Linking organizational context with structure: a preliminary investigation of the information processing view

Abstract

Although the effects of many environmental and contextual variables on organizational structure have been studied extensively, the relationships of these variables among themselves and with organizational structure remain largely inconclusive. Based on the information-processing (IP) view of organization, this study builds and tests an integrated model to investigate the factors that are likely to be associated with an organization's information intensity. The model includes two organizational contextual variables: competitive pressure and organizational innovativeness, two IP-related variables: information intensity and information technology (IT) importance, and two dimensions of organizational structure: centralization and formalization. Based on data collected in Taiwan, the results show the significant role of information intensity in mediating the effects of competitive pressure and innovativeness on IT importance and structures, thus lending strong support to the IP view of organization.