Jawn Lam

Hybrid structure

Organizational StructuresLateral and multidimensional forms13 min read

Different parts of the organization are grouped on different bases at once, for example functional at the center and product divisions below.

What it is

A hybrid structure groups different parts of one organization on different bases at once. The usual pattern keeps several functional departments central and sets product divisions beside them (Daft 1995).

The hybrid sets functional departments beside product divisions

Select a unit or a letter to read it; the key above the drawing names the lines and letters used.

Reports toAdjust to each other directlyWStandardization of work processesOStandardization of outputs

Strategic apexFunctions anddivisionsChiefexecutiveFunctionaldepartmentFunctionaldepartmentProductdivisionProductdivisionBy functionBy productWO
Strategic apexFunctions and divisionsChiefFunctionFunctionDivisionDivisionBy functionBy productWO
Select a unit or a letter to read it. W, standardization of work processes: The content of the work is specified or programmed in advance, usually by analysts. O, standardization of outputs: The results of the work are specified, such as targets or product dimensions, and the method is left to the unit.Chief executive. Layer: Strategic apex. Reports to no one. The single boss of every department and division.Functional department. Layer: Functions and divisions. Reports to Chief executive. By function. A central function that serves the whole organization.Functional department. Layer: Functions and divisions. Reports to Chief executive. By function. Also central, and run on standardized work processes. It settles its dealings with the divisions directly, where standardization meets local adaptation (our judgment, after Dessein, Garicano, and Gertner 2010).Product division. Layer: Functions and divisions. Reports to Chief executive. By product. A division that runs its own business and answers for its results.Product division. Layer: Functions and divisions. Reports to Chief executive. By product. Judged on standardized outputs.W, standardization of work processes. The content of the work is specified or programmed in advance, usually by analysts.O, standardization of outputs. The results of the work are specified, such as targets or product dimensions, and the method is left to the unit.
The structure in words
  1. Strategic apex
    • Chief executive, reports to no one. The single boss of every department and division.
  2. Functions and divisions
    • Functional department, reports to Chief executive, grouped by function. A central function that serves the whole organization.
    • Functional department, reports to Chief executive, grouped by function. Also central, and run on standardized work processes. It settles its dealings with the divisions directly, where standardization meets local adaptation (our judgment, after Dessein, Garicano, and Gertner 2010).
    • Product division, reports to Chief executive, grouped by product. A division that runs its own business and answers for its results.
    • Product division, reports to Chief executive, grouped by product. Judged on standardized outputs.
  • Functional department and Product division: adjust to each other directly.
  • By function: coordinated by standardization of work processes.
  • By product: coordinated by standardization of outputs.

Each unit has a single boss, and the two bases of grouping sit side by side, each over its own people. The departments coordinate by standardized work and the divisions by standardized outputs.

Source: Daft 1995; Williamson 1975; Mintzberg 1980, a synthesis of earlier research, offering propositions without a new test; Dessein and colleagues 2010, a formal model with no new data.

In the dimension profile, basis of grouping spans function and product (theory: Daft 1995; Williamson 1975), and it is not "two or more at once," because each unit has a single boss; a hybrid with regional or client divisions lies outside these two levels. The rest is our judgment. Centralization is mixed, the central functions keeping shared decisions and the divisions running their own, and decision rights span limited horizontal to limited vertical decentralization. The prime coordinating mechanism spans standardization of work processes, in the functions, and of outputs, in the divisions. Specialization and formalization are medium, both mixed by unit; layers and span moderate; lateral mechanisms at direct contact and liaison roles; moderate differentiation with some integrating roles; exchange by bureaucracy; and closed boundaries between the parts.

Where the hybrid structure sits on the eleven dimensions

The filled segments are the form's levels; select a row for its reason and sources.

Select a dimension to read why the form sits there, and on what basis.Basis of grouping: Function or process and product or purpose. Basis: Theory. Different parts are grouped on different bases, typically functional departments beside product divisions; each unit has a single boss, so it is not the dimension's level 5. The divisions may instead be regional or by client, as in the functional-divisional hybrid variant and Mintzberg's incomplete divisionalization by region or client; this two-level profile records the common product case, and a hybrid with regional or client divisions lies outside it (read grouping 1 with 4 or 3). Sources: Daft 1995; Williamson 1975.Specialization: Medium. Basis: Judgment. Mixed by unit; the middle band is judgment. Sources: Daft 1995.Standardization and formalization: Medium. Basis: Judgment. Mixed by unit; the middle band is judgment. Sources: Daft 1995.Centralization: Mixed. Basis: Judgment. Functional departments at the center keep shared decisions while divisions run their own; judgment. Sources: Daft 1995.Layers and span of control: Moderate. Basis: Judgment. Nothing in the sources read sets the depth; judgment. Sources: Daft 1995.Decision rights and the locus of authority: Limited horizontal decentralization to limited vertical decentralization. Basis: Judgment. Central functions hold power over shared standards and divisions hold delegated power over their businesses; judgment. Sources: Daft 1995; Mintzberg 1980.Prime coordinating mechanism: Standardization of work processes and standardization of outputs. Basis: Judgment. Standardized work in the functional departments and standardized outputs in the divisions, each unit by its own mechanism; judgment. Sources: Daft 1995; Mintzberg 1980.Lateral mechanisms: Direct contact and liaison roles. Basis: Judgment. Central functions and divisions must settle their dealings directly, a conflict between standardization and local adaptation that modelers have written into hybrids; judgment for the band. Sources: Dessein and colleagues 2010; Daft 1995.Differentiation against integration: Moderate differentiation, some integrating roles. Basis: Judgment. Units on different bases differ in orientation and are joined by the hierarchy and some integrators; judgment. Sources: Lawrence and Lorsch 1967a.Mode of exchange and control: Bureaucracy. Basis: Judgment. Inside one hierarchy; Williamson's mixed form is a hierarchy with parts run differently; judgment. Sources: Williamson 1975.Boundary permeability: Closed. Basis: Judgment. Boundaries between the differently grouped parts stay firm; judgment. Sources: Ashkenas and colleagues 1995.

Only the basis of grouping rests on theory, function and product side by side (Daft 1995; Williamson 1975). The other ten levels are judgment, and no row is contested.

Source: Daft 1995; Williamson 1975; Mintzberg 1980, a synthesis of earlier research, offering propositions without a new test; Dessein and colleagues 2010, a formal model with no new data; Lawrence and Lorsch 1967a, a multi-firm comparative field study; Ashkenas and colleagues 1995.

Where it came from

No single paper founded the form. Henry Mintzberg, in "Structure in 5's" (1980), argued that effective organizations favor a logically consistent configuration, while contradictory pressures, or a transition between configurations, drive some to hybrids. His hybrids mix whole configurations, a wider idea than mixing bases of grouping. In the same article he notes, citing Channon, that diversity only in region or client leads to an incomplete form of divisionalization, with certain critical functions concentrated at headquarters, the nearest he comes to this form.

