Flatter Organizational Structures Research Articles

Mitigating Supply Chain Vulnerability

Competitive pressures are forcing companies to adopt practices and supply chain structures that will produce high quality, reliable, reasonably priced products with continuously shorter lead times. In order to meet these goals, companies are utilizing flatter organizational structures and narrower supply chains. Flatter structures and narrower supply chains typically reap the benefits of reduced coordination costs and improved organizational efficiencies. However, there exists an associated burden of an increased risk of a single point of failure that could leave the supply chain unable to deliver products to the market in a timely manner. This research study develops a model of risk, called the risk assessment index, to assess the vulnerability of different supply chain structures. It is determined that there exists significant trade-offs between the number of suppliers in the supplier base, product diversification, supply chain coordination, and supply chain efficiency that must be examined for a supply chain to remain competitive in a highly risky, vulnerable environment.

Exploring the Relationships Between Product Development and Environmental Turbulence: The Case of Mobile TLC Services*

Managing innovation in turbulent environments (e.g., in environments with extreme uncertainty and complexity in market needs and technological opportunities) is a major challenge. A recent stream of studies in the management literature has suggested that when facing turbulent environments, firms should deploy more flexible development processes. This paper approaches this issue by looking at the Italian mobile telecommunications (TLC) industry. Nine in‐depth case studies were conducted in five different companies. Data analysis showed some important results. First of all environmental turbulence should be considered to be project specific rather than company or industry specific. Moreover, it can come from both shift in the market needs and in the technology. Nevertheless, it seems clear that having rapid changes is not enough to have environmental turbulence. If rapid changes can be somehow foreseen, there is no turbulence at all. Hence, when approaching projects in potentially turbulent environments, managers should assess both rapidity and unpredictability of the environment. Finally, looking at the in‐depth cases, the paper points out what of the main practices to increase flexibility that are described in literature are actually adopted by companies. In case of turbulence (both in the market and/or in the technology) companies delay concept freezing point. Moreover, in the case of technological turbulence, they also leverage on rapid project iterations, whereas in case of market turbulence they more likely adopt early experiments involving customers, formal and cross‐functional project teams, and flat organizational structures.

A Research of Resource-Based View From the Point of View Competitive Advantage and a Qualitative Search in Ford Otosan, Tusas, Graham and Toprak Seramik

The resource-based view of firm is influential theorical framework for understanding how competitive advantage within firms is achieved and how that advantage might be sustained over time. The resource-based view suggests that sustainable competitive advantage emerge from unique combination of resources. While there are multiple typologies of resource characteristics necessary to develop sustainable competitive advantage, most authors have integrated them into four critical ones: (1) the resource must be valuable, (2) the resource must be rare, (3) the resource must be difficult to imitate by competitors and the resource must be nonsubstitutable by other types of resource. Firms must develop new strategic resources and core competencies to survive in a dynamic and competitive environment. In this study, in order to test the correctness of the basic statement of “companies having unique, valuable, nonsubstitutable and inimitable resources and competences that cannot be achieved by the competitors obtain sustainable competitive advantage” a qualitative research on Ford Otosan, TUSAS, Graham and Toprak Seramik has been conducted. As a result, it has been detected that the companies having highly innovative capacity and open to change and having flat organization structure obtain sustainable competitive superiority.

The Division of Labour, Worker Organisation, and Technological Change

The model developed in this article explains differences in the division of labour across firms as a result of computer technology adoption. Changes in the division of labour result from reduced production time and improved communication possibilities. The first shifts the division of labour towards generic structures, while the latter enhances specialisation. Our estimates for a sample of Dutch establishments in the period 1990‐6 suggest that productivity gains have been the main determinant for shifts in the division of labour. These productivity gains induced skill upgrading, while in firms gaining from improved communication possibilities specialisation increased and skill requirements have fallen. The rapid spread of computer technology has led to substantial changes in the division of labour and a shift in the demand for labour in favour of skilled workers. Mostly these changes have been accompanied by flatter organisational structures, larger autonomy for workers or workgroups, the application of innovative human resource management practices and so on. There are also less typical examples where computerisation is associated with increased specialisation (e.g., the rapid increase of call-centres), scripting of communication with clients and stricter procedures. Although the empirical relationship between information and communication technology (ICT) adoption and organisational change has been well-documented, disagreement remains about the reasons why computerisation provides firms with incentives to change the structure of their organisation and the skill requirements of their workforce.

