Organizational Design Research Articles

Assessing the Level of Employees' Sustainability Awareness and its Effect on Sustainable Development Progression - A Case Study of Greater Karak Municipality/ Jordan

The current discourse on Sustainability Awareness (SA) is mainly focused on offering employees environmental training and education that aims to increase their participation in the organization's sustainable progress. Hence, overlooking the importance of the SA policy-making phase as well as the critical role designing SA programs plays in activating employees' efficient contribution to sustainability initiatives. Therefore, the significance of this research lies in offering an alternative model that integrates both processes of measuring and raising SA with the prospect of altering the organization's culture where sustainability value is created to motivate employees' engagement. In addition, this research will justify the failure of cases where environmental education, training, and SA programs did not positively affect employees' engagement nor did they benefit the organization's sustainable progress. This research presents organizations and decision-makers with a new approach to raising SA levels aiming to increase the potential for effective employment of the newly acquired knowledge. Hence, makes sustainable achievements more tangible. This model suggests the use of a qualitative approach to measuring employees' SA levels; a model that includes collecting data on employees' insights, conceptions, sources of knowledge, and personal experiences of sustainability. This model would replace the commonly used quantitative approach to measure SA which is limited to analyzing data numerically to draw a statistical picture aiming to determine whether a pre-designed SA program should be implemented. Instead, managers could benefit from the data collected in the SA measuring process to identify the focus areas of the SA-raising program. Furthermore, such data would help organizations design SA programs that are specifically tailored to target a change in their employees' mindset and beliefs.

EXPRESS: Exploring the Development of Heterogeneous Contracting Capabilities: The Role of Organizational Design

Previous research on learning to contract and contracting capabilities suggests that firms in interorganizational relationships adopt contractual designs that economize on transaction costs, and over time learn to govern their relationships in a more efficient manner by incrementally aligning contractual terms with transaction attributes based on new experiences made in their relationships. We augment the learning to contract literature by highlighting the role of organizational design as a factor that may impact contractual learning and the development of heterogeneous contracting capabilities. Specifically, we suggest that the level of specialization and structural integration across the firm’s technical, commercial, and legal functions may affect the effectiveness of contractual learning and the type of learning likely to occur. We also outline boundary conditions for our model in terms of potential interactions between the contractual environment, organizational design, and contractual learning.

Transformative organizational and programmatic change? Civil society responses to the Canadian Feminist International Assistance Policy (FIAP)

AbstractMotivationThe article aims to examine how Canada's Feminist International Assistance Policy (FIAP) shaped efforts of civil society organizations to address gender equality through organizational and programmatic change. FIAP and other feminist policies have direct implications as to how organizations design and administer their work to address gender inequality and on how funding agencies and foundations administer and support this work.Research QuestionWhat are the opportunities and limitations to FIAP's implementation based on the experiences of civil society organizations' efforts to address gender inequality?Approach and methodsData collection for this article took place between 2019 and 2021, beginning two years after the launch of FIAP. This research adopted a mixed‐methods grounded theory approach, where the collected data shaped the conceptual framework. An online survey, interviews, participatory workshops, and media analysis were included in the data collection. Staff from civil society organizations and the University of Ottawa supported the research design process. A response rate of 50% was achieved with a total of 42 respondents out of 83 organizations responding to the survey. A total of 15 interviews were conducted with gender equality specialists based in Canadian international organizations.FindingsAnalysis from data collected in 2019 with gender specialists and civil society organization (CSO) staff, as well as analysis of media coverage of challenges faced by feminist organizations in 2020 and 2021 revealed that the potential for CSO investment through staff support (financial, training and government guidance) could only be partially realized within the “unfeminist” structural landscape in which development programmes oversee the administration of under‐represented groups.Policy implicationsThis study demonstrates the limitations around building stronger linkages between policy formation and implementation processes, and also the opportunities. The authors argue that strengthening engagement with feminist networks globally could align policy priorities with those identified by grassroots movements, while influencing how funding agencies value feminist practice in CSOs.

