Importance Of Organizational Structure Research Articles

The Importance of Organizational Structure in Implementing Evidence-Based Best Practice.

Sakata, Theadora MD, MPhil; Fowles, Timothy PhD; Knighton, Andrew PhD; Bledsoe, Joseph MD, FACEP; Wolfe, Doug PhD; Srivastava, Rajendu MD, MPH Author Information

The impact of management systems on technical change: the adoption of pollution prevention techniques

A firm’s capability to innovate is influenced by its organizational structure. We examine the effect of Total Quality Environmental Management (TQEM) on the adoption of innovative pollution prevention activities over the period 1992–1996, and show that the rate of innovation increases following the adoption of TQEM. However, the effect of TQEM on pollution prevention innovation “wears out” over time. Our analysis indicates that this is likely because pollution prevention undertaken in one year continues to be effective in future years. This, in turn, reduces the incentives for further innovation due to declining marginal returns, rather than because the institutional effectiveness of TQEM weakens. We provide corroborative evidence based on the time profile of pollution prevention of firms that adopted TQEM prior to the start of our sample, and also develop a stylized model with (partial) obsolescence of pollution prevention innovations that matches the empirical regularities we obtain. Our findings shed light on the importance of organizational structure on the pace of technical change.

Managing Cancer Care During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Agility and Collaboration Toward a Common Goal.

The first confirmed case of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in the United States was reported on January 20, 2020, in Snohomish County, Washington. At the epicenter of COVID-19 in the United States, the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and University of Washington are at the forefront of delivering care to patients with cancer during this public health crisis. This Special Feature highlights the unique circumstances and challenges of cancer treatment amidst this global pandemic, and the importance of organizational structure, preparation, agility, and a shared vision for continuing to provide cancer treatment to patients in the face of uncertainty and rapid change.

The Impact of Management Systems on Technical Change: The Adoption of Pollution Prevention Techniques

A firm’s capability to innovate is influenced by its organizational structure. We examine the effect of Total Quality Environmental Management (TQEM) on the adoption of innovative pollution prevention activities over the period 1992-1996, and show that the rate of innovation increases following the adoption of TQEM. However, the effect of TQEM on pollution prevention innovation “wears out” over time. Our analysis indicates that this is likely because pollution prevention does not completely become obsolete, which reduces the incentives for further innovation in subsequent years, rather than because the institutional effectiveness of TQEM weakens. We provide corroborative evidence based on the time profile of pollution prevention of firms that adopted TQEM prior to the start of our sample, and also develop a stylized model with (partial) obsolescence of pollution prevention innovations that matches the empirical regularities we obtain. Our findings shed light on the importance of organizational structure on the pace of technical change.

Barriers to nurse leadership in an Indonesian hospital setting.

Given the prominent role of nursing within modern health care environments, it is essential that leadership is viewed as a key capability. However, little is known on how leadership evolves amongst the nurses in Indonesia and the barriers that exist to nurses gaining access to leadership roles. Limited attention is given to address the improvement of nurse leadership for the benefit of the nurses in the country. To identify organizational and individual practices and how these contribute to barriers to the development of nursing leadership in the hospital setting. A qualitative study employing semi-structured face-to-face interviews and a thematic approach to data analysis. Four key themes are derived as follows: (a) hierarchical leadership and the importance of organizational structure and gender, (b) restricted perspectives, both conceptual and spatial, (c) contractual barriers, and (d) professional barriers. Achieving the desired nurses' leadership skills required persistence support and education. Acknowledgement on nurses as professional entity by minimizing aforementioned challenges would elevate nurses' ability to engage further both in organization and leadership improvement. The findings of this study strengthen nursing leadership and management practice in hospital and beyond as they have helped to elucidate the nurses' viewpoints on barriers they have on leadership. This research highlighted evidence for decision-makers to bridge the gaps amongst nursing entities by, for example, encouraging regular nursing lectures for practice improvement, conducting research together/establishing research teams, or arranging interchange teaching between experienced nurses from the hospital and campus. Further, developing nursing professionals is one of the priorities for improving the Indonesian health profile, as nurses constitute the largest portion of Indonesian health workers.

Organizational Structure and the Behavioral Theory of the Firm: A Neo-Carnegie Perspective

A long research tradition has identified the importance of organizational structure for decision making. Yet despite its storied origins in the Carnegie School, the field has progressively moved aw...

Inclusion and Identity in the Mountain Biking Community: Can Subcultural Identity and Inclusivity Coexist?

Lifestyle sports studies have emphasized the boundary work done by core participants and the resulting exclusionary and hierarchical structures of these sports. Mountain biking is a lifestyle sport structured to incorporate new riders, yet bikers still share a group identity, raising important questions about whether exclusivity is necessary for subcultural identity. Drawing on 60 interviews with mountain bikers, this study explores both the meanings participants make of their experience and the organizational structure of the community. The community is designed to recruit and fully incorporate new members, while members maintain a sense of identity as mountain bikers through transmitting skills and knowledge to newer riders. These findings point to the importance of organizational structure in shaping community practices.