Editorial

Discusses the consultation document about the restructuring of library services at University of Wales Bangor which proposed the cutting of eight librarian positions. Gives an overview of a paper compiled by a group set up within the library service to formulate a response to the consultation document. Suggests alternatives to the proposed redundancies including adoption of a matrix-style team approach and a flat organizational structure. Argues that subject specialists and information professionals are more necessary than ever in an era of increasingly complex electronic resources.

Transferring human resource practices from the United Kingdom to China: the limits and potential for convergence

Substantial effort has been devoted to exploring the transfer of human resource management practices within multinational companies. Particular attention has been paid to countries with ‘strong’ HRM traditions, to transfers between economically developed countries and to firms in the manufacturing sector. This paper addresses the transfer of a British-owned retail firm's HRM practices from the United Kingdom to the People's Republic of China. From a variety of perspectives the expectation might be that the transfer of parent-country practices in this instance would be limited: HRM has not been considered a particular strength of UK firms; retail firms operate in a multi-domestic context directly serving local customers rather than as part of an integrated international production network; and there is a high cultural distance between the UK and China. When this multinational retailer entered the China market the express intention was to replicate as nearly as possible the management style of its UK stores. This paper examines the extent to which the firm's parent-country HRM practices, which the company increasingly considers as a key source of competitive advantage, have in fact been transferred to the Chinese stores. The paper seeks to provide fresh insights on the phenomenon of transfer by adopting a qualitative case study approach. This study also focuses on shopfloor employees' perspectives rather than purely the view of managerial staff, as has tended to be the case. Several aspects of HRM transfer are explored briefly: communication with the workforce, work pattern, age composition of the workforce, reward system, training, and employee representation. Attention then focuses on the transfer of the firm's relatively flat organizational structure to a country which is perceived to place a high value on hierarchy, and where hierarchies tend to be quite rigid and clearly demarcated. This provides useful insights into the nature of the transfer process. It is suggested that structural dimensions such as the country of origin, the degree of international production integration and the nature of product markets appear to have less utility in explaining the transfer of HRM practices than institutional and cultural features of the host-country environment and, above all, specific firm-level practices and the presence of expatriates in key management roles.

WHO OUGHT TO BE BLAMED? THE EFFECT OF ORGANIZATIONAL ROLES ON BLAME AND CREDIT ATTRIBUTIONS

Attributing blame for performance failure and credit for success is ubiquitous in organizations. These responsibility attributions can play an important role in aligning individual and organizational performance expectations, but may also exacerbate conflict in groups and organizations. Theory suggests that an actor's organizational role will affect blame and credit attributions, yet empirical work on this prediction is lacking. This article tests an organizational role approach by assessing the effect of the responsible actor's hierarchical position and whether he or she acted as an individual or as part of a group on blame and credit attributions. The study finds that in response to organizational failures and successes leadership roles attract more blame than other positions, but in contrast to previous predictions, these roles do not attract more credit than lower level roles. In addition, upper level positions tend to be assigned greater blame than credit, while lower level positions show a reversed pattern: they attract more credit than blame. Groups are less likely to be assigned blame and more likely to be credited than are individuals, and occupants in flat organizational structures are assigned higher levels of blame and credit than are occupants in taller organizational structures.