Interactions between dynamic team composition and coordination: an agent-based modeling approach

AbstractThis paper examines the interactions between selected coordination modes and dynamic team composition, and their joint effects on task performance under different task complexity and individual learning conditions. Prior research often treats dynamic team composition as a consequence of suboptimal organizational design choices. The emergence of new organizational forms that consciously employ teams that change their composition periodically challenges this perspective. In this paper, we follow the contingency theory and characterize dynamic team composition as a design choice that interacts with other choices such as the coordination mode, and with additional contextual factors such as individual learning and task complexity. We employ an agent-based modeling approach based on the NK framework, which includes a reinforcement learning mechanism, a recurring team formation mechanism based on signaling, and three different coordination modes. Our results suggest that by implementing lateral communication or sequential decision-making, teams may exploit the benefits of dynamic composition more than if decision-making is fully autonomous. The choice of a proper coordination mode, however, is partly moderated by the task complexity and individual learning. Additionally, we show that only a coordination mode based on lateral communication may prevent the negative effects of individual learning.

Finding Fulfillment: An Examination of the Fulfillment of Maslow’s Needs Among Traditional, Remote, and Hybrid-Setting Employees

The traditional office paradigm has shifted in the wake of COVID-19 and the Great Resignation. Workplace flexibility is no longer an employee benefit but rather an expectation. To explore the effects of this change, this study applied Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs theory to elements of organizational job design. Specifically, this study sought to determine if traditional, remote, or hybrid work settings influence employees’ fulfillment of Maslow’s five fundamental human needs. As a result, this study found that hybrid-setting employees have statistically greater levels of satisfaction with physiological needs, safety-security needs, belongingness needs, esteem needs, and self-actualization needs than when compared to traditional and remote-setting employees. These results affirm the benefits of hybrid-setting employment, likely attributed to heightened workplace flexibility compounded with the maintenance of in-person collaboration and social contact.

Incorporation of Corporate Startup: A Definition, Challenge, and Future Research Agenda

Objective: A corporate startup is a business development initiative led by a company's employees, using the company's resources and with the support of top managers. It aims to address business problems that arise within the company. This study seeks to define a corporate startup, highlight its challenges, and identify areas for future research. Design/Methods/Approach: The method employed is a literature review based on the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) paradigm, with systematic searches from a database of high-quality scientific journals indexed by Scopus (Q1 and Q2). Selected publications relevant to the theme will be reviewed, and data will be summarized. Findings: This study finds three challenges that occur for corporate startups, namely collaboration development with internal and external corporate startups, finding competent mentors for corporate startups, and resource management competency. Further research can be continued by discussing three things, namely identifying companies that practice corporate entrepreneurship and capturing qualitative and quantitative organizational designs to enable corporate entrepreneurship, more research on developing countries, and the creation of standard standards regarding the evaluation of startup corporate models in various companies across industries and countries. Originality/Value: This research is the first study to describe the definition of corporate startups obtained from various high-quality journals (Scopus Q1 and Q2), which discusses various applications of corporate startups worldwide, the majority in the form of case study studies. With various views on the applications in the industry through Case Studies, this research also explained a review of the challenges and agenda of research in the future Corporate Startup, originating from various practices over the past 20 years on four different continents. Practical/Policy implication: Companies can implement corporate startups by utilizing a model derived from this paper. This involves embracing specific definitions, addressing challenges proactively, and outlining future research directions based on the findings of this study. Academics can also apply future research agendas to subsequent research to develop research related to Corporate Startup.