The schools of organization design and the forms' origins, 1900 to now

Each row is a school's era; each square under them is a form at its first year. Select a row or a square to read it; on a form's page, its own square and span are marked, with the schools that treat it.

1900192019401960198020002020Bureaucracy and its criticsClassical administrationHuman relations and System 4Transaction cost economicsCarnegie schoolSocio-technical systemsLabor-managed firmModularity and mirroringStrategy and structureContingency theoryFrench bureaucratic schoolJapanese-firm literatureScandinavian and DutchConfiguration theoryInformation processingLabor processStrategic choiceGerman codeterminationOrganizational economicsInstitutional theoryPopulation ecologyResource dependenceBusiness groupsScandinavian institutionalSocietal effectNetwork perspectiveComputational designNew-forms debateAlgorithmic managementForms by first yearHybrid structure, 1980 to the presentNow

The forms by first year

1900192019401960198020002020Hybrid structure, 1980 to the presentNow

Schools that treat this form: Transaction cost economics and the M-form hypothesis; Structural contingency theory; Configuration theory; Strategic choice; Organizational economics: decision rights, authority, and complementarities; and Computational organization design and search.

Select a school's row or a form's square to read it.Select a form's square to read it; open a school below.Bureaucracy and its critics1900s to 1950s, revived from the 1990sWhat it claimsWeber held that rational-legal authority exercised through an office hierarchy, written rules, trained officials, and promotion by qualification is technically superior in precision, speed, and reliability. Critics studied its unintended consequences, Michels's iron law sharpest.What it has shownMerton (1940) argued, with no test, that rules can turn from means into ends; case studies followed. The Aston group concluded that the type's dimensions vary independently, and Wagner's meta-analysis (2021) found that many of their interrelationships have weakened.Who disputes itHuman relations and System 4 sets the costs of impersonal rules to motivation and cooperation against the technical superiority Weber stresses.Bureaucracy and its critics in The Schools of Organization DesignClassical administration1910s to 1940s, and in German to the 1970sWhat it claimsThere are general principles of administration, among them division of work, unity of command, a scalar chain of authority, and a limited span of control, and a structure built to them will be efficient in most settings. Taylor added that planners should set work methods.What it has shownThe school offered reasoning and experience, not tests. Woodward (1965) found that the spans and levels of the more successful firms in her sample differed by production system, and Simon (1946) showed that the principles come in pairs that point in opposite directions.Who disputes itStructural contingency theory found that the structure of successful firms varies with technology and environment, where classical writers treat their principles as general.Classical administration in The Schools of Organization DesignHuman relations and System 41920s to 1960sWhat it claimsOutput depends on the social relations of work, the norms of informal groups, and the style of supervision as much as on formal design. Likert's System 4, overlapping work groups joined by linking-pin managers under participative management, outperforms authoritative systems.What it has shownThe founding evidence is the Hawthorne studies, which later reanalyses dispute (Carey 1967; Levitt and List 2011). Likert's support came largely from his own institute's surveys. Wagner (1994) found participation's effects on performance and satisfaction significant but small.Who disputes itLabor process and critical theory reads human relations as a technique of managerial control rather than a change in the distribution of power.Human relations and System 4 in The Schools of Organization DesignTransaction cost economics and the M-form hypothesis1937, then the 1970s to the presentWhat it claimsFirms exist, and are organized as they are, to economize on transaction costs. Hierarchy replaces the market when assets are specific, uncertainty is high, and exchange is frequent, and the multidivisional form should outperform the functional form in large, diversified firms.What it has shownArmour and Teece (1978) found, in United States petroleum firms from 1955 to 1973, a positive relationship between the multidivisional form and profitability while the form was spreading, but not once an equilibrium in organizational form was reached.Who disputes itThe network perspective on organizations: Granovetter argued that the theory undersocializes economic action, which is embedded in networks of personal relations that also produce trust and order.Transaction cost economics and the M-form hypothesis in The Schools of Organization DesignThe Carnegie school and the attention-based view1940s to the presentWhat it claimsPeople in organizations are boundedly rational, so structure matters because it sets the premises of their decisions and channels their attention: who sees which problems, which goals they pursue, and which routines they follow. Ocasio makes structure distribute attention.What it has shownMarch and Simon (1958) drew propositions from the existing literature, and Cyert and March (1963) added process models and simulations. Two studies show hierarchy shaping what is sent up as well as what is chosen (Reitzig and Maciejovsky 2015; Keum and See 2017).Who disputes itOrganizational economics: decision rights, authority, and complementarities models a principal and agents with defined objectives; the Carnegie school, firms as coalitions with unresolved goal conflict.The Carnegie school and the attention-based view in The Schools of Organization DesignSocio-technical systems1950s to 1980sWhat it claimsAn organization is a social system and a technical system that must be designed together. The same technology admits more than one way of organizing work, and groups that own a whole task and control its variances at the source perform better and are more satisfied.What it has shownTrist and Bamforth (1951) found that longwall mechanization broke up self-regulating work groups. A review of 134 experiments found them extremely successful overall, and Stewart (2006) linked team autonomy to performance; studies of socialist brigades and Volkswagen qualify it.Who disputes itLabor process and critical theory: Kelly argued that labor intensification, not joint optimization, accounts for what socio-technical redesign achieved, and that the part of pay incentives was seriously underestimated.Socio-technical systems in The Schools of Organization DesignThe economics of the labor-managed firm and of enterprise ownership1958 to the presentWhat it claimsA firm run by its workers behaves differently from one run for investors: Ward modeled the Yugoslav-style firm as maximizing income per worker. Hansmann argued that an ownership form's success depends on the balance between the costs of market contracting and of ownership.What it has shownBurdín (2014) found a 29 percent lower hazard of dissolution for Uruguayan worker-managed firms than for conventional ones, and Fakhfakh, Pérotin, and Gago (2012) found French labor-managed firms as productive or more so in every industry studied.Who disputes itOrganizational economics (Jensen and Meckling) contrasts the labor-managed firm, in which tradable residual claims are legally prohibited, with cooperatives and partnerships that arise out of voluntary contracting.The economics of the labor-managed firm and of enterprise ownership in The Schools of Organization DesignModularity and the mirroring hypothesis1960s to the presentWhat it claimsComplex systems are built of nearly decomposable parts, and an organization's structure tends to mirror the architecture of what it makes: modular products allow loosely coupled organizations, and tightly coupled products need tightly coupled teams. Conway's law runs in reverse.What it has shownColfer and Baldwin (2016) review the empirical studies and report both support and principled exceptions. Direct tests point both ways: MacCormack, Baldwin, and Rusnak (2012) found open source products more modular than their commercial pairs; dynamic components break the mirror.Who disputes itNo school in the record disputes it head on; it answers information processing, which meets the coordination load inside the organization; mirroring writers locate it in the product's architecture.Modularity and the mirroring hypothesis in The Schools of Organization DesignStrategy and structure1960s to 1980sWhat it claimsStructure follows strategy: firms that diversify by product or geography outgrow the centralized functional structure and, after a lag and usually a crisis, adopt divisions. Chandler drew this from the histories of DuPont, General Motors, Standard Oil of New Jersey, and Sears.What it has shownChandler (1962) is comparative business history of four firms set against a wider survey. Rumelt (1974) related diversification and structure to performance, and Egelhoff (1988), with 34 multinationals, found some of Stopford and Wells's relationships supported and others not.Who disputes itInstitutional theory: in Fligstein's model divisions spread with a product-related or unrelated strategy, presidents from sales or finance, and other firms in the industry changing; strategy was one of three.Strategy and structure in The Schools of Organization DesignStructural contingency theory1960s to the presentWhat it claimsThere is no one best structure. Performance depends on fit between structure and contingencies such as environment, technology, size, and strategy, on an open-system view of the organization. Drazin and Van de Ven separate fit as selection, interaction, and systems.What it has shownBurns and Stalker, Woodward, and the Aston group related structure to context; Drazin and Van de Ven (1985) supported selection and systems fit only. Pennings (1975) found that fit did not explain effectiveness; Schoonhoven (1981) found traditional hypotheses unsupported.Who disputes itStrategic choice: Child argued that contingency theory explains structure by the constraints of context and leaves out the political process by which power-holders choose strategic action, structural forms