Formal Organizational Structure Research Articles

TIME FOR EU MATTERS: THE EUROPEANIZATION OF DUTCH CENTRAL GOVERNMENT

To what extent does the European Union (EU) affect national governments? This article seeks to answer this question by assessing the Europeanization of Dutch central government. Using data from a large-scale survey among civil servants, we assess to what extent the EU affects the structure and culture of governmental organizations, as well as the activities of individual civil servants. On the basis of this analysis, we conclude that the impact of the EU both on individual civil servants and on organizations in Dutch central government is two-sided: a small core of civil servants and organizations are deeply involved in EU-related activities and this exists alongside a much broader base of civil servants and organizations that are less affected by the EU. These differences appear more clearly on the level of daily working practices than on the level of formal organizational structures. Nevertheless, the impact of European integration on government organizations remains limited to particular organizations and particular civil servants within central government.

Designing an organisational rule set: experiences of using second-order organisational design in healthcare

One of the biggest challenges of organisational design is moving toward a less formal organisational structure as the artefact to be designed. We find inspiration in computer game design for a way to address this problem: second-order design. Second-order design means designing rules that give rise to certain behaviour. In this article we present our study of an organisational intervention in a hospital using second-order design principles. The study highlights the role of rules and game structures, the inclusion of stakeholders in the design process and the importance of prototyping organisational designs. The implications for future empirical work are discussed.

Cooperative Research Centres as effective institutions for contemporary models for achieving innovation in primary industry

The creation of a formal organisational structure that brings together the specific needs of particular industries, with the expertise and research capacity available through recognised research providers, has an underlying and undeniable logic. Cooperative Research Centres (CRCs) provide this formal structure and are generally strongly focussed on carrying out applied outcome-driven research to improve productivity through innovation. Despite this strong commercial focus and record of scientific-output CRCs, there is general recognition that adoption of research from CRCs can be improved. The present paper focuses on primary industry CRCs and discusses the applicability of contemporary innovation concepts, which have evolved through the process of industrialisation and socialisation of science, and their application for improving innovation within primary industry CRCs. Specifically considered are 4th and 5th generation innovation concepts that promote ideas within ‘Open Innovation’ and ‘Knowledge Creation’ as a means of improving innovation within the primary industry CRCs organisational structure.

A Political Display and Symbolic Reasoning of Budgeting: Organizational Control Systems in an Indonesian Higher Education Institution

This study examines the impact of the paternalistic manage rial style of Javanese culture in an Indonesian higher education institution on the role budgeting used within the organization. This is an eth nographic case study in which the researcher is part of the case being studied as an academic and administrative staff member. An historical analysis is performed by confirmation of other organizational participants' understanding about the school's control system through inter views. To provide official organizational and descriptive historical contexts of the case and to make available the powerful link between what people say and what they actually do, documents and archival recordsare also used. Instead of formal organizational structures being adopted, informal relationships, paternalistic management and physical control dominate everyday managerial practices in the school. Budgeting fa cilitates a political deal among the school's stakeholders. It functions as a rationalized myth to the process and a symbolic reason to display that managerial conducts are financially responsible - not merely an efficiency measurement.

Microculturas y cultura organizacional: construcción dialéctica en la organización

<span>Las disciplinas administrativas han construido un modelo conceptual de cultura organizacional en donde se ha desconocido el carácter natural que le concede la antropología al concepto de cultura. La investigación buscó indagar por la manera como la estructura formal de organizaciones productivas incide en la cooperación espontánea de los empleados. El artículo tiene como propósito evidenciar que la cultura en la organización no solo se configura por los aspectos de la estructura formal sino que existen otras dinámicas grupales espontáneas, distintas y a la vez, complementarias de los postulados que maneja la gestión de la cultura organizacional. El trabajo se apoya en algunos conceptos claves como orden, vinculación y principios de organización social, que permiten presentar un paralelo entre dos tipos de orden: el orden espontáneo y el orden artificial. Finalmente, se devela la forma en cómo el orden artificial restringe, en algunos casos, las interacciones sociales entre los empleados.</span>