As debilidades estruturais das organizações: o exemplo ibérico

A partir dos resultados de um inquérito realizado junto de 187 empresas portuguesas e catalãs, pretendeu-se estudar a possibilidade de existir um déficit de estruturação entre estas empresas, susceptível de limitar a sua produtividade e a sua competitividade. As características específicas deste tecido empresarial, onde prevalecem empresas de pequena dimensão, com uma gestão familiar autodidacta, podem criar um quadro inibidor do desenvolvimento de uma vontade organizadora e que mantém muitas destas empresas amarradas a um estado pré-organizacional. Quando seria de esperar que estas empresas, que reconhecem estar a enfrentar um ambiente mais complexo, mais variável e mais hostil, estivessem a aligeirar e a flexibilizar as suas estruturas organizativas, assiste-se ao reforço generalizado destas, que parece coincidir com o reconhecimento desta necessidade. A confirmar-se este déficit, a sua resolução poderá ser um factor incontornável para reconduzir estas empresas na senda da competitividade.

“Do all things with counsel”1: Benedictine women and organizational democracy

The purpose of this essay is to set forth a model for organizfltional democracy especially suited to feminist and other non‐traditional, non‐hierarchical organizations and to illustrate that model by way of a case study of two communities of Benedictine nuns. The elements of the model are: shared fundamental values, structures designed to encourage true participation, and the provision of resources members need to participate effectively. The decision‐making practices of Benedictine sisters are a suitable case study, because Benedictine communities are feminist in nature, have relatively flat organizational structures, and have been using democratic practices for a longer period of time than have most contemporary organizations.

A Web-Based Knowledge Management Environment for Consulting and Research Organizations

Consulting and research organizations are characterized by a project orientation, teamwork, a flat organizational structure, and a dynamically changing set of personnel roles and objectives. These organizations develop information content in the form of reports, various graphics, presentations, documents, and sometimes video and audio files that can be broadly defined as project artifacts. Knowledge is often defined by “best practices,” formalized procedures, and external connections. Although many organizations possess characteristics common to those of consulting and research organizations, the unique focus of consulting and research firms on knowledge, as one of the primary products offered to clients requires a knowledge management effort and technological infrastructure that support this unique focus. In this paper we present a Web portal-based knowledge management architecture designed to support the specific knowledge management activities prevalent in consulting and research firms. The architecture is composed of advanced computational techniques consisting of an XML-based repository of organizational artifacts, a software bus, groupware, a multimedia repository, and ontological reasoning. The Web portal is a view into groupware, search, and multimedia applications as well as normal Web functionality. The architecture is three tiered with the client tier consisting of a Web browser, a middle tier consisting of the support applications encapsulated in a portal, and a back tier containing the repositories and databases. An index/repository engine is used in the back tier to manage the contents of a separate index repository and an ontology repository. An ontology repository is used to store expressions that are a form of knowledge representation that can be queried. An index repository contains indexes to HTML and XML based Web pages containing organizational artifacts. The architecture represents a unified use of various technology components that, in concert, provide the functionality and integration of technology required by consulting and research firms to harvest and leverage the combined knowledge of their knowledge workers to provide better service to their clients.

U.K. Public Sector Project Management—A Cultural Perspective

The U.K. government is striving to introduce a value-oriented perspective within public management, especially in regard to major capital expenditure, by promoting closer ties to private sector suppliers. The emphasis is effective service delivery rather than asset ownership (e.g., on educated, healthy people rather than procurement of school and hospital buildings or state provision of personnel), meaning public managers are directly accountable for service performance. Resulting partnerships between public and private sectors demand a fundamental change to the worldview of U.K. civil servants. Relationship building, user consultation, ongoing performance assessment such as benchmarking, direct accountability, and flatter organizational structures have replaced traditional modes of accountability and operation. This article explores the cultural influences on the role of the project sponsor in delivering on these aims. It seeks to understand how these cultural influences affect the project sponsor’s ability to deliver a project on time, within budget, and of the right quality.