Особенности проектирования кластеров как больших организационно-экономических систем

The need for accelerated reindustrialization of industry highlights the task of modernization based on modern principles of the procedure for designing new enterprises, holdings, clusters and other complex economic structures, united by a category of large organizational and economic systems. The problem is that if the development of a promising image of an industrial enterprise is carried out using an established technology (analysis of the initial data – development strategy development – building a business model – development of projects of production and social subsystems, as well as management subsystems – preparation of a business plan), then the procedure for designing an industrial cluster is not yet clearly regulated. Only the requirements for industrial clusters applying for state support for their development have been identified. The absence of such regulations leads to a situation in which some of the already created industrial clusters cease to exist due to miscalculations made during their formation and the organization of the initial stage of operation. The features of organizational design of industrial clusters – a promising form of regional concentration of production are consiered. The article discloses the features of industrial clusters and their differences from industrial enterprises from the point of view of design, and also proposes a procedure for performing this work, which includes an original set of actions that ensures the achievement of the goals of the participants in this association. Its specificity is associated with the cooperation of legally independent economic entities from various spheres of the economy, interested in obtaining an additional effect from the coordination of their activities in the region, on the terms of informal unification without losing the freedom to choose their areas of activity, but within the framework of coordinating the joint achievement of common goals.

Dylematy interpretacyjne stosowania sygnałów drogowych ze szczególnym uwzględnieniem sygnalizatora S-2 w „bezpiecznym” zarządzaniu ruchem drogowym. Część II/III

Interpretative dilemmas of the use of road signals with particular emphasis on the S-2 signal in “safe” traffic management. Part II/III In this part of the article, the authors focus their attention on the formal and legal issues related to the design of traffic signals on roads and intersections in Poland. A synthesis of the characteristics of the necessary content of the design of traffic organization with traffic lights, approved by the competent authority managing traffic on the road is given. A historical outline of the guidelines for the implementation of the signal allowing turning in the direction indicated by the green arrow is provided. The most important aspect of this part of the article is a commentary on the current legal provisions regarding the permissibility and inadmissibility of allowing simultaneous movement of individual collision streams – with particular emphasis on vehicle streams controlled by the S-2 traffic signal. The commentary includes separate references to the legal status from the original version of the requirements made in 2004 and from the 2008 and 2015 amendments to the regulations. In the authors’ opinion, these descriptions provide key points explaining the complexity of the problem for designers, reviewers, and approvers of signals controlled traffic organization. An effort has been made to explain comprehensively all possible situations since there is currently a non-uniform application of signal phases at intersections and different opinions on the questions of interpreting the correct application of the "green arrow" signal. The results of the study in this regard are included in part III of the article.

Developing conceptual model for safety risk management in aviation as building capacity and resilience strategy

Purpose This study aims to develop an inclusive, multidisciplinary, flexible and organizationally adaptable safety risk management framework, including diversity management, that will be implemented to ensure safety is and remains at the desired level. If the number of incidents and potential incidents that could lead to accidents and their impact rates are to be reduced operationally and administratively, aviation safety risks and sources of risk must be better understood, sources of risk identified, and the safety risk management framework designed in an organization-specific and organization-wide sustainable way. At this point, it is necessary to draw the conceptual framework well and to define the boundaries of the concepts well. In this study, a framework model that can be adapted to the organization is proposed to optimize the management of risks and provide both efficient and effective resource allocation and organizational structure design in its operations and management functions. Design/methodology/approach The qualitative research method – triple techniques – was deemed appropriate for this study, which aims to identify, examine, interpret and develop the situations of safety management models. In this context, document analysis, business process modeling technique and Delphi techniques from qualitative research methods were used via integration as the methodology of this research. Findings To manage dynamic civil aviation management activities and business processes effectively and efficiently, the risk management process is the building block of the “Proposed Process Model” that supports the decision-making processes of aviation organizations and managers. This “Framework Conceptual Model” building block also helps build capacity and resilience by enabling continuous development, organizational learning, and flexible structuring. Research limitations/implications This research is limited to air transportation and aviation safety management issues. This research is limited specifically to a safety-based risk management framework for the aviation industry. This research may have social implications as source saving, optimum resource use and capacity building will make a contribution to society and add value besides operational and practical implementation. Social implications This research may contribute to more safe operations and functions in the aviation industry. Originality/value Management and academia may gain considerable support from this research to manage their safety risks via a corporate-tailored risk management framework, both improving resilience and developing corporate capacity. With this model presented, decision-makers will have a guiding structure that can optimally manage the main risk types that may be encountered in the safety risk in the fields of suppliers, manufacturers, demand changes, logistics, information management, environmental, legal and regulatory. Existing studies in the literature are generally in the form of algorithms and cannot be used as a decision-making support tool. This model aims to fill the gap in the literature. In addition, added value may be created by applying this model to optimum management safety risks in the real aviation industry and its related sectors.