included.Structural contingency theory in The Schools of Organization DesignThe French bureaucratic school (strategic analysis)1960s to 1980sWhat it claimsA bureaucracy is a system of power relations organized around zones of uncertainty. Impersonal rules and centralization protect members from depending on one another, those who control uncertainties hold power, and, unable to correct its errors, it changes only through crisis.What it has shownLe phénomène bureaucratique (1963; English 1964) rests on two case studies, a clerical agency and a state industrial monopoly. L'acteur et le système (1977; English 1980) is theoretical.Who disputes itSocietal effect and comparative business systems: D'Iribarne argues that national logics of conduct, such as a French logic of honor, explain differences that Crozier attributed to power games.The French bureaucratic school (strategic analysis) in The Schools of Organization DesignThe Japanese-firm literature1960s to the presentWhat it claimsThe large Japanese firm coordinates operating decisions through horizontal information sharing among semi-autonomous shops and uses its ranking hierarchy mainly as an incentive scheme (Aoki). It creates knowledge through middle-up-down management (Nonaka and Takeuchi).What it has shownAoki (1986) is a formal model. Lincoln, Hanada, and McBride (1986) compared 51 Japanese and 55 United States manufacturing plants, and Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995) rest on case studies, chiefly of Japanese firms. Fruin (1994) found the enterprise system defined at three levels.Who disputes itLabor process and critical theory reads shop-floor delegation as control: Sewell and Wilkinson argue that just-in-time and total quality regimes delegate tactical responsibility while centralizing strategic control.The Japanese-firm literature in The Schools of Organization DesignThe Scandinavian and Dutch socio-technical schools1960s to 2000sWhat it claimsThe Scandinavian program sought democracy at work through field experiments with semi-autonomous groups, then through democratic dialogue. The Dutch school's design theory turns complex organizations with simple jobs into simple organizations with complex jobs.What it has shownEmery and Thorsrud reported field experiments in Norwegian industry; Gustavsen (1992) records that they spread less than hoped, his reason for turning to dialogue. Berggren studied work organization in the Swedish auto industry. The Dutch work rests on design cases and argument.Who disputes itThe Japanese-firm literature: defenders of the Toyota system hold that standardized work with employee participation learns faster; Berggren reports Swedish long-cycle plants matching a line plant on productivity.The Scandinavian and Dutch socio-technical schools in The Schools of Organization DesignConfiguration theory1970s to the presentWhat it claimsStructures cluster into a small number of internally coherent configurations whose elements reinforce one another, so organizations move between a few types in large jumps, not small steps. Mintzberg's five configurations each rest on one coordinating mechanism.What it has shownDoty, Glick, and Huber (1993) found that fit to Miles and Snow's ideal types predicted effectiveness while fit to Mintzberg's did not. A meta-analysis of 40 tests (Ketchen and colleagues 1997) found that configuration partly explains performance, more so with broad definitions.Who disputes itStructural contingency theory: Donaldson counters that most organizations sit at intermediate points on a continuum of fits, not in a few configurations, and that studies over time find mostly incremental change.Configuration theory in The Schools of Organization DesignInformation processing1970s to the presentWhat it claimsThe more uncertain the task, the more information must be processed during its execution. An organization either reduces that need, through slack resources or self-contained tasks, or raises its capacity, through vertical information systems or lateral relations up to the matrix.What it has shownGalbraith (1973, 1974) built the framework from cases and from Simon's theory of bounded rationality, and Tushman and Nadler (1978) set it out as an integrating concept for design. Daft and Lengel (1986) argued that structure must reduce equivocality as well as supply data.Who disputes itThe Carnegie school and the attention-based view: Ocasio holds that firm behavior results from how the firm channels and distributes attention, so structure governs where attention goes, not only how much is processed.Information processing in The Schools of Organization DesignLabor process and critical theory1970s to the presentWhat it claimsStructure is above all a system of control over labor. Braverman argued that management deskills work by separating conception from execution; Edwards traced a sequence from simple control by the boss to technical control through machines to bureaucratic control through rules.What it has shownHistorical and theoretical (Braverman 1974; Edwards 1979). Delbridge (1995), observing a Japanese-owned plant in England, found that just-in-time and total quality regimes combined the control of labor with management's economic goals more completely than piece rates had.Who disputes itBureaucracy and its critics: Adler argues that labor process theory ignores the progressive socialization of the labor process, which drives long-term skill upgrading, and disputes deskilling as the trend.Labor process and critical theory in The Schools of Organization DesignStrategic choice1970s to the presentWhat it claimsStructure is the outcome of choices by those with power in the organization, who decide on strategic action, including the structural form, the manipulation of environmental features, and the performance standards to be met. Context constrains but does not determine structure.What it has shownLargely conceptual: Child (1972) built the argument from gaps in contingency findings, and the empirical case rests mostly on the modest share of structural variance contingencies explain. A 2026 review of 42 studies finds upper echelons theory their main theoretical anchor.Who disputes itStructural contingency theory: Donaldson replies that organizations mostly adopt the structures their contingencies dictate, to avoid the loss of performance misfit brings, so choice over structure is at most limited.Strategic choice in The Schools of Organization DesignThe German codetermination literature1970s to the presentWhat it claimsWorks councils and employee board seats form a structural layer through which coordination can become negotiation between management and employees. Defenders argue that it supports long-term employment, training, and cooperation; critics, that it weakens shareholder control.What it has shownJäger, Schoefer, and Heining (2021) found board-level codetermination left wages unchanged and, if anything, raised capital formation. Jirjahn (2011) reports studies pointing to positive works council effects; a meta-analysis found codetermination laws tied to lower productivity.Who disputes itOrganizational economics (Gorton and Schmid) found that firms with equal employee and shareholder representation did worse for their shareholders than firms with one-third employee representation.The German codetermination literature in The Schools of Organization DesignOrganizational economics: decision rights, authority, and complementarities1976 to the presentWhat it claimsDesign is the joint choice of who holds which decision rights, how performance is measured, and how it is rewarded. Rights should be placed where the specific knowledge lies, formal authority differs from real authority, and practices are complements that pay off in clusters.What it has shownIchniowski, Shaw, and Prennushi (1997) found, on 36 steel finishing lines, that lines using a set of innovative work practices achieved substantially higher productivity, consistent with complementarities. Bloom and colleagues found more decentralization where trust was higher.Who disputes itGhoshal argued that management research has shaped managers' worldview with ideologically inspired amoral theories, built on a scientific model that excludes human intentionality and so denies moral considerations.Organizational economics: decision rights, authority, and complementarities in The Schools of Organization DesignInstitutional theory1977 to the presentWhat it claimsFormal structures are often adopted because they are legitimate in the organization's field, as rationalized myths, and then decoupled from the work done. Organizations in a field grow alike through coercive, mimetic, and normative isomorphism, whether or not it is efficient.What it has shownTolbert and Zucker (1983) found that city characteristics predicted early but not later adoption of civil service reform, which they read as institutionalization. Palmer, Jennings, and Zhou (1993) found support for institutional and economic accounts of late M-form adoption.Who disputes itStructural contingency theory: Kraatz and Zajac found little support for neoinstitutional predictions in 631 liberal arts colleges, which grew less alike; the change they studied was curricular, not structural.Institutional theory in The Schools of Organization DesignPopulation ecology1977 to the presentWhat it claimsOrganizations face strong structural inertia, because selection favors the reliability and accountability of stable structures. Change in a population's forms comes mainly from founding and failure, not adaptation, and changing core features resets the liability of newness.What it has shownAmburgey, Kelly, and Barnett (1993) found that the effects of change on the hazard of failure vary by type of change and over time, and that rates of change depend on how often and how recently an organization has changed. Carroll and Hannan (2000) set out the program's methods.Who disputes itFor structural contingency theory, Donaldson argues that ecology understates managers' capacity to adapt structure.Population ecology in The Schools of Organization DesignResource dependence1978 to the presentWhat it claimsOrganizations depend on outside parties for critical resources, and structure follows the management of that dependence: units that cope with critical dependencies gain power, and boundaries are redrawn through cooptation, joint ventures, and mergers to absorb constraint.What it has shownPfeffer and Salancik (1978) assembled