Contextual Influences and the Adoption and Practice of Relationship Selling in a Business-to-business Setting: An Exploratory Study

Recently, a number of authors have argued in favour of a relationship approach to selling and sales management. Despite this call, there has been little in the way of research to identify the impact of adopting relationship selling at an organizational and tactical level. Based upon multiple in-depth interviews with experienced salespeople, we propose the conditions under which relationship selling is appropriate, and argue that relationships with customers evolve through a two-stage process that involves balancing short-term performance based behaviors with long-term relationship building behaviors. Findings cause us to argue that organizations adopting a relationship approach to selling require flatter organizational structures and need to foster more flexible organizational cultures.

Information Technology and Restructuring in Public Organizations: Does Adoption of Information Technology Affect Organizational Structures, Communications, and Decision Making?

Information Technology and Restructuring in Public Organizations: Does Adoption of Information Technology Affect Organizational Structures, Communications, and Decision Making?

Why Ethical Codes Constitute an Unconscionable Regression

The article protests against the usage of ethical codes by business organisations. It asserts that professionals are in a different situation to that of employees; and that with the latter ethical codes are used by management to ensure compliance and are devoid of ethical content. Ethical codes it is argued are part of management's control system in a time of flatter organisational structures with a far wider span of control. It is also asserted that the ambitions of some to utilise ethical codes so that the business organisation is able to engender societal change is dangerous and likely, if successful, to return us to an age which we could not seriously desire to re-visit.

Information Technology and Optimal Firm Structure

In this paper I use a principal-agent framework to explore the relation between the hierarchical structure of firms and the accounting information technologies available to them. I allow the principal to choose the number of layers in the firm, the number of agents in each layer, and the quantity and quality of information in the firm (subject to the available information technology). Alternative information technologies are characterized by their monitoring efficiency, the impact of control reduction on information quality and the returns on monitoring effort. I find that demand for a layer of supervisors exists only for a limited set of parameters. Furthermore, only in a few extreme cases do the benefits of additional layers of supervisors outweigh the costs. Obviously, there are reasons other than supervision for firms to use hierarchical structure; hence, my results demonstrate that from an information gathering perspective, in many cases, the required information rent associated with a hierarchical structure may outweigh its benefit, and in this respect flatter organizations are optimal. Structural changes in the economy that make monitoring more difficult might increase the information rent in a hierarchy. Hence, the analysis in this paper may help explain the recent trend towards flatter organizational structures.

The role of organisational structure in successful global brand management: A case study of the Pierre Smirnoff Company

While articles and books have largely focused on the strategic issues around brands and branding, much less attention has been focused on the people who manage them, and in particular, the organisational structures within which they operate. This paper is a case study which explores the role of organisational structure in the global management of the Smirnoff brand, the world's number one brand of vodka. It is set against a background of an increasingly turbulent, global environment where one of the key responses has been to ‘downsize’ or delayer the management hierarchy. The research identifies a series of factors which have enabled Smirnoff to compete successfully in the global environment including strong leadership, a clear, global brand strategy and a relatively flat organisational structure that has allowed a ‘loose-tight’ dynamic to operate between the international regions and Head Office, London. A number of general points are drawn from the case study which have implications for other companies operating in a global environment.

High-Flyer Management-Development Programs

High-flyer programs are fast-track career-development programs for managers identified as having high-potential and designated for rapid advancement in their organizations (Cox and Cooper, 1988). These programs, common in large, bureaucratic, and stable organizations during the 1960s and 1970s, typically targeted the best and brightest new college graduates for accelerated career development. They moved new recruits through a series of positions and training experiences as they were promoted to middle management and top executive positions (Cox and Cooper, 1988; Hall, 1976; Ofner, 1987). During the early 1980s, as organizations began to cut costs, create flatter organizational structures, and downsize, these programs were frequently revised to meet changing organizational needs (London and Stumpf, 1982). In particular, organizations