Corruption and hierarchy: a replication of studies 1c and 6 of Fath & Kay 2018

Corruption represents a complex problem firmly embedded within our societal structures, governments, and organizations. The current study aimed to build a clearer consensus on the extent to which perceptions of organizational corruption are associated with organizational hierarchy. Two high-powered close replications of studies 1c and 6 by Fath and Kay provide further evidence for the claim that taller organizational structures are associated with greater perceived potential for corruption, and that these perceptions may compromise subsequent trust-related outcomes. Our results reinforce the importance of organizational design and aim to inspire future works to consider the ways in which researchers and organizations can minimize corruption. Preregistration, data and materials can be found on the OSF: https://osf.io/zb5j2.

Connecting Human and Information Resources in the Generation of Competitive Advantage

AbstractA key trend in recent decades is a growing standardisation of tangible digital resources. This trend coexists with development in the most advanced organisations of high-level technological, human and organisational resources teams built around advanced digital solutions. Digitisation has increased information asymmetries in organisations. However, it has changed the nature of the assets that support them. Accordingly, their effects are independent if unaccompanied by complementary investments in organisational design and human capital. This article focuses on relationships between information and cognitive asymmetries, their effects on developing strategic capabilities and their impact on competitive position. Partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) analysis was run on a data set of 418 Spanish tourism firms. The results show the positive effects of the interaction between human resources and information assets in strengthening the competitive position of modern organisations.

Wenqian Wang, Fabrice Lumineau, and Oliver Schilke. Blockchains: Strategic Implications for Contracting, Trust, and Organizational Design

Wenqian Wang, Fabrice Lumineau, and Oliver Schilke. Blockchains: Strategic Implications for Contracting, Trust, and Organizational Design

How institutional disruptions impact the choice of MNC subsidiary control systems

PurposeThis study seeks to explicate how institutional disruptions impact multinational corporation (MNC) subsidiary control choices. It uses institutional theory to understand the influence of formal and informal institutions across countries on the type of control system employed in an MNC manufacturing subsidiary.Design/methodology/approachThis study’s sample is based on a unique dataset from five trustworthy sources. We use multi-level models to account for the hierarchical nature of the sample of 1,630 multinational subsidiaries spread across 26 host countries by firms from 21 home countries.FindingsThe institutional distance between the host and the home country has a negative relationship with strategic control. In contrast, the home country’s power distance has a positive relationship with strategic control.Originality/valueStudy findings indicate the need to incorporate formal and informal institutional elements in the control system’s conceptual framing and design. This notion complements existing visualizations of optimizing MNC controls through extant articulations of minimizing governance costs through organizational design choices or strategic needs.

The rise of the red dragon: the non-binary political economy of decentralised public banks

ABSTRACT This article scrutinises China’s unexpected economic ascent as an industrial dynamo despite an underdeveloped institutional framework, driven by a fusion of the Currency and Banking School arguments. Our discourse focuses on the reorganisation of endogenous money in post-Communist China, which significantly fortified the domestic economy. We employ a two-tiered framework, firstly linking the Currency vs. Banking School debate to the crucial role of domestic bank credit creation in economic development. Subsequently, we anchor this within the context of the post-Mao reforms, illustrating how ‘inside money’ is deployed in a top-down manner to real industry via a bottom-up and decentralised organisational design. The emergent Chinese political economy is in our view defined by the amalgamation of neo-statist and neo-liberal credit market policies. We detail the transformative effect of evolving domestic commercial banking trends, thereby shaping a distinctive post-Communist society.

How exponential organizations outcompete(d) their traditional counterparts (in the past eight years)?