studies of boards, mergers, and joint ventures. A meta-analysis of 157 tests (Drees and Heugens 2013) corroborated the main prediction: organizations meet resource dependencies with interorganizational arrangements that raise their autonomy.Who disputes itTransaction cost economics and the M-form hypothesis explains boundaries by efficiency; resource dependence, by power and constraint.Resource dependence in The Schools of Organization DesignThe business-groups literature1978 to the presentWhat it claimsGroups of legally independent firms bound by ownership and social ties are a durable form of their own, neither one firm nor a market. Where institutions function poorly, groups can benefit member firms and can destroy value; they are sometimes paragons, sometimes parasites.What it has shownKhanna and Palepu (2000) found that affiliates of the most diversified Indian groups outperformed unaffiliated firms. A meta-analysis of 141 studies (Carney and colleagues 2011) found that affiliation lowers performance in general, less so where institutions are underdeveloped.Who disputes itOrganizational economics: agency writers read pyramids and cross-holdings as devices that separate control from ownership; Almeida and Wolfenzon offer a financing rationale for pyramids instead.The business-groups literature in The Schools of Organization DesignScandinavian institutionalism1980s to the presentWhat it claimsIdeas of organizing do not diffuse unchanged; they travel and are translated as they are adopted, so a form taken up in one place is not the same form elsewhere. Organizations can also be built of organizations (meta-organizations), which behave differently.What it has shownA discussion paper by Czarniawska and Joerges (1995) contrasts the diffusion of ideas with their translation, drawing on examples such as Swedish municipal reform; the work on meta-organizations (Ahrne and Brunsson 2008) is conceptual.Who disputes itInstitutional theory can read the same processes, seen from a translocal view, as institutional isomorphism, though translation holds that each adopter modifies an idea, so an institution re-created elsewhere is new.Scandinavian institutionalism in The Schools of Organization DesignSocietal effect and comparative business systems1980s to the presentWhat it claimsFirms matched on size, technology, and industry differ systematically by country, because how a society educates, trains, recruits, and promotes its workforce, and its industrial relations, shape how work is divided and supervised, so structure is partly a national product.What it has shownMaurice, Sorge, and Warner (1980) compared closely matched manufacturing units in France, West Germany, and Great Britain and found more pervasive differences in their organization than usually recognized. Whitley (1999) set out a comparative account of business systems.Who disputes itStructural contingency theory stresses culture-free elements of structure; matched comparisons find nationally different shapes of organization.Societal effect and comparative business systems in The Schools of Organization DesignThe network perspective on organizations1985 to the presentWhat it claimsOrganizations and their members are nodes joined by ties, and the pattern of ties shapes what they can do. Economic action is embedded in networks of personal relations (Granovetter 1985), and network forms are a distinct form, not a hybrid of market and hierarchy (Powell 1990).What it has shownPodolny and Page (1998) review the research and find that network forms foster learning, confer status and legitimacy, bring economic benefits, help manage resource dependencies, and give employees considerable autonomy, and they ask for attention to networks' dysfunctions.Who disputes itTransaction cost economics: Williamson treats the hybrid as a third generic form between market and hierarchy; for Powell, network forms are a distinct form, not a mix of the two.The network perspective on organizations in The Schools of Organization DesignComputational organization design and search1990s to the presentWhat it claimsDesign choices interact, so design space is a rugged landscape with many local peaks, and structure affects how well an organization searches it. Decentralizing interdependent decisions can trap units on poor peaks; temporary decentralization, then reintegration, can help.What it has shownMostly simulation, with one field test: Csaszar (2012), with more than 150,000 stock-picking decisions by 609 mutual funds, found that decision-making structure affects the number of initiatives pursued and the omission and commission errors made.Who disputes itNo school in the record disputes it head on; it disputes structural contingency theory, whose bivariate fit, its simulations show, cannot capture how the best design depends on interactions among choices.Computational organization design and search in The Schools of Organization DesignThe new-forms debate1990s to the presentWhat it claimsOrganizations must solve four universal problems (dividing tasks, allocating them, providing rewards, and providing information), and a form is new when it solves them in new ways. Self-managing organizations radically decentralize authority; skeptics hold hierarchy reappears.What it has shownFoss (2003) traced the rise and partial reversal of Oticon's spaghetti organization to the problem of selective intervention. A meta-analysis of 54 studies of 13,914 teams (Greer and colleagues 2018) found that hierarchy within teams on net slightly lowers team performance.Who disputes itBureaucracy and its critics: removing formal structure leaves informal elites whose power is unaccountable (Freeman), and democratic and network organizations are much less hierarchy-free than their labels suggest.The new-forms debate in The Schools of Organization DesignThe algorithmic-management literature2015 to the presentWhat it claimsSoftware does much of the directing, evaluating, and disciplining that managers and rules once did. Kellogg, Valentine, and Christin (2020) call algorithmic control a new contested terrain; Puranam (2021) treats dividing decisions between people and machines as a design problem.What it has shownMostly qualitative field studies of gig work. Wood and colleagues (2019), with 107 interviews in six countries and 679 survey respondents, found that algorithmic management tends to give remote gig workers flexibility and autonomy, but also low pay, isolation, and overwork.Who disputes itLabor process and critical theory reads control at work as contested terrain; Kellogg, Valentine, and Christin take up that view but argue that algorithmic control is distinct from earlier forms.The algorithmic-management literature in The Schools of Organization DesignFunctional structureOrigin: 1911 to 1937.Family: Classical hierarchies.Line and staffOrigin: 1916 to 1943.Family: Classical hierarchies.Multidivisional (M-form) by productOrigin: 1920s practice; named and analyzed 1962 to 1975.Family: Divisionalized forms.Machine bureaucracyOrigin: 1922 (Weber); 1979 (Mintzberg).Family: Classical hierarchies.Divisional by customer or market segmentOrigin: 1937; 2005.Family: Divisionalized forms.Matrix organizationOrigin: 1950s to 1960s practice; analyzed 1971 to 1977.Family: Lateral and multidimensional forms.Co-determined organizationOrigin: 1951 to 1976 (the laws); 1984 to 2022 (the main studies).Family: Forms from other traditions.Socio-technical autonomous work groupsOrigin: 1951 to 1965.Family: Team-based and self-managing forms.Stratified hierarchy (requisite organization)Origin: 1951 to 1989.Family: Classical hierarchies.Cooperative organizationOrigin: 1958 to 1999.Family: Forms from other traditions.Linking-pin organization (System 4)Origin: 1961 to 1967.Family: Team-based and self-managing forms.Divisional by regionOrigin: 1962 to 1972.Family: Divisionalized forms.Adhocracy (innovative organization)Origin: 1968 to 1979.Family: Professional, project, and knowledge forms.J-form (the Japanese firm)Origin: 1968 to 1990.Family: Forms from other traditions.Professional bureaucracyOrigin: 1968 to 1979.Family: Professional, project, and knowledge forms.Holding company (H-form)Origin: 1972 to 1975; 1987.Family: Divisionalized forms.Ambidextrous organizationOrigin: 1976 to 2004.Family: Professional, project, and knowledge forms.Simple structureOrigin: 1979.Family: Classical hierarchies.Hybrid structureOrigin: 1980 to the present.Family: Lateral and multidimensional forms.Missionary (ideological) organizationOrigin: 1980 to 1989.Family: Ideological forms.Network, modular, and virtual organizationOrigin: 1986 to 1990.Family: Network and market-like forms.Transnational and multidimensional organizationOrigin: 1987 to 1989.Family: Lateral and multidimensional forms.Business group (keiretsu, chaebol, family house)Origin: 1988 to 2007.Family: Forms from other traditions.Shamrock organizationOrigin: 1988 to 1989.Family: Network and market-like forms.Federal organizationOrigin: 1989 to 1992.Family: Network and market-like forms.Self-managing organization (less-hierarchical forms)Origin: 1989 to 2017.Family: Team-based and self-managing forms.Boundaryless organizationOrigin: 1990 to 1995.Family: Network and market-like forms.Front-back organizationOrigin: 1990s to 2007.Family: Lateral and multidimensional forms.Professional partnership (P2 form)Origin: 1990.Family: Professional, project, and knowledge forms.The corporate center and shared servicesOrigin: 1991 to 2000.Family: Divisionalized forms.Internal market organizationOrigin: 1993 to 1994.Family: Network and market-like forms.Process (horizontal) organizationOrigin: 1993 to 1999.Family: Lateral and multidimensional forms.Cellular organizationOrigin: 1994 to 1997.Family: Network and market-like forms.Hypertext organizationOrigin: 1994 to 1995.Family: Forms from other traditions.Team-based organizationOrigin: 1995.Family: Team-based and self-managing forms.Project-based organizationOrigin: 2000 to 2006.Family: Professional, project, and knowledge forms.Agile at scaleOrigin: 2001 to 2016.Family: Contemporary and emerging forms.Distributed (all-remote) organizationOrigin: 2002 to 2021.Family: Contemporary and emerging forms.Open-source and community-based organizationOrigin: 2002 to 2007.Family: Contemporary and emerging forms.Algorithmically managed organizationOrigin: 2015 to 2020.Family: Contemporary and emerging forms.Team of teamsOrigin: 2015.Family: Team-based and self-managing forms.

