Organizational Design →
- 14 Apr 2014
- Working Paper Summaries
Facts and Figuring: An Experimental Investigation of Network Structure and Performance in Information and Solution Spaces
How can managers create organizations that bring people together to successfully solve problems? One increasingly popular managerial tactic to improve problem-solving performance is to increase the connectedness, or what academics call clustering, of the organization. Using everything from transparent, open offices to open social collaboration platforms, connecting everyone and everything, the theory goes, will produce better solutions. True or false? In the lab, the authors randomly assigned individuals to 70 sixteen-person organizations—some more clustered than others—and asked each organization to solve a complex problem: divine the who, what, where, and when of an impending terrorist attack (akin to the famous Clue® whodunit game). They did so using a platform not unlike real intelligence problem-solving environments: Through their computers, individuals could search for information, share information with each other, and share theories about the solutions, while the platform tracked all behavior. The results? Connectedness had different effects on the "facts" and "figuring" stages of problem solving. Search for information (facts) was, indeed, more efficient the more connected the organization. But performance in interpreting the information (figuring) to develop solutions was undermined by too much connectedness. The same connections that helped individuals coordinate their search for information also encouraged individuals to reach consensus on less-than-perfect solutions, making connectedness a true double-edged sword. The authors conclude with a discussion of implications for both theory and practice in our increasingly connected 'small world' and suggest directions for future research. Key concepts include: Problem solving requires two important and complementary forms of search: searching for information (for the facts that may be important pieces of the puzzle) and searching for solutions (for theories that combine puzzle pieces into an answer). The same network structure can promote or inhibit knowledge diversity, depending on whether that knowledge consists of information, or interpretations of information. 'Good' communication structures may only be good for parts of the process of collective problem solving: structures that are good now may be bad later. Organizations might be wise to adopt different communications structures for different phases of collective problem solving. Rather than allow the march of technology to dictate organizational performance, it is possible to imagine how technology could be harnessed to achieve different performance goals. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 10 Apr 2014
- Research & Ideas
Book Excerpt--‘Accelerate: Building Strategic Agility for a Faster-Moving World’
Management and leadership are not the same thing. But which is more important to a growing, innovative organization? An excerpt from John Kotter's new book, Accelerate: Building Strategic Agility for a Faster-Moving World. Open for comment; 0 Comments.
- 10 Apr 2014
- Research & Ideas
John Kotter’s Plan to Accelerate Your Business
In the fast-paced modern economy, businesses can no longer rely on just one organizational design, argues John Kotter in a new book, Accelerate: Building Strategic Agility for a Faster-Moving World. Why we need two "operating systems." PLUS Book excerpt. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 20 Jan 2014
- Research & Ideas
Language Wars Divide Global Companies
An increasing number of global firms adopt a primary language for business operations—usually English. The problem: The practice can surface dormant hostilities around culture and geography, reports Tsedal Neeley. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 15 Jan 2014
- Research & Ideas
Managing the Family Business: It Takes a Village
Is it better to lead a family business with one ultimate leader or a team? John A. Davis, an expert on family business management, kicks off a series of articles with a look at governance models. Open for comment; 0 Comments.
- 05 Dec 2013
- What Do You Think?
Is Walmart Defying Economic Gravity?
Summing Up Can Walmart sustain its half-a-trillion-dollar enterprise much longer? Jim Heskett's readers see a conflict between the company's immense size and its business model. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 06 Nov 2013
- What Do You Think?
Is Top-Down Resource Allocation on the Rise?