Branding in practice: The profile and role of brand managers in the UK

Marketing as an area of management has come under close scrutiny in recent years and the management of brands, both product and corporate, has been no exception. In particular, the brand manager as the champion of the brand has been under attack, namely, they are too young, inexperienced and focus too much on the short term. Indeed, the entire system of brand management has been questioned in the light of the rapidly changing marketing environment brought about by economic recession, internationalization and changing patterns of distribution. Add to this the growth of corporate branding and it is not difficult to understand the concerns. However, do these concerns reflect the reality? This paper explores the role and profile of the brand manager through a research survey carried out by the authors. The research examined the age, experience and remuneration package of brand managers and looked at their responsibilities, accountability and planning horizons within marketing departments. The results are discussed in the context of the wider marketing environment and trends towards alternative management systems such as category management and flatter organizational structures. It concludes that many of the criticisms are true but sometimes only in part. For example, brand managers are young and well educated but poorly trained. They manage more brands than they used to but have not widened their span of functional responsibilities to include the newer areas of marketing such as database marketing and trade marketing. They spend a relatively short period of time in one job, have short‐term objectives and are paid in proportion to the size of their advertising and promotion budgets but are nevertheless usually part of a strategy formulation team. The research also indicates that organizations have been slow to adopt new structures, which is resulting in an increasingly fragmented brand management process.

Integrating R&D and Marketing: A Review and Analysis of the Literature

During the past 20 years, numerous studies have explored the R&D—marketing interface and its role in the new product development (NPD) process. Academics and practitioners (including a PDMA task force) have examined commonly used measures of success, the underlying reasons for the success or failure of NPD projects, and the effects of R&D—marketing integration on both project‐ and company‐level success. Does this mean we have all the answers when it comes to ensuring the necessary level of cooperation and interaction between R&D and marketing? Of course not.Abbie Griffin and John R. Hauser note that prior research on R&D—marketing integration is being reassessed in light of the movement toward flatter organizational structures and cross‐functional teams. To facilitate that reassessment, and to help guide future research in this area, they review recent research on the methods employed for integrating R&D and marketing, and they propose several hypotheses regarding those methods. They present their review and hypotheses within the framework of a causal map they have developed for studying functional integration.The causal map links cooperation to NPD success along situational dimensions, structural and process dimensions, and outcome dimensions. The desired outcome in any NPD effort is the timely commercialization of a profitable product. The situational dimensions address the amount and types of integration needed in a project, which depend on such factors as the project phase and the level of project uncertainty. The structural and process dimensions focus on the actions taken to achieve functional integration. These include relocation and physical facilities design, personnel movement, informal social systems, organizational structures, incentives and rewards, and formal integrative management processes.The proposed hypotheses focus on the methods for achieving functional integration—that is, the structural and process dimensions of the causal map. At first glance, these hypotheses seem to state the obvious. For example, few would challenge the notion that quality function deployment eliminates barriers to functional integration and improves information sharing between functions. However, achieving those benefits requires the presence of other factors such as senior management involvement. Rather than examine these hypotheses separately, researchers should explore the relative merits of the methods for achieving functional integration. In other words, future research must consider both the situational and the structural and process dimensions of this framework.

A micro module approach to the design and control of autonomous decentralized chemical plant

In systems management today, a flat organizational structure can be flexibly adapted to environmental changes owing to autonomous behaviour of individuals, and such design concepts serve to eliminate a hierarchical structure from an organization. Learning from such situations and applying the basic concept behind to them engineering problem-solving is expected. Using the concept may realize the design and operation of flexible plants in which systems structures are not fixed and each unit has a wider operating range. Furthermore, the control structures are different from those of the traditional scheme of hierarchy. One of the promising ways of accomplishing this is based on the “autonomous decentralized systems concept”, which is not well established and the definition of which terminology is not concrete. In this paper, the authors present a new framework of processing systems design and operations on the basis of the autonomous decentralized system concept.