The schools by first year

  1. Bureaucracy and its critics1900s to 1950s, revived from the 1990sWhat it claimsWeber held that rational-legal authority exercised through an office hierarchy, written rules, trained officials, and promotion by qualification is technically superior in precision, speed, and reliability. Critics studied its unintended consequences, Michels's iron law sharpest.What it has shownMerton (1940) argued, with no test, that rules can turn from means into ends; case studies followed. The Aston group concluded that the type's dimensions vary independently, and Wagner's meta-analysis (2021) found that many of their interrelationships have weakened.Who disputes itHuman relations and System 4 sets the costs of impersonal rules to motivation and cooperation against the technical superiority Weber stresses.
  2. Classical administration1910s to 1940s, and in German to the 1970sWhat it claimsThere are general principles of administration, among them division of work, unity of command, a scalar chain of authority, and a limited span of control, and a structure built to them will be efficient in most settings. Taylor added that planners should set work methods.What it has shownThe school offered reasoning and experience, not tests. Woodward (1965) found that the spans and levels of the more successful firms in her sample differed by production system, and Simon (1946) showed that the principles come in pairs that point in opposite directions.Who disputes itStructural contingency theory found that the structure of successful firms varies with technology and environment, where classical writers treat their principles as general.
  3. Human relations and System 41920s to 1960sWhat it claimsOutput depends on the social relations of work, the norms of informal groups, and the style of supervision as much as on formal design. Likert's System 4, overlapping work groups joined by linking-pin managers under participative management, outperforms authoritative systems.What it has shownThe founding evidence is the Hawthorne studies, which later reanalyses dispute (Carey 1967; Levitt and List 2011). Likert's support came largely from his own institute's surveys. Wagner (1994) found participation's effects on performance and satisfaction significant but small.Who disputes itLabor process and critical theory reads human relations as a technique of managerial control rather than a change in the distribution of power.
  4. Transaction cost economics and the M-form hypothesis1937, then the 1970s to the presentWhat it claimsFirms exist, and are organized as they are, to economize on transaction costs. Hierarchy replaces the market when assets are specific, uncertainty is high, and exchange is frequent, and the multidivisional form should outperform the functional form in large, diversified firms.What it has shownArmour and Teece (1978) found, in United States petroleum firms from 1955 to 1973, a positive relationship between the multidivisional form and profitability while the form was spreading, but not once an equilibrium in organizational form was reached.Who disputes itThe network perspective on organizations: Granovetter argued that the theory undersocializes economic action, which is embedded in networks of personal relations that also produce trust and order.
  5. The Carnegie school and the attention-based view1940s to the presentWhat it claimsPeople in organizations are boundedly rational, so structure matters because it sets the premises of their decisions and channels their attention: who sees which problems, which goals they pursue, and which routines they follow. Ocasio makes structure distribute attention.What it has shownMarch and Simon (1958) drew propositions from the existing literature, and Cyert and March (1963) added process models and simulations. Two studies show hierarchy shaping what is sent up as well as what is chosen (Reitzig and Maciejovsky 2015; Keum and See 2017).Who disputes itOrganizational economics: decision rights, authority, and complementarities models a principal and agents with defined objectives; the Carnegie school, firms as coalitions with unresolved goal conflict.
  6. Socio-technical systems1950s to 1980sWhat it claimsAn organization is a social system and a technical system that must be designed together. The same technology admits more than one way of organizing work, and groups that own a whole task and control its variances at the source perform better and are more satisfied.What it has shownTrist and Bamforth (1951) found that longwall mechanization broke up self-regulating work groups. A review of 134 experiments found them extremely successful overall, and Stewart (2006) linked team autonomy to performance; studies of socialist brigades and Volkswagen qualify it.Who disputes itLabor process and critical theory: Kelly argued that labor intensification, not joint optimization, accounts for what socio-technical redesign achieved, and that the part of pay incentives was seriously underestimated.
  7. The economics of the labor-managed firm and of enterprise ownership1958 to the presentWhat it claimsA firm run by its workers behaves differently from one run for investors: Ward modeled the Yugoslav-style firm as maximizing income per worker. Hansmann argued that an ownership form's success depends on the balance between the costs of market contracting and of ownership.What it has shownBurdín (2014) found a 29 percent lower hazard of dissolution for Uruguayan worker-managed firms than for conventional ones, and Fakhfakh, Pérotin, and Gago (2012) found French labor-managed firms as productive or more so in every industry studied.Who disputes itOrganizational economics (Jensen and Meckling) contrasts the labor-managed firm, in which tradable residual claims are legally prohibited, with cooperatives and partnerships that arise out of voluntary contracting.
  8. Modularity and the mirroring hypothesis1960s to the presentWhat it claimsComplex systems are built of nearly decomposable parts, and an organization's structure tends to mirror the architecture of what it makes: modular products allow loosely coupled organizations, and tightly coupled products need tightly coupled teams. Conway's law runs in reverse.What it has shownColfer and Baldwin (2016) review the empirical studies and report both support and principled exceptions. Direct tests point both ways: MacCormack, Baldwin, and Rusnak (2012) found open source products more modular than their commercial pairs; dynamic components break the mirror.Who disputes itNo school in the record disputes it head on; it answers information processing, which meets the coordination load inside the organization; mirroring writers locate it in the product's architecture.
  9. Strategy and structure1960s to 1980sWhat it claimsStructure follows strategy: firms that diversify by product or geography outgrow the centralized functional structure and, after a lag and usually a crisis, adopt divisions. Chandler drew this from the histories of DuPont, General Motors, Standard Oil of New Jersey, and Sears.What it has shownChandler (1962) is comparative business history of four firms set against a wider survey. Rumelt (1974) related diversification and structure to performance, and Egelhoff (1988), with 34 multinationals, found some of Stopford and Wells's relationships supported and others not.Who disputes itInstitutional theory: in Fligstein's model divisions spread with a product-related or unrelated strategy, presidents from sales or finance, and other firms in the industry changing; strategy was one of three.
  10. Structural contingency theory1960s to the presentWhat it claimsThere is no one best structure. Performance depends on fit between structure and contingencies such as environment, technology, size, and strategy, on an open-system view of the organization. Drazin and Van de Ven separate fit as selection, interaction, and systems.What it has shownBurns and Stalker, Woodward, and the Aston group related structure to context; Drazin and Van de Ven (1985) supported selection and systems fit only. Pennings (1975) found that fit did not explain effectiveness; Schoonhoven (1981) found traditional hypotheses unsupported.Who disputes itStrategic choice: Child argued that contingency theory explains structure by the constraints of context and leaves out the political process by which power-holders choose strategic action, structural forms included.