Summing Up Respondents to this month's column provided Jim Heskett possible explanations for greater reliance on top-down resource allocation processes while arguing that a blend of influences from the top and bottom of an organization are still important for best results. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 17 Oct 2013
- Working Paper Summaries
Sharing Design Rights: A Commons Approach for Developing Infrastructure
Traditionally, a commons is a natural resource that gives rise to the problem of collective action: Individuals who act alone without consideration for others will arrive at outcomes that are bad for all. Pioneering research by Elinor Ostrom, a scholar of economic governance, has revealed that the claimants to a common pool resource are sometimes able to organize themselves to manage the commons on a day-today basis and to adapt to changing circumstances. In this paper, the authors study the dynamics of a commons organization: In 2006-2007, the Manchester City Council created a commons organization to design a number of new school buildings. The Council had broad decision rights over school design and construction, but rather than delegating those rights to its own staff or to a joint venture, as were the typical practices, the Council gave each school co-equal rights to approve the design so that no building project could go forward unless signed off by both the school and the Council staff. As such, the Council converted the decision-making process from a controlled, centralized style to a commons-based approach. Using the principles of Ostrom's commons theory the authors show that, overall, the commons form of organizing brought with it concomitant risk. This risk, however, was significantly lessened through the creation of a robust commons organization. Key concepts include: This study uses design theory to explain why the design process for school buildings can be viewed as a common pool resource, and explain what constitutes "tragedy of the commons" in this context. Sensible actions in terms of defining boundaries, making benefits proportionate to costs, and deferring to local rule-making can increase the robustness of the commons and increase its chances of success. A design commons organization should be considered as a potentially advantageous alternative to other ways of organizing design production processes. However, a design commons organization might not necessarily be the best approach to resolve design production problems in all environments. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 18 Sep 2013
- Working Paper Summaries
What Do We Know About Corporate Headquarters? A Review, Integration, and Research Agenda
For the last five decades, research on the multidivisional firm has developed into one of the most important areas of management research. While the majority of this research deals with the firm's portfolio of businesses and international subsidiaries, there is a smaller but significant body of literature on the corporate headquarters (CHQ) - the multidivisional firm's central organizational unit. In this paper, the authors identify major shortcomings and gaps in this research. They then propose five high-priority research opportunities that demand particular attention: (1) The CHQ's nature and boundaries; (2) the CHQ's "functioning"; (3) the CHQ's staff(ing); (4) the CHQ's relationship with the operating units; and (5) the CHQ's impact. Overall, there is a need for a research agenda that builds upon the collective insights from the review but, at the same time, considers the findings of related literature as well as novel ideas from practice. Key concepts include: Research on the CHQ is increasingly disconnected. It has developed along four different tracks in the economic, organization, international business, and practice-oriented traditions. The authors of this paper provide the first comprehensive framework of CHQ research that integrates dispersed insights, identifies the most relevant variables of interest, and specifies the dominant relationships between them. The CHQ is defined as the firm's central organizational unit, (structurally) separated from the operating units (business and geographic units). It hosts corporate executives and staff as well as central staff functions that fulfill various roles for the overall firm. Research on the CHQ has the unique potential to contribute to our understanding of contemporary organizations. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 03 Sep 2013
- Working Paper Summaries
How the Zebra Got Its Stripes: Imprinting of Individuals and Hybrid Social Ventures
Creating hybrid organizations that combine existing organizational forms is a complex process. Given the legitimacy challenges facing hybrid organizations, why are they created in the first place? The authors focus on the role of "environmental imprinting" on individuals: this means the persistent effects that individuals' environments during sensitive periods have on their subsequent behaviors. After constructing and analyzing a novel dataset of over 700 founders of social ventures, all guided by a social welfare logic, the authors suggest that individual imprinting helps to explain why an entrepreneur founding a social venture might create a hybrid by incorporating a secondary, commercial logic. Overall, the paper contributes to the understanding of hybrid organizations by providing the first large-scale, empirical examination of the antecedents of the widely-discussed type of hybrids that combine social welfare and commercial logics. Key concepts include: Environmental imprinting refers to the effects that characteristics of individuals' environments during sensitive periods have on their subsequent behaviors. Entrepreneurs' direct exposure to various work environments through their own experience influences their likelihood to create a new hybrid venture. The findings contribute to institutional theory more generally by showing how environmental imprints on individuals may enable divergence from current, institutionalized structures, as well as how the contours of such imprints may vary with characteristics such as tenure and type of exposure. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 12 Aug 2013