The mechanics behind plant development

Morphogenesis in living organisms relies on the integration of both biochemical and mechanical signals. During the last decade, attention has been mainly focused on the role of biochemical signals in patterning and morphogenesis, leaving the contribution of mechanics largely unexplored. Fortunately, the development of new tools and approaches has made it possible to re-examine these processes. In plants, shape is defined by two local variables: growth rate and growth direction. At the level of the cell, these variables depend on both the cell wall and turgor pressure. Multidisciplinary approaches have been used to understand how these cellular processes are integrated in the growing tissues. These include quantitative live imaging to measure growth rate and direction in tissues with cellular resolution. In parallel, stress patterns have been artificially modified and their impact on strain and cell behavior been analysed. Importantly, computational models based on analogies with continuum mechanics systems have been useful in interpreting the results. In this review, we will discuss these issues focusing on the shoot apical meristem, a population of stem cells that is responsible for the initiation of the aerial organs of the plant.

Evolution of Organisational Structure and Capabilities in Internationalising Banks: The CEE Operations of UniCredit's Vienna Office

Cross-border integration is the central management issue for banks that expand internationally, and this is especially true in Central and Eastern Europe, where the pace of internationalisation through mergers and acquisitions has been rapid. A critical challenge in cross-border integration is aligning a multinational company's formal organizational structure with the distribution of capabilities across its subsidiary units, and this issue is explored by tracking the co-evolution of organizational structure and capabilities during the internationalisation of a large banking network into this region. Our focus is the Vienna head office of Bank Austria Creditanstalt, which was acquired first by HypoVereinsbank (Germany) and then UniCredit (Italy). Despite its formal role being downgraded during these changes, the unit continued to develop its distinctive capabilities. The key insight our article offers is that managing cross-border integration is not simply about recognizing the value of the distinctive capabilities of individual units and designing formal structures that successfully align with them. It is also about understanding the need for dynamic interaction between formal corporate structure and individual units' desires to retain power and influence, which have significant implications for the development of their organizational capabilities.

Organizational performance under conditions of vulnerability: A multi-agent perspective

We develop a multi-agent system based on computational organization theory to analyze the effect of vulnerability on organizational performance. Agents within the organization are modeled as information processing units, while links between agents represent the communication network along which commands or instructions are transmitted. The vulnerability of an organization is defined in terms of the ability of the organization to accomplish tasks when the agent or communication link fails. We demonstrate the utility of this framework by comparing the performance of four classic forms of organizational structure, and propose a hybrid structure that maximizes flexibility in the face of a rapidly changing environment. It is the ability of information technology to support this flexibility, we suggest, that will allow future organizational forms to gain a competitive advantage.

Semantic Technology for Capturing Communication Inside an Organization

Capturing information about employees can give organizations insight into underlying knowledge processes. Analyzing email communications, for example, can produce an informal structure that's flexible and that organizations can recalculate regularly to capture information flow among employees. The structure could also help institutions to both identify collaboration patterns and predict changes in those patterns. Using semantic technologies in various domains, researchers have developed domain-specific ontologies to capture knowledge and enable reasoning. Organizations can support such knowledge management by capturing knowledge of their own people and their communication records, including email exchanges. The proposed approach analyzes an internal social network and uses the resulting information to produce an informal organizational structure. The authors evaluated their approach using a mid-size organization's actual data and compared the informal structure they obtained with the formal organizational structure. As the results show, the approach proved useful for modeling social structures based on real-world communication records.

Ownership, size, and the formal structure of organizations: evidence from US public and private firms, 1992-2002

This study considers the effects of (i) ownership structure, (ii) prior size dynamics of growth and decline, and (iii) organizational size on changes in the formal structure of organizations. Using a broad sample of almost 70,000 US public and private firms, I test the arguments by estimating conditional logistic regressions using as dependent variables two dimensions of organizational structural differentiation: the number of formal subunits and hierarchical levels. The findings show that public firms are more likely to elaborate structurally, but less likely to simplify their structural differentiation. As organizations grow/decline in size, they apparently tend to increase/decrease their degree of structural differentiation. However, for a given change in size, the level of structural differentiation is less likely to increase during growth than it is to decrease during decline, indicating an asymmetric pattern. I also find that organizational size can serve as a facilitator or inhibitor for structural change, depending on the direction of change. Finally, I find that the asymmetric pattern of growth and decline works differently for large and small firms. The same proportional increase in size is more likely to generate structural differentiation for larger firms than for smaller firms. But the same proportional decrease in size has a smaller likelihood of causing structural de-differentiation for larger firms than for smaller firms. Copyright 2009 The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Associazione ICC. All rights reserved., Oxford University Press.

