This study empirically tests the existence of populations. It reports a general organizational classification for both the United States and Japanese electronics industries. It tests for and identifies populations within a family of electronics industries and demonstrates the relevance of a general organizational classification for explaining how different natural selection processes affect different populations. Data include 669 US and 144 Japanese electronic firms. The results suggest that classification should play a more central role in development of organizational science.
This paper discusses the problems and processes involved in conducting longitudinal ethnographic research. The author's field study of technological change in radiology provides the context for the discussion. Specific attention is paid to how researchers can design a qualitative study and then collect data in a systematic and explicit manner. Consequently, the paper seeks to dispel the notion that participant observation and quantitative data analysis are inimical. Finally, the social and human problems of gaining entry into a research site, constructing a research role, and managing relationships with informants are illustrated.
Theories that relate organization-level variables to one another frequently contain just three variables. “Formalization is negatively associated with success in a turbulent environment” and “Technology is a determinant of span of control at lower organizational levels” are examples. Theories limited to two or three variables tend to have low predictive validity and consequently are of limited use to anyone attempting to predict or interpret relationships among organizational variables. One purpose of the study reported here was to develop a more encompassing and more valid theory about a specific relationship—the relationship between centralization and effectiveness. A second purpose of the study was to set forth and test the efficacy of a general approach for developing more encompassing and more valid theories about organizations. The successful application of this approach resulted in a six-variable theory: the relationship between the two variables centralization and effectiveness is a function of (1) the average size of the units of analysis, (2) the effectiveness subconstruct considered, (3) the extent of professionalization in the organizations, and (4) whether the organizations produce primarily goods or services. Specifically, 57% of the variance in the linear association between centralization and effectiveness was shown to be explainable by a linear function of the four variables just noted. This theory enables identification of the conditions where centralization will be related to effectiveness most positively (i.e. r = 0.49) and the conditions where it will be related to effectiveness most negatively (i.e., r = −0.56). Besides these four predictor variables, four others were tested as possible predictors of the centralization-effectiveness relationship, but were rejected. Rejection of two of these latter four variables contradicted commonly accepted beliefs—decentralization was not more positively related to effectiveness in turbulent environments and decentralization was not more positively related to effectiveness in larger organizations. Two concerns regarding the organization science literature resulted from this research. The first follows from our observations that most reports of studies include dysfunctionally sparse descriptions of the organizational contexts in which the data were collected and that in many studies the magnitudes of both the variables of primary interest and also the contextual variables are reported on coarse scales (e.g., on nominal scales with few levels, such as “small” and “large”). As a consequence of these two practices, researchers synthesizing the literature and developing theories from it—as was done in the research reported here—necessarily group together studies that should be distinguished from one another on the basis of their attributes. This unwanted grouping results in theories that are less predictive than they could be. The second concern is that the subset of the organization science literature dealing with relationships between organizational design variables (such as centralization) and organizational effectiveness contains few studies demonstrating the causal directions of observed relationships. As a result, because various levels of effectiveness may lead to the adoption or evolution of different levels of “design variables,” or may be related to certain levels of a design variable because both are related to a third variable researchers and administrators observing high correlations between a design variable and effectiveness must be cautious in inferring that effectiveness can be enhanced by changing, the level of the respective design variable.
While the “formulation” or “strategy” side of business policy has always drawn appropriately from economic theory, we caution that, taken to its logical extreme, economic theory ignores the importance of implementation, implies lack of choice in organization decision-making, and makes the organization a nonentity. In this paper, we outline the fundamental differences between behavioral and economic approaches to business policy. These differences are highlighted by an illustration of their divergent perspectives on corporate “agency”.
Organizations require legitimacy to attract constituents' support Legitimacy, however, is always problematic. Thus, organizations frequently pursue legitimacy through a variety of substantive and symbolic practices. But legitimacy is a social judgment that is ultimately accorded the organization by its constituents. Organizations that pursue this judgement run the risk of “protesting too much”–of being perceived as precisely the opposite, manipulative and illegitimate. Such organizations include (1) the clumsy actor, perceived as unethical, heavy-handed, or insensitive, (2) the nervous actor, perceived as dogmatic, intolerant, or evasive, and (3) the overacting actor, perceived to overstate claims to legitimacy or overreact to faults. The analysis suggests that attempts to increase legitimacy may trigger a series of vicious circles which ultimately decrease legitimacy.
