Organizational work, Part III. Empirical results

Abstract

The first part of this series presents a theory and a code for describing organizational work. The second part introduces methods for describing the distribution of organizational work using the double hierarchy in the code. This third part presents data from a set of 17 organizations dating back to 1981. The data show that the distribution of organizational work exhibits strong regularities. For example, the composite M-curve for an organization tends to be upward-sloping. The M-curves for planning task processes tend to be downward-sloping. The M-curves for directing, controlling, and coordinating task processes tend to be hump-shaped. The M-curves for execution task processes are upward-sloping. The data demonstrate the necessity of the hierarchy of type of task process. The data also show the interdependency between the hierarchy by type of task process and the hierarchy of aggregation. The data demonstrates that subunits within an organization may have different M-curves. M-curves appear to demonstrate remarkable stability over time. These results are followed by conclusions and implications.