organizational changes in Japanese companies. The empirical study consisted of a matched control group design involving 81 Japanese companies experiencing a CEO succession event and 81 companies with continuity of their CEO leadership. The results of the study can be summarized as follows. Overall CEO succession was not associated with radical strategic and organization changes. Japanese companies did engage in evolutionary organization and strategic adaptations during the five year period of the study but independent of CEO succession. The governance structure moderates organization changes (independent of CEO succession) in particular when the firm was affiliated with a main bank and the firm was experiencing severe financial pressure.

One view holds that organizations are virtual to the extent that they outsource key components of their production processes, and that electronic networks make it easier to do this. The goal of the present paper is to examine explicitly the effects that use of electronic networks for transactions with suppliers has on firms' degree of virtualization. In so doing, we also highlight factors that influence the use of networks for coordination with suppliers, and the impact such use has on coordination success. Contrary to much recent speculation, the use of electronic networks for transactions was not associated with increased outsourcing, but rather with greater dependence on internal production. Moreover, the use of interpersonal relationships for coordination, which many think of as an alternative to electronic network use, was positively associated with greater network use. Surprisingly, use of electronic networks was negatively associated with such outcomes as order quality and efficiency, and satisfaction with suppliers, while more reliance on personal linkages was associated with better outcomes and mitigated the negative consequences of using electronic networks.

Although downsizing has become an integral part of organizational life in the U.S., there is little serious theoretical or empirical work on this issue. Nearly all of the completed work addresses the effects of downsizing, which usually are negative. Therefore, an important yet unanswered question is: Why do organizations downsize in the first place? In addressing this question, I offer some systematic thoughts on the causes of downsizing. Specifically, I develop a conceptual framework for studying organizational innovation that draws on two overlooked dimensions associated with this phenomenon, the basis of social action (rational versus arational) and social context (organizational versus extraorganizational). I then characterize downsizing as an organizational innovation and develop propositions that explain why organizations downsize. Finally, I emphasize that empirical evaluation of these propositions will help us to understand a pivotal organizational development of recent decades.

This article seeks to reconceptualize the relationship between flexibility and efficiency. Much organization theory argues that efficiency requires bureaucracy, that bureaucracy impedes flexibility, and that organizations therefore confront a tradeoff between efficiency and flexibility. Some researchers have challenged this line of reasoning, arguing that organizations can shift the efficiency/flexibility tradeoff to attain both superior efficiency and superior flexibility. Others have pointed out numerous obstacles to successfully shifting the tradeoff. Seeking to advance our understanding of these obstacles and how they might be overcome, we analyze an auto assembly plant that appears to be far above average industry performance in both efficiency and flexibility. NUMMI, a Toyota subsidiary located in Fremont, California, relied on a highly bureaucratic organization to achieve its high efficiency. Analyzing two recent major model changes, we find that NUMMI used four mechanisms to support its exceptional flexibility/efficiency combination. First, metaroutines (routines for changing other routines) facilitated the efficient performance of nonroutine tasks. Second, both workers and suppliers contributed to nonroutine tasks while they worked in routine production. Third, routine and nonroutine tasks were separated temporally, and workers switched sequentially between them. Finally, novel forms of organizational partitioning enabled differentiated subunits to work in parallel on routine and nonroutine tasks. NUMMI's success with these four mechanisms depended on several features of the broader organizational context, most notably training, trust, and leadership.

This article is concerned with the assessment of the substantiation of management decisions in practice. The necessity for this undertaking derives from the fact that to be successful, management must choose the right extent of analysis for preparing major decisions. Testing this hypothesis requires the ability to measure the thoroughness of a decision preparation and to relate different levels of thoroughness to the success of the decision outcomes. In this paper, the author first presents the conceptual framework of argumentation rationality which makes it possible to measure the thoroughness of a decision preparation—or in other words, the soundness of reasons given for the decision. For a concrete-trial usage, the concept is then combined with the methodology of account analysis introduced by Lewin (Lewin 1996, Lewin and Hunter 1996, Hunter 1999) for the research project on “New Organization Forms in the Information Age” (NOFIA). The arguments given explicitly in the accounts express rationales for management decisions and thus give hints on the intensity of the decision preparation. Using a simplified version of the measuring concept which assesses the argumentation rationality on three selected rationality determinants (pro/contra relation, depth of arguments, and breadth of arguments), two different types of rationality analyses are carried out to illustrate the fruitfulness of the approach. First, on the basis of 16 accounts concerning an important strategic decision of Daimler-Benz made in 1985 (becoming an integrated technology group), the arguments discussed during that time are identified and structured for assessing the substantiation of decision preparation. The developed structure of reasoning not only allows a formal evaluation, but in addition offers starting points for a substantial discussion of the change action. Secondly, 138 accounts from the German automotive industry of the years 1990–1997 are analyzed in order to identify first typical patterns of management argumentation. Based on the available empirical foundation, four types of reasoning are isolated, which differ characteristically with respect to the considered rationality determinants. The paper closes with a perspective on significant questions for further elaborating as well as employing the concept in future research.