- Research & Ideas
‘Hybrid’ Organizations a Difficult Bet for Entrepreneurs
Hybrid organizations combine the social logic of a nonprofit with the commercial logic of a for-profit business, but are very difficult to finance. So why would anyone want to form one? Julie Battilana and Matthew Lee investigate. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 09 Jul 2013
- Research & Ideas
Catching Up With Boards--Jay Lorsch
Few scholars have studied the behavior of boards as extensively as Jay Lorsch. In this interview, Lorsch discusses current issues facing boards including executive pay, underrepresentation of women, and proposals to cleave the roles of CEO and chairman. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 24 Jun 2013
- Working Paper Summaries
The Entrepreneurial Gap: How Managers Adjust Span of Accountability and Span of Control to Implement Business Strategy
The management accounting literature of the past twenty years is replete with studies of budgeting systems, balanced scorecards, performance measures, and contract-based incentives. Relatively little attention has been devoted, however, to the organization structure in which these systems exist. Existing accounting theory has little to say, for example, on how the design of performance measures might differ if a business is organized by function, by region, or by product or customer group. In this study, which augments in-depth field data collected by the author in three separate companies with a larger data set generated by 72 teams of MBA student researchers, organization design is reintroduced as a critical variable in understanding management control systems in the context of intensifying global competition. Results suggest that managers appear to adjust span of accountability relative to span of control based on the degree of innovation and independent initiative they wish to foster. In addition, when managers want employees to build long-term relationships with customers, develop new products and services, or navigate the labyrinths created by complex organization designs, they set span of accountability wider than span of control. Key concepts include: The propositions developed in this study offer a potentially new way of thinking about the links between accountability, performance measures, and organization design in complex organizations. Holding individuals accountable for measures that are wider than the resources they control forces them to become resourceful in working with others in different units to figure out how to solve problems and turn opportunities to advantage. At the same time, norms must exist that encourage the offering of a helping hand to those seeking new ways of achieving their goals. Without these conditions, dysfunctional behavior is inevitable. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 06 Mar 2013
- What Do You Think?
Who Should Manage Our Work Time?
Summing Up Who will save us from our work habits? Jim Heskett's readers offer a range of viewpoints on the responsibility of employees to manage their time at work. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 01 Mar 2013
- Working Paper Summaries
Hurry Up and Wait: Differential Impacts of Congestion, Bottleneck Pressure, and Predictability on Patient Length of Stay
This paper quantifies and analyzes trends related to the effects of increased workload on processing time across more than 250 hospitals. Hospitals are useful settings because they have varying levels of workload. In addition, these settings have high worker autonomy, which enables workers to more easily adjust their processing times in response to workload. Findings show that heavy load plays a significant role in processing times. Congestion is associated with longer lengths of stay. More surprisingly, when there is a high load of incoming patients from a low pressure area (emergency medical patients), current hospital inpatients' stays are longer compared to when incoming patients are from a high pressure area (emergency surgical patients). Furthermore, high predictability of the incoming patients (e.g. scheduled surgical patients) is associated with shorter lengths of stays for the current inpatients than when the incoming patients are less predictable (emergency surgical patients). In this study, there was no decrease in quality of care for patients with shorter lengths of stay. Key concepts include: High congestion increases patients' length of stay by up to 0.81 days, which indicates inefficiency due to overloading of resources. Incoming inventory load with high predictability reduces patients' length of stay by up to 0.45 days, which is enabled by the ability of a worker to plan in advance for a new work assignment by discharging a patient to make room for the incoming one. With highly predictable incoming patients and no congestion on the day before expected discharge, there is a shift toward discharging patients currently in the hospital one day earlier than expected. A hospital would benefit from adding or allocating additional resources to the inpatient hospital units, and counter-intuitively, targeting a lower occupancy level to increase productivity. To further improve productivity, the allocated inpatient hospital resources could include adding a nurse on the hospital floors who is solely responsible for discharges and admissions. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 25 Feb 2013
