| How Do Manager's Perceive Interdependency? Portfolios of Interdependency and Their Consequences in Contemporary Contexts |
| | Staudenmayer, Nancy | Duke U. | nstauden@mail.duke.edu | (919) 660 - 7994 |
| | Wong, Sze-Sze | Duke U. | ssw2@acpub.duke.edu | (919) 384-9277 |
| | DeSanctis, Gerardine | Duke U. | gd@mail.duke.ed | (919) 660-6245 |
| | In the new era of knowledge work, decentralization, and distributed relationships, management of job-related interdependencies is taking on
increased importance. Our study investigated manager's perceptions of job interdependencies. We sought to describe some statistical
regularities of interdependence in order to get at its very nature and identified key characteristics of the organization, workgroup and individual
that are associated with job interdependency. We also isolated specific dimensions of interdependence and explored how these dimensions
related to one another. Finally, we measured the psychological effects of interdependency, specifically role stress and perceived job control.
Our study was exploratory in the sense that it represents one of the first attempts to empirically measure perceptions of interdependencies
in contemporary work contexts. We based our measurement approach on a comprehensive model of job interdependency that included both
antecedents and outcomes of interdependencies in managerial settings. We found that individual coping mechanisms-how managers seek,
maintain, and destroy interdependencies-moderated the impact of interdependencies on managers' perceptions of job stress and job control.
Further, these moderating effects sometimes defied common expectations. Overall our results hearken a profound dilemma for organizations
in the future. Managers will need to take on a portfolio of continually changing, multi-dimensional interdependencies over time, with potentially
negative psychological effects. The challenge of new forms will be how to reconcile organizational needs for success in interdependency
management with individual limitations to apply adequate coping mechanisms.
|
| | Keywords: interdependence; job stress; virtual work |
| Hidden Interdependencies |
| | Staudenmayer, Nancy | Duke U. | nstauden@mail.duke.edu | (919) 660 - 7994 |
| | Wong, Sze-Sze | Duke U. | ssw2@acpub.duke.edu | (919) 384-9277 |
| | DeSanctis, Gerardine | Duke U. | gd@mail.duke.ed | (919) 660-6245 |
| | Based on the seminal work of researchers such as Thompson (1967), Galbraith (1973), Pfeffer & Salanck (1978), and others, the
predominate conceptualization of interdependency today depicts them as objective, stable, analytical task relationships, easily described
and uniformly perceived. Empirical research has largely focused on the design and coordination implications of a given-in-advance task set,
rarely questioning the prevailing model (Tushman & Nadler, 1978; Eppinger, Whitney, et al., 1994; Wageman, 1995). This paper aims to
expand on the traditional conceptualization of interdependence to include notions of interdependency as subjective, fluid, and ambiguous.
Based on recent empirical work and supported by new thinking about the nature of knowledge work and new organizational forms, we
propose a new category of interdependency, labeled hidden, which appears to be increasingly common and important in modern work
environments. We define hidden interdependencies as those task relationships that fall outside of an individual's current state of awareness
at a given point in time and thus are somehow not adequately appreciated or coordinated. We theorize about the sources of hidden
interdependency and present a series of propositions about where and when they are likely to be found. We also speculate about the
possible consequences of hidden interdependencies for individual, team, and company functioning and performance. The paper closes with
a discussion of the considerable research and managerial challenges associated with understanding and managing this new phenomenon. |
| | Keywords: Hidden; Interdependency; Coordination |
| What's An Organizational Form, Anyway? |
| | Jacobides, Michael G. | U. of Pennsylvania | jacobides@wharton.upenn.edu | (215) 898-1224 |
| | This paper revisits the concept of organizational form. It argues that we
have not adequately distinguished between organizing mechanisms - ways in
which specific productive activities are organized (such as through markets,
hierarchies, networks, etc), and organizational forms- that is, the
structured set of organizing mechanisms used by organizations. Indeed, the
same organization employs different mechanisms within its administrative
scope (e.g., strict hierarchy for shop-floor supervision vs. network
governance for loosely coupled centers of innovation.). Also, the same
entity that appears to be a hierarchy in one instance is a market
participant or a member of a network in another. Thus, given that
organizations use an intricately related mix of organizing mechanisms,
we propose to study organizations in two levels. The first is studying
the organizing mechanisms employed (e.g., use of network, hierarchical
relationship, or market interface for a particular productive aim.) To
study these mechanisms, the paper proposes a departure from the voluminous
work of institutional economists and their critics alike, and provides a
novel framework based on "differential rights". The second level is
studying organizational form - the composition and architecture of
mechanisms used by an organization. We explain why organizational form is
more than the "mix and match" of organizational mechanisms employed, and
review the significant implications of this observation. The evolution of
organizational form and its determinants, i.e. how different mechanisms
co-evolve and interact, is explored, and the dynamics of organizational
evolution as they relate to our framework are examined. |
| | Keywords: Organizational Form; Governance Structure; Co-evolution |
| Emergent Mechanisms of Control in New Organizational Forms |
| | Wally, Stefan | Chapman U. | wally@chapman.edu | (714) 997-6682 |
| | Clark, Kevin | U. of Maryland | kclark@mbs.umd.edu | (301) 314-9782 |
| | This paper explores emergent control mechanisms in new organizational forms. We first provide a descriptive characterization of these new organizational forms. We consider the new organizational forms to have significantly fewer employees whose orientation to work is considerably more flexible and generalized than traditionally has been expected. We also consider the new organizational forms to be characteristic of businesses who are concerned with the provision of knowledge-based goods and services through computerized, information processing. We postulate that new organizational forms, as we describe them, do not exist in a pure form, but that the conceptualization of them as ideal-type forms can promote effective analyses of their characteristics and consequences.