This paper describes an evolutionary model of organizational change through the selective retention of jobs. This type of change can operate in addition to top-down planned organizational change, providing “another engine” of organizational transformation over time. All evolutionary change processes require that there be a system for replicating activities over time, a source of variation in activities, and mechanisms which permit some activities to persist while others do not. In this model, formalized job systems and related management practices provide the mechanism for the replication of job activities. Idiosyncratic jobs—or jobs created around particular people rather than in the abstract—serve as a mechanism for unplanned variation in sets of job duties. Finally managerial actions such as layoffs, reorganizations, budget changes and copying jobs from other areas lead to the selective retention of some sets of job activities over others. The organizational change created by these processes may or may not be adaptive for the organization. The outcome will depend on such factors as the birth, death and imitation rates for idiosyncratic and other jobs, as well as the criteria used for job birth and job termination. Adaptation is possible, but is a function of complex, nonlinear constraints. Specific organizational processes that determine these factors are discussed. The model implies that adaptive change can occur in the absence of clear and consistent goals. Thus, the model's implications contradict the frequent assumption of strategic planning literatures that clear and stable goals are necessary for adaptive organizational change. Formalization is necessary for the organization to maintain over time those job activities which have proved to be useful innovations. Thus, the model's implications also contradict the assumption in structural contingency theory that formalization deters adaptive change. Although consistent with other theories of evolutionary organizational change, the model extends prior work by detailing concrete mechanisms, clarifying boundary conditions for the process, and stressing that adaptation is feasible but definitely not assured. The outcome depends in part upon managerial attention to organizational processes rather than to outcomes, and “benign opportunism”—or creative attention to unfolding organizational competencies. Finally, the paper outlines the potential of the model for further study, especially for empirical research on evolutionary change processes and on organizational learning. The evolutionary change process described can be seen as a form of trial-and-error learning in which retained jobs constitute the organization's memory. It is distinct from many other organizational learning models, however, because the source of innovation—idiosyncratic jobs—is not planned in advance by top management, and may be unrelated to current aspirations of the dominant coalition.
This paper describes a case study methodology that combines a real-time longitudinal (three-year) study with nine retrospective case studies about the same phenomenon. These two kinds of case studies offer opportunities for complementary and synergistic data gathering and analysis. That is, specific strengths in each method compensate for some particular weakness in the other. For instance, the retrospective studies offer the opportunity to identify patterns indicative of dynamic processes and the longitudinal study provides a close-up view of those patterns as they evolve over time. The combination of the two types of case studies also enhances three kinds of validity: construct, internal and external. The author also discusses problems with and shortcomings of this dual methodology and suggests the circumstances for which the methodology is especially appropriate.
The specific nature of decision rules and the pattern of connections they create between people help determine the performance of an organization. To show these causal connections, decision rules are rigorously defined and their algebraic structure explored. Properties of decision rules and of structure performance are then operationally defined. A number of propositions connecting decision rule properties to performance properties are made, their meanings investigated, and their truths supported by logical arguments. The relations of these newly defined properties to others in the literature are explored and used to restate and integrate together some of the literature's vague and isolated generalizations.
This paper is concerned with defining organizational processes necessary to operate safely technologically complex organizations that can do great physical harm to themselves and their surrounding environments. The paper first argues that existing organizational research is little help in understanding organizational processes in such organizations. It then identifies nuclear powered aircraft carriers as examples of potentially hazardous organizations with histories of excellent operations. The paper then examines a set of components of “risk” identified by Perrow (1984) and antecedents to catastrophe elucidated by Shrivastava (1986) and discusses how carriers deal with these factors to lessen their potentially negative effects. The paper concludes with suggestions for future research.