An organizational taxonomy of entrepreneurship policy delivery structures

Purpose– Organizing entrepreneurship policy efforts is not an easy task. There are often several different actors involved, and their efforts towards improving conditions for entrepreneurs may be more or less organized. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the organizational archetypes of local entrepreneurship policy, across a number of factors relating to coordination mechanisms and outsourcing.Design/methodology/approach– The study is based on a survey of 77 Danish municipalities, covering 79 per cent of the total population, and their entrepreneurship policy structures. A two-step cluster analysis has been performed to identify taxonomies of entrepreneurship policy organizations.Findings– The findings reveal four different clusters: arm’s length coordination; arm’s length decoupling; internal centralization; and arm’s length centralization. Moreover the study reveals a link between these archetypes and the effectiveness of the local entrepreneurship policy delivery structure, suggesting that some structures may be more effective than other.Originality/value– The paper shifts the focus from policy formulation to organization, showing the importance of organizational structure for better performance. Specifically, the paper illustrates how lack of reaction to the environment leads to underperformance. Moreover, the paper draws the attention towards these new taxonomies, which are of value not only to academia but also to the political world.

Implementing Self-Managed Teams at Western Field University: A Human Resource and Leadership Case Study

This case challenges future sport managers to consider the importance of organizational structure and the impact structure has on job performance and motivation. In the case, students are presented with a university ticket sales department with a traditionally tall bureaucratic organizational structure. In 2014, the department struggled with poor performance, high turnover, and low levels of employee morale. However, the department took drastic steps and adopted an organizational structure that is based on the idea of self-managed teams. Now in 2016 the department is undergoing a thorough evaluation to see whether the organizational change made two years ago has had a positive impact. Even though the case uses a fictional university (i.e., Western Field University), the issues and challenges involved in changing an organizational structure, motivating employees, and leading change stem from real-world situations. The case contains ticket sales data, employee turnover information, and sample quotes from employees that aid in the analysis. This case is intended for use in human resource management classes, but it also has implications for organizational behavior or leadership courses.

Servitization and Competitive Advantage: The Importance of Organizational Structure and Value Chain Position

OVERVIEW:Servitization represents a business-model change and organizational transformation from selling goods to selling an integrated combination of goods and services. Competitive advantage is one outcome of this shift. During servitization, companies follow stages to realize services as an opportunity to differentiate from goods and achieve higher customer satisfaction. This study analyzes this transition from base, intermediate, and advanced services by presenting results from 102 senior executives in multinational companies. Our results suggest increasing interest in service-led strategies in manufacturing companies. The results also show that increasing differentiation and high customer satisfaction are fundamental to achieving competitive advantage and superior performance with services. The analysis also indicates the importance of a company's position in the value chain and the organizational structure it selects to support services in successful servitization.

Organizational Practices and Prefigurative Spaces in European Queer Festivals

Social movement scholars have been actively debating the importance of organizational structures for solidarity and new social movements. This article investigates how queer festivals build on the horizontal structure legacy of those movements, constructing their own prefigurative models through a set of specific organizational practices. Queer festivals constitute a dynamic repertoire of action of queer politics in Europe, expanding across the continent. Based upon their belief in the limits of strict identity politics of gender and sexuality, queer festivals attempt to construct new identities, based upon their anti-identitarian ethos. Beyond their discursive frames, queer festivals, as prefigurative spaces, attempt to build their new identities through specific practices, reflected among others on their organizational choices. The article posits three key elements for the prefigurative model that queer festivals attempt to build: (1) Squats as the spaces in which queer movement actors build their anti-authoritarian identity; (2) the organizational choice based on horizontality; (3) the role of the Do-It-Yourself model for festivals' deployment. Insight into queer festivals is based on ethnographic research conducted in five European capitals, including semi-structured interviews.

Not just "getting by": factors influencing providers' choice of interpreters.

Providers consistently underutilize professional interpreters in healthcare settings even when they perceive benefits to using professional interpreters and when professional interpreters are readily available. Little is known about providers' decision-making processes that shape their use of interpreters. To understand the variety of considerations and parameters that influence providers' decisions regarding interpreters. A qualitative, semi-structured interview guide was used to explore providers' decision making about interpreter use. The author conducted 8 specialty-specific focus groups and 14 individual interviews, each lasting 60-90 minutes. Thirty-nine healthcare professionals were recruited from five specialties (i.e., nursing, mental health, emergency medicine, oncology, and obstetrics-gynecology) in a large academic medical center characterized as having "excellent" interpreter services. Audio-recorded interviews and focus groups were transcribed and analyzed using grounded theory to develop a theoretical framework for providers' decision-making processes. Four factors influence providers' choice of interpreters: (a) time constraints, (b) alliances of care, (c) therapeutic objectives, and (d) organizational-level considerations. The findings highlight (a) providers' calculated use of interpreters and interpreting modalities, (b) the complexity of the functions and impacts of time in providers' decision-making process, and (c) the importance of organizational structures and support for appropriate and effective interpreter utilization. Providers actively engage in calculated use of professional interpreters, employing specific factors in their decision-making processes. Providers' understanding of time is complex and multidimensional, including concerns about disruptions to their schedules, overburdening others' workloads, and clinical urgency of patient condition, among others. When providers make specific choices due to time pressure, they are influenced by interpersonal, organizational, therapeutic, and ethical considerations. Organizational resources and guidelines need to be consistent with institutional policies and professional norms; otherwise, providers risk making flawed assessments about the effective and appropriate use of interpreters in bilingual health care.