Leaving the Streets: Transformation of Prostitute Identity Within the Prostitution Rehabilitation Program

This article examines the process of identity transformation among prostitutes immersed in the Prostitution Rehabilitation Program (PRP). I assess how residents transition from a deviant to a non-deviant identity by examining their talk (biographical reconstruction) and behavior (role embracement) through participant observation and in-depth interviews over an extended period of time. Departing from extant literature that focuses on identity change within rigidly structured organizations, I analyze a unique site, which contains two forms of organizational structures—total and quasi-total institutional settings. Within these contexts, I find former prostitutes move through three successive phases of change as they attempt to shed a deviant identity. Future studies will need to consider how varying organizational structures inhibit or facilitate this process.

From High-Performance Teams to Evolutionary Learning Communities: New pathways in organizational development

AbstractDevelopments in organizational thinking often lead to new forms of organizational structure. Increases in organizational complexity and operational connectivity have intensified the need for coordinated decision taking at and among all levels of organization. This means that the ability to work in teams has become a core competence in work environments where collaboration is at a premium. Empowered teams consist of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose or a set of performance goals for which they hold themselves mutually accountable. The power and authority traditionally held exclusively by the manager is passed to the team. Contemporary organizations often demonstrate examples of such work teams, showing exceptional job performance and production of innovative solutions. Consequently, there has been great interest in understanding what makes these teams what they are, and how they function. This article reports on the characteristics of high-performance teams foun...

Police organizational structure and child sexual abuse case attrition

PurposeThis paper aims to explore the effects of formal police organizational structure on child sexual abuse case attrition.Design/methodology/approachData from two surveys were merged for this analysis: a 1988 survey of child abuse enforcement in US police departments, and the 1987 Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics (LEMAS) database produced by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Based on the structure‐performance link that is rooted in structural contingency theory, this study examines the effects of both global and specific structural features on two case disposition ratios. Because structure is more easily malleable than other factors that may affect performance, such as environment and context, it is important to know whether certain structural arrangements produce more desirable outcomes than others.FindingsThe results indicate that the global structural variables included in this analysis play a small role in child sexual abuse case attrition. None of the variables included in the model influence the rate at which cases are designated as “founded”. The size and height of police agencies and the rate at which they designate cases as founded both influence their arrest rates for child sexual abuse cases.Research limitations/implicationsThe small sample size made it difficult to estimate the models. Future research should test the findings reported here using larger samples.Originality/valueTo the author's knowledge this is the first study to compare the effects of global and specific structures on police outputs.

How to make the rhetoric of joined-up government really work

"Joined-up' government and 'whole-of-government' approaches have evolved over the past two decades from the simple 'one-stop-shop' concept to much more formal organisational structures mandated at the highest levels. In many cases, the participants in these developments were learning on the job, as they responded to community and political demands for better service delivery and more accountability. This paper looks back at some of those developments and proposes a schema to assess and place policies, strategies and programs.

Telemedicine Deployments Within NATO Military Forces: A Data Analysis of Current and Projected Capabilities

Since the creation of the NATO Telemedicine Expert Panel (now renamed the TMED Expert Team) in 2000, when few nations had deployed telemedicine systems to support military field operations, this group has been encouraging the nations to deploy telemedicine (TMED) in support of their forces, and to write the use of TMED into NATO doctrine. This has been a relatively successful effort, and TMED is increasingly being used within the military medical structures of some NATO and Partnership for Peace nations to provide medical care to deployed military personnel. We report the results of a multinational survey of current and projected availability of various telemedicine modalities within the NATO medical services that are participating in the work of the TMED expert team (ET). Though only a "snapshot in time," and not representing all NATO nations, this is the first attempt to identify both current and planned TMED utilization within the multinational military medical community. Participating nations report that communication systems now in place at the lowest levels of medical support increasingly enable the routine use of Web-based teleconsultation modalities. Teleradiology is now being seen as the de facto standard for imaging support. While a number of nations report they have deployed capabilities for obtaining clinical consultations at a distance, most responding nations do not have a formal organizational structure to control and manage remote consultation and rely on informal clinical relationships (e.g., requesting consults from the deployed clinician's home hospital or from friends). Military electronic health records are in use by only a minority of nations and fewer still are capable of civilian interface. Less common TMED capabilities (e.g., tele-microbiology, tele-pathology, tele-medical maintenance) are being increasingly used, but are still rarely deployed. As a result of the findings of this survey, specific recommendations for expanding the use of TMED in the NATO multinational medical setting have been made to appropriate NATO bodies.

