Task and Resource Bottlenecks: How Organization Design Informs the Microfoundations of RBT

Abstract

We investigate the microfoundations of resource-based theory to better understand how resources are managed and used within organizations to influence their performance. To accomplish this, we draw on an organization design lens that informs us about how both resource management and task design are impactful to reducing bottlenecks in work systems. Specifically, we focus on two forms of task interdependence, namely the study of decentralization of task flow and the complexity of task interconnections, and show that both being high or low benefit performance. Our study also examines how resource fungibility and resource slack cannot improve performance each in isolation, but that together can benefit organizations. Our context is the scheduled U.S. passenger airline industry over two decades. Together, our findings have important implications for how the design of tasks and resource allocation to these tasks can influence an organization’s performance.