- Working Paper Summaries
Fostering Organizational Learning: The Impact of Work Design on Workarounds, Errors, and Speaking Up About Internal Supply Chain Problems
In competitive environments, it is essential that organizations develop techniques that increase the willingness of employees to improve organizational performance. This is especially true in complex service organizations, such as hospitals, where employees have a wide range of discretionary activities that they can perform and lower levels of supervision. For this paper, the author conducted a series of laboratory experiments to test the possibility that managers can manipulate specific work circumstances to increase employees' willingness to speak up about problems, regardless of the employees' individual characteristics. Findings show that participants were more likely to contribute improvement suggestions when employees' role orientation was primed to include process improvement as part of daily work activities and when deliberate blockages made it difficult to work around problems in a way that conformed with policy. The study supports the notion that employee positive behavior can stem from deliberate work design, which falls under managers' jurisdiction, rather than solely from self-motivated employees. Overall, the research advances understanding of the influence of work design on two important employee behaviors-improvement-oriented action and risky workarounds that may harm customers. Key concepts include: Small changes in job design can reduce employee silence about organizational problems. Providing employees with time to reflect on opportunities for improvement may be a more productive vehicle for improvement-oriented voice than expecting employees to speak up about problems while they are completing routine work. In addition to having a flexible role definition that includes improvement as part of one's routine work, employees should also be trained to work collaboratively to eliminate internal supply chain problems that their department causes for downstream internal customers. Workers engage in risky workarounds because they feel forced to, due to their desire to complete assigned tasks. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 11 Sep 2012
- Working Paper Summaries
Spatial Organization of Firms: Internal and External Agglomeration Economies and Location Choices Through the Value Chain
How do firms decide location strategy for distinct activities in the value chain, such as manufacturing, research and development, or sales? Does strategy depend on geographically bounded spillovers between firms, or within firms? This paper uses data for organic expansions in the US by firms in pharmaceuticals in 1993-2005 to consider two types of expansions. The first is internal: an increase in employment in existing establishments. The second is external: opening new establishments. Alcacer (HBS) and Delgado (Fox School of Business) argue that decisions about geographical location are a tradeoff between external drivers pulling firms to geographically disperse activities and internal drivers pushing within-firm collocation, either across activities (such as manufacturing and R&D) or within activities (such as multiple R&D labs). Key concepts include: In biopharmaceutical activity, both internal and external agglomeration economies have separate, positive impacts on location, with relevant differences by activity. Internal economies of agglomeration arise within an activity (such as among plants) and across activities (such as between manufacturing and sales). The effects of across-activity and within-activity internal economies vary by activity and type of organic expansion. Across-activity internal economies are asymmetric: For example, organic expansions of bio-sales activity seem to collocate with existing manufacturing establishments, but organic manufacturing expansions do not collocate with sales. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 27 Aug 2012
- Research & Ideas
Employee-Suggestion Programs That Work
The key to operating a successful employee-suggestion program is to stop spending so much time on big-bang projects and focus on solving "low-hanging-fruit" problems. Research by Anita L. Tucker and Sara J. Singer. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 01 Aug 2012
- What Do You Think?
Should CEOs Worry About ‘Too Big to Succeed?’
Summing Up Is there a right size for a company? Jim Heskett's readers ponder his question: Can companies become too big to succeed? Open for comment; 0 Comments.
Fixing the ‘I Hate Work’ Blues
Many employees report they are overworked and not engaged—a recent New York Times article on the phenomenon was titled, "Why You Hate Work." The problem, says Bill George, is that the way we design work stifles engagement. Here's the fix. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.