As part of our theoretical development, we review the state of academic scholarship on issues of power and control within organizations. We find that managerial power that draws on traditional bases of power has become superseded in these new forms. We postulate that widely advocated new mechanisms of control, namely culture, trust, and empowerment, will fall short in satisfying the requirements of the new organizational forms. We develop propositions that managerial control in newer organizational forms may require supplementing through approaches which we label: professional socialization, reputational effects, and extra-organizational outcome controls. |
| | Keywords: New Organizational Forms; Control Mechanisms; Managerial Power and Control |
| "Soft Bureaucracies" : Domination and Political Centralization in French Organizations |
| | Courpasson, David Paul | EM LYON | courpasson@em-lyon.com | (33) 04 78 33 77 92 |
| | This paper discusses the emergence and the reinforcement of organizational political regimes based on domination and centralization, in French Organizations.
Domination and power are old concepts in organizational sociology. The confrontation of two well known approaches to politics in organizations, that of Weber and that of Crozier, suggests that "archaïc" notions such as obedience, constraint or domination are still very useful to understand how business leaders "govern" organizations today.
Based on empirical studies, the paper proposes to see organizations as "soft bureaucracies", where rational obedience is the main action and the main condition of both organizational effectiveness and personal survival. Thus, organizations should be viewed simultaneously as "structures of domination" and as "structures of subjectivities" (in a Weberian way, domination is indissociable from subjectivities). Nevertheless, in spite of the success of the network form utopia, the re-emergence of bureaucracies is the sign that organizations are more and more politically centralized and governed. |
| | Keywords: Domination; Legitimacy; Power |
| Markets, Culture, and Institutions: The Formation of Taiwan's Business Groups, 1950s-1970s |
| | Chung, Chi-nien | Stanford U. | cnchung@leland.stanford.edu | (650)-723-1692 |
| | Business groups are a special type of enterprise organization existing in almost
every market economy. Group member firms do not operate as isolated units in the
market nor under a common hierarchical dictation, but have institutionalized
relationships with each other and work coherently as an alliance. This
structure, neither markets nor hierarchies, nor in between, constitutes a
challenging question to Williamson's framework. Moreover, these business groups
play a central role in economies in which they operate. For Taiwan, the top 100 business groups, on average, produced one third of the GNP in the past twenty years.
Why does this organizational form exist in the first place? This paper reviews
three relevant theories, market-centered theories, culturalist perspective, and
the institutional approach, and employs the data of Taiwan's top 150 business
groups and their 954 member firms to evaluate them. I first statistically
examined the market-centered theories and the institutional arguments, and the
latter is significantly supported by my sample. Following this evidence, I
employ the Boolean algorithm to compare group firms with non-group firms and
confirm that lacking a coherent leading core in ownership and management makes
firms unable to respond to institutional incentives promptly. Finally, I examine
the family ownership network of 150 groups and refute the cultural perspective,
that the equal inheritance pattern of family property drives entrepreneurs to
establish separate firms rather than single hierarchies. I conclude this paper
by evaluating the relative leverage of markets, culture, and institutions in the
formation of Taiwan's business groups.
|
| | Keywords: Business Groups; Institutional Theory; Organizational Form |