  11. The French bureaucratic school (strategic analysis)1960s to 1980sWhat it claimsA bureaucracy is a system of power relations organized around zones of uncertainty. Impersonal rules and centralization protect members from depending on one another, those who control uncertainties hold power, and, unable to correct its errors, it changes only through crisis.What it has shownLe phénomène bureaucratique (1963; English 1964) rests on two case studies, a clerical agency and a state industrial monopoly. L'acteur et le système (1977; English 1980) is theoretical.Who disputes itSocietal effect and comparative business systems: D'Iribarne argues that national logics of conduct, such as a French logic of honor, explain differences that Crozier attributed to power games.
  12. The Japanese-firm literature1960s to the presentWhat it claimsThe large Japanese firm coordinates operating decisions through horizontal information sharing among semi-autonomous shops and uses its ranking hierarchy mainly as an incentive scheme (Aoki). It creates knowledge through middle-up-down management (Nonaka and Takeuchi).What it has shownAoki (1986) is a formal model. Lincoln, Hanada, and McBride (1986) compared 51 Japanese and 55 United States manufacturing plants, and Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995) rest on case studies, chiefly of Japanese firms. Fruin (1994) found the enterprise system defined at three levels.Who disputes itLabor process and critical theory reads shop-floor delegation as control: Sewell and Wilkinson argue that just-in-time and total quality regimes delegate tactical responsibility while centralizing strategic control.
  13. The Scandinavian and Dutch socio-technical schools1960s to 2000sWhat it claimsThe Scandinavian program sought democracy at work through field experiments with semi-autonomous groups, then through democratic dialogue. The Dutch school's design theory turns complex organizations with simple jobs into simple organizations with complex jobs.What it has shownEmery and Thorsrud reported field experiments in Norwegian industry; Gustavsen (1992) records that they spread less than hoped, his reason for turning to dialogue. Berggren studied work organization in the Swedish auto industry. The Dutch work rests on design cases and argument.Who disputes itThe Japanese-firm literature: defenders of the Toyota system hold that standardized work with employee participation learns faster; Berggren reports Swedish long-cycle plants matching a line plant on productivity.
  14. Configuration theory1970s to the presentWhat it claimsStructures cluster into a small number of internally coherent configurations whose elements reinforce one another, so organizations move between a few types in large jumps, not small steps. Mintzberg's five configurations each rest on one coordinating mechanism.What it has shownDoty, Glick, and Huber (1993) found that fit to Miles and Snow's ideal types predicted effectiveness while fit to Mintzberg's did not. A meta-analysis of 40 tests (Ketchen and colleagues 1997) found that configuration partly explains performance, more so with broad definitions.Who disputes itStructural contingency theory: Donaldson counters that most organizations sit at intermediate points on a continuum of fits, not in a few configurations, and that studies over time find mostly incremental change.
  15. Information processing1970s to the presentWhat it claimsThe more uncertain the task, the more information must be processed during its execution. An organization either reduces that need, through slack resources or self-contained tasks, or raises its capacity, through vertical information systems or lateral relations up to the matrix.What it has shownGalbraith (1973, 1974) built the framework from cases and from Simon's theory of bounded rationality, and Tushman and Nadler (1978) set it out as an integrating concept for design. Daft and Lengel (1986) argued that structure must reduce equivocality as well as supply data.Who disputes itThe Carnegie school and the attention-based view: Ocasio holds that firm behavior results from how the firm channels and distributes attention, so structure governs where attention goes, not only how much is processed.
  16. Labor process and critical theory1970s to the presentWhat it claimsStructure is above all a system of control over labor. Braverman argued that management deskills work by separating conception from execution; Edwards traced a sequence from simple control by the boss to technical control through machines to bureaucratic control through rules.What it has shownHistorical and theoretical (Braverman 1974; Edwards 1979). Delbridge (1995), observing a Japanese-owned plant in England, found that just-in-time and total quality regimes combined the control of labor with management's economic goals more completely than piece rates had.Who disputes itBureaucracy and its critics: Adler argues that labor process theory ignores the progressive socialization of the labor process, which drives long-term skill upgrading, and disputes deskilling as the trend.
  17. Strategic choice1970s to the presentWhat it claimsStructure is the outcome of choices by those with power in the organization, who decide on strategic action, including the structural form, the manipulation of environmental features, and the performance standards to be met. Context constrains but does not determine structure.What it has shownLargely conceptual: Child (1972) built the argument from gaps in contingency findings, and the empirical case rests mostly on the modest share of structural variance contingencies explain. A 2026 review of 42 studies finds upper echelons theory their main theoretical anchor.Who disputes itStructural contingency theory: Donaldson replies that organizations mostly adopt the structures their contingencies dictate, to avoid the loss of performance misfit brings, so choice over structure is at most limited.
  18. The German codetermination literature1970s to the presentWhat it claimsWorks councils and employee board seats form a structural layer through which coordination can become negotiation between management and employees. Defenders argue that it supports long-term employment, training, and cooperation; critics, that it weakens shareholder control.What it has shownJäger, Schoefer, and Heining (2021) found board-level codetermination left wages unchanged and, if anything, raised capital formation. Jirjahn (2011) reports studies pointing to positive works council effects; a meta-analysis found codetermination laws tied to lower productivity.Who disputes itOrganizational economics (Gorton and Schmid) found that firms with equal employee and shareholder representation did worse for their shareholders than firms with one-third employee representation.
  19. Organizational economics: decision rights, authority, and complementarities1976 to the presentWhat it claimsDesign is the joint choice of who holds which decision rights, how performance is measured, and how it is rewarded. Rights should be placed where the specific knowledge lies, formal authority differs from real authority, and practices are complements that pay off in clusters.What it has shownIchniowski, Shaw, and Prennushi (1997) found, on 36 steel finishing lines, that lines using a set of innovative work practices achieved substantially higher productivity, consistent with complementarities. Bloom and colleagues found more decentralization where trust was higher.Who disputes itGhoshal argued that management research has shaped managers' worldview with ideologically inspired amoral theories, built on a scientific model that excludes human intentionality and so denies moral considerations.