Knoweldge Transfer Across Hierarchical Lines: The Importance of Organizational Structure and Type of Knowledge

This paper uses football and ice hockey as archetypal contexts to explore managerial knowledge transfer to subordinates in tall and flat organizational structures. Interviews with players and coaches, and observations of team meetings, practices, and games, revealed different mechanisms for transferring declarative knowledge (tall context) and procedural knowledge (flat context).

Governing Technical Information Systems in Local Crisis Management

There are increased demands to prepare for and coordinate of crisis management in public administrative bodies. Governmental organizations and authorities have responsibility for providing systems and structures of coordination before, during, and after crises. Among these are the technical information systems which create the structuring arena for coordination and integration that is analyzed here. There are several technical information systems to choose from for municipalities, which are responsible for local crisis management in Sweden. One technical information system, known as web-based information system (WIS), was a national initiative, but due to the local autonomy mandated in the Swedish constitution it was complicated to get municipalities to choose the national system and alternative local technical information systems were developed. The study builds on a bottom-up analysis of how municipalities choose technical information systems within crisis management. The main conclusion points out the importance of organizational structure in governance and the demand of flexibility in technology.

ALTRUISM IN SUICIDE TERROR ORGANIZATIONS

Abstract.In recent years, much has been learned about the strategic and organizational contexts of suicide attacks. However, motivations of the agents who commit them remain difficult to explain. In part this is because standard models of social learning as well as Durkheimian notions of sacrificial behavior are inadequate in the face of the actions of human bombers. In addition, the importance of organizational structures and practices in reinforcing commitment on the part of suicide recruits is an under‐explored factor in many analyses. This essay examines the potential applicability of evolutionary models of altruism to the understanding of commitment to suicide on the part of terrorist organizational recruits. Three evolutionary models of sacrificial behavior in nonhuman species and many categories of human behavior are explored cross‐organizationally: reciprocity, inclusive fitness theory, and induced altruism. Reciprocal altruism is unlikely to be a major motivator in suicide attacks because the costs exhibited by attackers are too high to be adequately compensated. However, the role of evolved self‐deception in perceptions of personal death, and thus of rewards in the afterlife, is potentially illuminating. Inclusive fitness theory can help explain the motivations of attackers because rewards to kin often are offered by organizations to suicide recruits. However, suicide bombers also often act out of revenge for the loss of or injury to relatives, and inclusive fitness theory generally, as well as more specific theoretical models of retaliatory aggression, may not adequately account for the bombers' actions. Predictions from induced altruism theory appear to be well supported because suicide terror organizations tend to be tightly structured around practices intended to maintain and reinforce commitment though the manipulation of kinship‐recognition cues.

Organizational Structure Forming Problems in Modern Industrial Enterprise

Information technologies quickly develop in a knowl-edge society, the speed of the introduction of new knowl-edge also increases, so the modern enterprise seeking for the new management possibilities tries to use all these opportunities. In this process the forming of the human resources is very important in this process such is the development of the education system. Information trans-fer for the individual user is the inseparable part of the communication process inside the organization. For communication to be effective the organization has to dis-tribute the positions, competences, responsibilities and motivation that are determined by the organizational structure. The importance of organizational structures is de-clared by the scientists and practitioners of various coun-tries (Galbrait, 1994; Гвишиани, 2005, Soldatos., Hardy, 2004. Minzberg, 1984; Paliulis., Chlivickas, 1998), but only few of them have modern organizational structures. The organizational structure can be discussed from sev-eral points of view: as the initial base necessary for the formation of the structure and the necessary number of employees (this special aspect is stressed in this paper) and as the system ensuring the change of effective infor-mation. Severe competition requires the creation of mod-ern and present day changes corresponding organiza-tional management structures. Huge, bureaucratic, high hierarchy structures with long and insufficiently moti-vated chains of solution approval actually are unable to work good enough in the situation when quick changes take place in business. With the speed of the changes of global economy in mind it is important to know that the restructuring of organizations in accordance with the situation in the present day business environment can improve the situation only for a short time. The possible outcome can be only the constant adaptation of the or-ganizational structure to the changing internal and ex-ternal conditions.