THE ROLE OF INTERDEPENDENCE IN THE MICRO-FOUNDATIONS OF ORGANIZATION DESIGN: TASK, GOAL, AND KNOWLEDGE INTERDEPENDENCE

Interdependence is a core concept in organization design, yet one that has remained consistently understudied. Current notions of interdependence remain rooted in seminal works, produced at a time when managers’ near-perfect understanding of the task at hand drove the organization design process. In this context, task interdependence was rightly assumed to be exogenously determined by characteristics of the work and the technology. We no longer live in that world, yet our view of interdependence has remained exceedingly task-centric and our treatment of interdependence overly deterministic. As organizations face increasingly unpredictable workstreams and workers co-design the organization alongside managers, our field requires a more comprehensive toolbox that incorporates aspects of agent-based interdependence. In this paper, we synthesize research in organization design, organizational behavior, and other related literatures to examine three types of interdependence that characterize organizations’ workflows: task, goal, and knowledge interdependence. We offer clear definitions for each construct, analyze how each arises endogenously in the design process, explore their interrelations, and pose questions to guide future research

Division of Labour and Social Coordination Modes : A simple simulation model

This paper presents a preliminary investigation of the relationship between the process of functional division of labour and the modes in which activities and plans are coordinated. We consider a very simple production process: a given heap of bank-notes has to be counted by a group of accountants. Because of limited individual capabilities and/or the possibilities of mistakes and external disturbances, the task has to be divided among several accountants and a hierarchical coordination problem arises. We can imagine several different ways of socially implementing coordination of devided tasks. 1) a central planner can compute the optimal architecture of the system; 2) a central planner can promote quantity adjustments by moving accountants from hierarchical levels where there exist idle resources to levels where resources are insufficient; 3) quasi-market mechanisms can use quantity or price signals for promoting decentralized adjustments. By means of a simple simulation model, based on Genetic Algorithms and Classifiers Systems, we can study the dynamic efficiency properties of each coordination mode and in particular their capability, speed and cost of adaptation to changing environmental situations (i.e. variations of the size of the task and/or variations of agents' capabilities). Such interesting issues as returns to scale, specialization and workers exploitation can be easily studied in the same model

The Dynamics of the Organisation of Industry

The paper presents and formalises an approach to the evolution of the organisation of industry which starts from multi-activity firms, and which relates to economists like Young, Stigler, and Richardson. To capture the open-ended process of disintegration of industry, the paper operates with decomposable tasks and gives an account of the vertical and horizontal structure of production by means of weighted trees — in the graphtheoretical sense. Based on this addition to the analytical toolbox, the paper gives an account of the decomposition of industry as driven by the structural innovations and process innovations of firms that specialise and exchange in an open-ended evolutionary process.Vertical disintegration, horizontal disintegration, production trees, specialisation of production, specialisation of R&D, George B. Richardson

A Task-Based Approach to Organization: Knowledge, Communication and Structure

We bridge a gap between organizational economics and strategy research by developing a task-based approach to analyze organizational knowledge, process and structure, and deriving testable implications for the relation between production and organizational structure. We argue that organization emerges to integrate disperse knowledge and to coordinate talent in production and is designed to complement the limitations of human ability. The complexity of the tasks undertaken determines the optimal level of knowledge acquisition and talent. The relations between tasks, namely, complementarities or substitutabilities and synergies, determine the allocation of knowledge among members of the organization. Communication shapes the relation between individual talent, and governs the organizational process and structure that integrates disperse knowledge to perform tasks more efficiently. Organization structure can also be deliberately designed ex ante to correct bias of individual judgement, the extent to which is dependent on the attributes of tasks. Organization process and the routinized organizational structure are the core of organizational capital, which generates rent and sustains organizational growth. This task-based approach enriches the existing body of organization studies, in particular the knowledge-based theory of the firm and the dynamic capabilities theory.task-based approach, complementarities, tacit knowledge, codifiable knowledge, code,vertical communication, horizontal communication, organizational architecture, decision bias

An Institutional Approach To Operations Management In Internet Based Production Concepts

An important change in the socio-economic environment of industrial firms is the increasing dif­fusion of Internet Technologies in production processes. Applications of Internet Technologies may be directly implemented on the shop floor, e.g. in networking dislocated assembly lines, as well as in assisting management processes, e.g. in production planning and control. This leads to a strong approximation of the traditional production and operation systems and the Internet Technologies. While traditional production concepts, such as Lean Production, World Class Manufacturing and Agile Manufacturing, inevitably disregard this development, new production concepts arise that fundamentally consider the application of Internet Technologies on the shop floor. However, from a business management perspective, industrial firms have to accomplish new operating requirements deriving from this technological change. This paper provides a discussion of the consequences of Internet Technologies on operations management, as well as of production concepts based on Internet Technologies from an institutional point of view

Virtual Organizational Learnign in Open Source Software Development Projects

We studied the existence of virtual organizational learning in open source software (OSS) development projects. Specifically, our research focused on learning effects of OSS projects and factors that affect the learning process. The number and percentage of resolved bugs and bug resolution time of 118 SourceForge.net OSS projects were used to measure the learning effects> Projects were characterized by project type, number and experience of developers, number of bugs, and bug resolution time. Our results provide evidence of virtual organizational learning in OSS development projects.Virtual organizational leraning: Organizational learning curve: Virtual organization: Open source software development: Project performance

Organization of activities and management in starting software firms

Companies achieve their goals through the management function organization for the people and resources to achieve their goals. The starting software companies have a specific goal for a new product. There are various definitions for a new product and goal. We will review starting software companies which target to develop a new product and validate it on a market for vitality and growth potential. Their need for function organization is specific. The current article aims to do a theoretical review for the methods of organization of activity and management of the company in its early stages

Introducing the Cluster Level

This paper explores interrelationships between organizational routines and their effect on routine dynamics. We introduce a more aggregate perspective on routines, the cluster level, and develop a theoretical framework that helps understanding the dynamics of routine clusters. The framework combines thoughts on the division of labor, modularity, and the consequences of complementarities. It explains why single routines are grouped into clusters and how complementarities between the specialized routines of a cluster will affect its evolution. It is the main argument of this paper that, in contrast to the expanding dynamics of single routines, which continuously bring about variations, the dynamics of clusters are restricting, amounting to a selection mechanism in organizational practice. To illustrate and substantiate our argument, we use a historical case study on CEWE, the European market leader in photofinishing. We analyze how the cluster for 35mm photofinishing—the core routines of the analog years—reacted to the upcoming digital revolution in the 1990s. Our paper offers three contributions: First, we theorize on the interrelationship between routines and the anatomy of clusters. Second, we provide a conceptual framework for analyzing the dynamics of routine clusters that builds on complementarities and the related misfit costs. Third, by elaborating on these dynamics, our findings contribute to a multilevel theory of organizational routines by adding the meso level of the routine cluster to the micro level of single routine dynamics