PurposeExponential organizations (ExOs) are purpose-driven companies that leverage exponential technologies and exponential business practices to grow and scale rapidly, transform industries and create massive value and impact. In contrast, non-ExOs follow a linear approach to business and organizational strategy design and execution. This study aims to validate the hypothesis, based on financial metrics, that ExOs outperform their competitors and linear counterparts. Furthermore, it also brings a new understanding of the gap raised in the past eight years about how ExOs can achieve significantly better performance, measured with financial metrics.Design/methodology/approachFor measuring how exponential an organization is, this study elaborated a completely new assessment tool called Exponential Quotient (ExQ). This study applied ExQ to the 100 largest US headquartered companies as ranked by Fortune magazine in 2014. Calculating the ExQ enabled this study to rank these Fortune 100 companies and identify the most and the least exponential firms. This study tracked these companies as to how they performed on different financial metrics over the eight years of 2014–2021 and analyzed the results.FindingsThrough the analysis, this study revealed that the top 10 ExOs have significantly outperformed their bottom 10 non-exponential peers, delivering 40x higher shareholder returns, 2.6x better revenue growth, 6.8x higher profitability and 11.7x better asset turnover. Furthermore, this study could identify commonalities and similarities between the two groups. This means that ExOs can thrive even in tough times and that accelerating technologies unlock abundance and allow every organization to become a disruptive innovator and stay ahead of the competition. These are novel results in the research focusing on the gap between exponential and traditional organizations.Research limitations/implicationsUsing the ExQ diagnostics tool, every organization can see how flexible, scalable and agile they are, which is the starting point for an exponential transformation program. Although this approach has already found its way into practice and is applied globally by thousands of organizations (startups, scaleups and incumbents), so far, the academic establishment is in its nascent phase. With this research, the authors wanted to extend this field of science. On the other hand, because of its novelty, no appropriate previous studies existed to compare the results.Practical implicationsThe possible implications showed that there is a plannable way for significantly increasing an organization’s ExQ and advance it from a linear toward an exponential organizational model.Originality/valueThe results validated the robustness of the ExO framework and philosophy and shed light on the importance of exponential transformation – a proven method to increase an organization’s ExQ. This framework is not a “how to be successful” guide. Instead, it uncovered some of the previously unknown and universal mechanisms of scalability – which, in turbulent times, make companies successful (based on financial metrics). To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study was among the first kind of in-depth analyses to validate the whole ExO model.

Informal health sector and routine immunization: making the case for harnessing the potentials of patent medicine vendors for the big catch-up to reduce zero-dose children in sub-Saharan Africa.

The COVID-19 pandemic caused a surge in the number of unimmunized and under-immunized children in Africa. The majority of unimmunized (or zero-dose) children live in hard-to-reach rural areas, urban slums, and communities affected by conflict where health facilities are usually unavailable or difficult to access. In these settings, people mostly rely on the informal health sector for essential health services. Therefore, to reduce zero-dose children, it is critical to expand immunization services beyond health facilities to the informal health sector to meet the immunization needs of children in underserved places. In this perspective article, we propose a framework for the expansion of immunization services through the informal health sector as one of the pillars for the big catch-up plan to improve coverage and equity. In African countries like Nigeria, Ethiopia, Tanzania, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, patent medicine vendors serve as an important informal health sector provider group, and thus, they can be engaged to provide immunization services. A hub-and-spoke model can be used to integrate patent medicine vendors into the immunization system. A hub-and-spoke model is a framework for organization design where services that are provided by a central facility (hub) are complimented by secondary sites (spokes) to optimize access to care. Systems thinking approach should guide the design, implementation, and evaluation of this model.