  20. Institutional theory1977 to the presentWhat it claimsFormal structures are often adopted because they are legitimate in the organization's field, as rationalized myths, and then decoupled from the work done. Organizations in a field grow alike through coercive, mimetic, and normative isomorphism, whether or not it is efficient.What it has shownTolbert and Zucker (1983) found that city characteristics predicted early but not later adoption of civil service reform, which they read as institutionalization. Palmer, Jennings, and Zhou (1993) found support for institutional and economic accounts of late M-form adoption.Who disputes itStructural contingency theory: Kraatz and Zajac found little support for neoinstitutional predictions in 631 liberal arts colleges, which grew less alike; the change they studied was curricular, not structural.
  21. Population ecology1977 to the presentWhat it claimsOrganizations face strong structural inertia, because selection favors the reliability and accountability of stable structures. Change in a population's forms comes mainly from founding and failure, not adaptation, and changing core features resets the liability of newness.What it has shownAmburgey, Kelly, and Barnett (1993) found that the effects of change on the hazard of failure vary by type of change and over time, and that rates of change depend on how often and how recently an organization has changed. Carroll and Hannan (2000) set out the program's methods.Who disputes itFor structural contingency theory, Donaldson argues that ecology understates managers' capacity to adapt structure.
  22. Resource dependence1978 to the presentWhat it claimsOrganizations depend on outside parties for critical resources, and structure follows the management of that dependence: units that cope with critical dependencies gain power, and boundaries are redrawn through cooptation, joint ventures, and mergers to absorb constraint.What it has shownPfeffer and Salancik (1978) assembled studies of boards, mergers, and joint ventures. A meta-analysis of 157 tests (Drees and Heugens 2013) corroborated the main prediction: organizations meet resource dependencies with interorganizational arrangements that raise their autonomy.Who disputes itTransaction cost economics and the M-form hypothesis explains boundaries by efficiency; resource dependence, by power and constraint.
  23. The business-groups literature1978 to the presentWhat it claimsGroups of legally independent firms bound by ownership and social ties are a durable form of their own, neither one firm nor a market. Where institutions function poorly, groups can benefit member firms and can destroy value; they are sometimes paragons, sometimes parasites.What it has shownKhanna and Palepu (2000) found that affiliates of the most diversified Indian groups outperformed unaffiliated firms. A meta-analysis of 141 studies (Carney and colleagues 2011) found that affiliation lowers performance in general, less so where institutions are underdeveloped.Who disputes itOrganizational economics: agency writers read pyramids and cross-holdings as devices that separate control from ownership; Almeida and Wolfenzon offer a financing rationale for pyramids instead.
  24. Scandinavian institutionalism1980s to the presentWhat it claimsIdeas of organizing do not diffuse unchanged; they travel and are translated as they are adopted, so a form taken up in one place is not the same form elsewhere. Organizations can also be built of organizations (meta-organizations), which behave differently.What it has shownA discussion paper by Czarniawska and Joerges (1995) contrasts the diffusion of ideas with their translation, drawing on examples such as Swedish municipal reform; the work on meta-organizations (Ahrne and Brunsson 2008) is conceptual.Who disputes itInstitutional theory can read the same processes, seen from a translocal view, as institutional isomorphism, though translation holds that each adopter modifies an idea, so an institution re-created elsewhere is new.
  25. Societal effect and comparative business systems1980s to the presentWhat it claimsFirms matched on size, technology, and industry differ systematically by country, because how a society educates, trains, recruits, and promotes its workforce, and its industrial relations, shape how work is divided and supervised, so structure is partly a national product.What it has shownMaurice, Sorge, and Warner (1980) compared closely matched manufacturing units in France, West Germany, and Great Britain and found more pervasive differences in their organization than usually recognized. Whitley (1999) set out a comparative account of business systems.Who disputes itStructural contingency theory stresses culture-free elements of structure; matched comparisons find nationally different shapes of organization.
  26. The network perspective on organizations1985 to the presentWhat it claimsOrganizations and their members are nodes joined by ties, and the pattern of ties shapes what they can do. Economic action is embedded in networks of personal relations (Granovetter 1985), and network forms are a distinct form, not a hybrid of market and hierarchy (Powell 1990).What it has shownPodolny and Page (1998) review the research and find that network forms foster learning, confer status and legitimacy, bring economic benefits, help manage resource dependencies, and give employees considerable autonomy, and they ask for attention to networks' dysfunctions.Who disputes itTransaction cost economics: Williamson treats the hybrid as a third generic form between market and hierarchy; for Powell, network forms are a distinct form, not a mix of the two.
  27. Computational organization design and search1990s to the presentWhat it claimsDesign choices interact, so design space is a rugged landscape with many local peaks, and structure affects how well an organization searches it. Decentralizing interdependent decisions can trap units on poor peaks; temporary decentralization, then reintegration, can help.What it has shownMostly simulation, with one field test: Csaszar (2012), with more than 150,000 stock-picking decisions by 609 mutual funds, found that decision-making structure affects the number of initiatives pursued and the omission and commission errors made.Who disputes itNo school in the record disputes it head on; it disputes structural contingency theory, whose bivariate fit, its simulations show, cannot capture how the best design depends on interactions among choices.
  28. The new-forms debate1990s to the presentWhat it claimsOrganizations must solve four universal problems (dividing tasks, allocating them, providing rewards, and providing information), and a form is new when it solves them in new ways. Self-managing organizations radically decentralize authority; skeptics hold hierarchy reappears.What it has shownFoss (2003) traced the rise and partial reversal of Oticon's spaghetti organization to the problem of selective intervention. A meta-analysis of 54 studies of 13,914 teams (Greer and colleagues 2018) found that hierarchy within teams on net slightly lowers team performance.Who disputes itBureaucracy and its critics: removing formal structure leaves informal elites whose power is unaccountable (Freeman), and democratic and network organizations are much less hierarchy-free than their labels suggest.
  29. The algorithmic-management literature2015 to the presentWhat it claimsSoftware does much of the directing, evaluating, and disciplining that managers and rules once did. Kellogg, Valentine, and Christin (2020) call algorithmic control a new contested terrain; Puranam (2021) treats dividing decisions between people and machines as a design problem.What it has shownMostly qualitative field studies of gig work. Wood and colleagues (2019), with 107 interviews in six countries and 679 survey respondents, found that algorithmic management tends to give remote gig workers flexibility and autonomy, but also low pay, isolation, and overwork.Who disputes itLabor process and critical theory reads control at work as contested terrain; Kellogg, Valentine, and Christin take up that view but argue that algorithmic control is distinct from earlier forms.