Beyond Circulation: The Evolution of Access Services and Its Relationship to Reference Librarianship

ABSTRACT Academic libraries have undergone a variety of organizational changes in the last two decades. One area that has evolved out of these changes is access services. Relationships between circulation, interlibrary loan, and reference have been explored though informal and formal organizational structures. Because of these types of interactions it is feasible for reference librarians to consider positions in access services.

A Framework for Analysis of Ambidexterity and Performance in Small-to-Medium-Sized Firms

Ambidextrous organizations provide a practical model for forward-looking executives seeking to pioneer disruptive innovations while pursuing incremental gains. The relationships described in this study are based on the organizational-context literature, in particular Ghoshal and Bartlett's (1994) framework for organizational effectiveness, suggesting that contextual ambidexterity emerges when owner-managers in a business unit develop a supportive organization context. This perspective suggests that superior business-unit performance is not achieved primarily though charismatic leadership nor through some formal organizational structure, nor strong company culture; but rather through building a rational set of systems and processes that collectively define a context that allows the transcending capabilities of alignment and adaptability to flourish simultaneously, thereby sustaining business unit performance.

Formal structures and informal networks: Structural analysis in organizations

Adopting a network-analytical approach this study tests predictions regarding the coexistence of formal organizational structures and informal networks. Data have been collected on the cooperative relationships within the strategic decision process at the two top-management levels in two German multinational corporations. The results from applying QAP and ANOVA analytical techniques reveal—against widespread assumptions—that managers participating in strategy-making not only use informal cooperation ties in addition to their formally designed relationships, but they also disregard their formal work contacts to a surprising extent. Moreover, significant differences can be found between horizontal and vertical relationships: (1) formal horizontal ties are much more likely to be disregarded than formal vertical ties, and (2) a significantly greater number of informal ties are built and maintained in a vertical rather than a horizontal direction. The results contribute to the existing literature in this field by offering deeper insights into the interdependencies between formal structures and informal networks.

The Third World Kidney Day: Looking Back and Thinking Forward

The Third World Kidney Day: Looking Back and Thinking Forward

The Social Structure of Organization: Coordination in a Large, Multi-Business Firm

In my dissertation, I examine intraorganizational social networks and their antecedents and consequences. The first paper, jointly authored with Michael Tushman, is a theoretical discussion of the role of social networks in inter-divisional coordination. Most large organizations fail to develop new businesses that combine resources from disparate parts of the firm. I define and explore a brand of corporate entrepreneurship based on interdependent innovation - the deliberate creation of interdependence between autonomous divisions of multi-business firms to create new products. I argue that interdependent innovation is difficult because the social structures that promote exploration of new possibilities are inconsistent with the social structures needed to successfully execute interdependent innovation; I suggest that senior leadership plays a crucial role in transitioning the organization between different network structures.Empirically, there are at least two methodological hurdles to researching the complex interaction between formal structure and social structure in contributing to organizational outcomes. First, the kind and quality of data that have typically been collected to conduct network analysis are inadequate; and second, there is a paucity of research that accounts for the embeddedness of the informal structure in the formal. In the second dissertation paper, I begin to resolve these two issues. I argue for data collection methods relying on electronic communication archives (e.g., e-mail) for network analysis. I also empirically develop novel measures that use this data to quantify the social structural relationships between formal divisions; in doing so, I explicitly embed informal structure within formal structure in novel ways.The third dissertation paper, jointly authored with Toby Stuart and Michael Tushman, is an empirical study of the pattern of communications - and, by extension, the coordination that it enables - in a modern organization. We analyze a dataset with more than 100 million electronic mail messages, calendar meetings and teleconferences for a sample of more than 30,000 employees of a single, multidivisional firm. In dyad-level models of the probability that pairs of individuals communicate, we find very large effects of spatial proximity and formal organizational structure on the rate of communication; homophily effects based on gender, organizational tenure, and salary levels are much weaker.