Balancing Affordances and Constraints: Designing Enterprise Social Media for Organizational Knowledge Work

Enterprise social media (ESM) is changing how knowledge workers interact and share information; however, a debate persists as to whether ESM is an adequate knowledge management system. ESM provides a rich set of affordances for organizational knowledge work, such as improved organizational memory, but also constrains knowledge work performance because of digital interruptions. Extending and complementing existing scholarship, this study asks the following research question: How can organizations design ESM to realize its knowledge work benefits? Using a computational agent-based model that incorporates the design features of ESM, workers’ attitudes, and resulting ESM-use affordances and constraints, this study shows how ESM-use outcomes are contingent both on the design of and users’ attitudes toward ESM. Specifically, the negative effects of ESM interactivity are mitigated when employees have a low transparency preference and access ESM without posting as much. The study further unpacks asymmetric engagement as the mechanism that leads low transparency configurations to be more resilient to the negative effects of interruptions driven by ESM interactivity. Asymmetric engagement—learning from posted content without interacting often—enables the gradual creation of organizational memory while maintaining a broad user base by minimizing interruptions. These results ultimately contribute a multilevel model of ESM use and knowledge work outcomes, enhancing the theoretical understanding of previously studied mechanisms such as communication visibility and providing implications for organizations designing ESM.

Factors influencing medical school professors' perceptions of nonface-to-face education method and satisfaction with related faculty development programs

Objectives This study aims to conduct an empirical analysis of the factors influencing medical school professors’ perceptions of nonface-to-face (nonF2F) education method effects and satisfaction with nonF2F faculty development programs.
 Methods We conducted a survey of 445 medical school professors who participated in the nonF2F faculty development program from July 2020 to April 2021. For the data analysis, the SPSS 26 program was used to perform reliability, descriptive statistics, correlation, simple, and multiple regression analyses.
 Results First, program design, learning management, and communication with instructors were identified as factors that significantly influence medical school professors’ perceptions of the effectiveness of nonF2F education method. Second, the perception of the effect of nonF2F education method had a statistically significant effect on the satisfaction of nonF2F faculty development programs. Considering various factors for the organization or institution-level learning design, management, and instructors, rather than just one aspect of the nonF2F faculty development program, the degree to which medical professors perceive the effectiveness of nonF2F education method increases.
 Conclusions Training institutions strive for meticulous program design and learning management, and instructors can study strategies to improve communication skills in nonF2F situations, leading learners to positive perceptions of nonF2F education method and high satisfaction with faculty development programs. This study is significant because it has implications for the effective implementation of nonF2F teaching development programs that prepare for the educational environment in the “untact era” and meet demand.

Organisational Design and Sustainability Performance

The collapse of many organizations could be linked to the weak performance of management team members. The management team is the engine of growth implemented through designing strategies with which organization will manage its internal affairs bearing in mind the external environmental influences. Drawing on our research and the work of others, we explore the various organization design strategies and how that could bring sustainability. In doing, it was deduced that sustainability initiative, and the accompanying changes to the organizational structure, must have executive sponsorship and the CEO must be a visible proponent of the sustainability vision for the company. Executive sponsorship accelerates engagement by employees and business units, but even better results can be expected if the CEO is proactive and assume personal leadership of a highly visible sustainability program. It was however, recommended that: The leader of the sustainability initiative should have a direct reporting relationship with both the CEO and the board of directors in order to send a signal to employees and other stakeholders about the important of the initiative and provide the initiative with access to the support and resources available from high-level executives and managers in other departments.

Digitally-mediated coordination in healthcare: the effects of teleconsultation on doctor-to-doctor relational coordination

BackgroundDigitalization transforms the way in which interdependent work is coordinated, especially in healthcare settings. This work deepens the effect of teleconsultation use on health professionals’ coordination. For this aim, we rely on Relational Coordination Theory (RCT), which explores coordination as an interactive process among group participants within the context of task interdependency.MethodsWe collected data through an online survey administered to Italian specialist doctors between March and April 2023. 489 complete answers were gathered. Hypotheses have been tested through Structural Equation Modelling.ResultsWe found that teleconsultation frequency of use has a positive and significant effect on both components of relational coordination, confirming our hypotheses.ConclusionsTheoretically, this research contributes to our understanding of the effect of digitally mediated coordination mechanisms on relational coordination. In practice, we shed light on the organizational implications of telemedicine under a novel perspective, focusing on the role of professional interactions in digitally mediated work and providing useful elements for the organizational design of telemedicine.