A Relational Approach to Organization Design
Anna Grandori and
Giuseppe Soda
Industry and Innovation, 2006, vol. 13, issue 2, 151-172
Abstract:
The paper criticizes the currently dominant view of organization forms as “discrete alternatives” and “coherent” set attributes, and proposes a more refined and micro-analytic view of organization forms as particular combinations of coordination mechanisms and rights allocations. This view is relevant for understanding and devising “new” forms and proposing solutions for governing the composite and fast changing systems of today. The view is “relational” as it offers a procedure for devising “superior” configurations as combinations—relations between organizational components—in a quasi-continuous space of possibilities. The approach is sustained by the quantitative methods of network analysis as applied to relations among firm's resources and activities. Theoretically, the approach revisits organization design, integrating classic organization theory tenets with the new inputs provided by organizational economics. Substantively, it is argued that a mix of much differentiated coordination mechanisms is usually superior to the codified, “packaged”, allegedly “coherent”, forms of organization. The procedure presented in the paper is applied to a field experiment in a medium size firm.1
Keywords: Relational governance; network theory; organization design (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)
Downloads: (external link)
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13662710600684316 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:indinn:v:13:y:2006:i:2:p:151-172
Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/CIAI20
DOI: 10.1080/13662710600684316
Access Statistics for this article
Industry and Innovation is currently edited by Associate Professor Mark Lorenzen
More articles in Industry and Innovation from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().