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Journal of Political Economy Vol. 114 No. 2 2006

Coordination and Experimentation in M‐Form and U‐Form Organizations

Yingyi Qian1; Gérard Roland1; Chenggang Xu2,3

1 University of California, Berkeley · 2 London School of Economics and Political Science · 3 Tsinghua University

Abstract

We compare the performance of organizational forms (M‐form and U‐form) in experimenting with uncertain projects. In our framework, organizational forms affect the information structure of an organization and thus the way to coordinate changes. Compared to the U‐form, the M‐form organization achieves better coordination in “attribute matching” but suffers from coordination in “attribute compatibility” and less gains in specialization. The distinctive advantage of the M‐form is its flexibility in choosing between small‐scale and full‐scale experimentation.

DOI
10.1086/501170
Volume
114
Issue
2
Pages
366-402
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

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