Organisational structure revisited

Abstract

This study's primary goal is to investigate all variables that are reported to affect the organisational structure in the same research model. For this purpose, effects of Top Management Team profile variables, including Strategic Decision-Making Style and Strategic Decision-Making Group Size, Environmental Dynamism, Environmental Hostility, Organization Size (both annual turnover and number of employees are taken separately as the indicators of organisation size), Organization’s Age, and Technology (three technological levels: low, medium and high technologies) on the Organizational Structure analysed. Organisation’s Degrees of Centralization and Formalization were taken as organisational structure variables. The research adopted a convenient sampling method and was conducted with 455 managers working in Turkey's different organisations. The Partial Least Square-Structural Equation Model (PLS-SEM) approach is used to assess the effects of Top Management Team profile variables, environmental factors, and organisational factors on both the degree of centralisation and formalisation. The results show that TMT Age, Environmental Hostility, Organizational Size (Annual Turnover only), and Technology have a positive and significant effect only on formalisation, while Strategic Decision-Making Group Size, Strategic Decision-Making Style, and Environmental Dynamism on both The Degree of Centralisation and Formalisation. This study also showed that the effects of most of the variables mentioned in the literature as antecedents of the organisational structure could not be determined while all the variables mentioned above are included in the same research model.