The forms by first year

  1. Functional structure: 1911 to 1937
  2. Line and staff: 1916 to 1943
  3. Multidivisional (M-form) by product: 1920s practice; named and analyzed 1962 to 1975
  4. Machine bureaucracy: 1922 (Weber); 1979 (Mintzberg)
  5. Divisional by customer or market segment: 1937; 2005
  6. Matrix organization: 1950s to 1960s practice; analyzed 1971 to 1977
  7. Co-determined organization: 1951 to 1976 (the laws); 1984 to 2022 (the main studies)
  8. Socio-technical autonomous work groups: 1951 to 1965
  9. Stratified hierarchy (requisite organization): 1951 to 1989
  10. Cooperative organization: 1958 to 1999
  11. Linking-pin organization (System 4): 1961 to 1967
  12. Divisional by region: 1962 to 1972
  13. Adhocracy (innovative organization): 1968 to 1979
  14. J-form (the Japanese firm): 1968 to 1990
  15. Professional bureaucracy: 1968 to 1979
  16. Holding company (H-form): 1972 to 1975; 1987
  17. Ambidextrous organization: 1976 to 2004
  18. Simple structure: 1979
  19. Hybrid structure: 1980 to the present
  20. Missionary (ideological) organization: 1980 to 1989
  21. Network, modular, and virtual organization: 1986 to 1990
  22. Transnational and multidimensional organization: 1987 to 1989
  23. Business group (keiretsu, chaebol, family house): 1988 to 2007
  24. Shamrock organization: 1988 to 1989
  25. Federal organization: 1989 to 1992
  26. Self-managing organization (less-hierarchical forms): 1989 to 2017
  27. Boundaryless organization: 1990 to 1995
  28. Front-back organization: 1990s to 2007
  29. Professional partnership (P2 form): 1990
  30. The corporate center and shared services: 1991 to 2000
  31. Internal market organization: 1993 to 1994
  32. Process (horizontal) organization: 1993 to 1999
  33. Cellular organization: 1994 to 1997
  34. Hypertext organization: 1994 to 1995
  35. Team-based organization: 1995
  36. Project-based organization: 2000 to 2006
  37. Agile at scale: 2001 to 2016
  38. Distributed (all-remote) organization: 2002 to 2021
  39. Open-source and community-based organization: 2002 to 2007
  40. Algorithmically managed organization: 2015 to 2020
  41. Team of teams: 2015

Twenty-three of the 29 schools run to the present, and 16 of those began in the 1970s or later. The forms arrive in waves: 14 of the 41 first appear between 1985 and 1994.

Source: Fayol 1949; Weber 1978; Mayo 1933; Trist and Bamforth 1951, an interview-based field study in one industry; Burns and Stalker 1961, a field study of twenty firms; Mintzberg 1979; Child 1972a; Coase 1937; Meyer and Rowan 1977; Hannan and Freeman 1977; Galbraith 1973; Jensen and Meckling 1976; Crozier 1963; Emery and Thorsrud 1969; Yoshino 1968; Streeck 1984a; Kellogg and colleagues 2020, a review of earlier research through one theoretical lens, with no new data; Puranam and colleagues 2014, a conceptual argument; Chandler 1962, several independent case histories by a historian; Pfeffer and Salancik 1978; Simon 1946; Maurice and colleagues 1980, a comparison of matched factories in three countries; Levinthal 1997; Simon 1962; Braverman 1974; Hamilton and Biggart 1988, a comparison of three economies by scholars; Ward 1958; Czarniawska and Joerges 1995; Granovetter 1985.

Richard Daft's textbook Organization Theory and Design (fifth edition, 1995) gives the hybrid its own section, illustrated by Sun Petroleum Products.

When no single basis of grouping fits the whole organization, the form answers how to get the advantages of more than one. Walker and Lorsch (1968), a comparison of two matched plants making the same product, found the functional plant better at current output and the product plant at improving capabilities, and conclude that function suits a stable, routine task and product a less routine one. On our reading, a hybrid makes that choice part by part. No sector of origin is recorded.

Where it fits

Every cell is our judgment, since no work read tests the hybrid against any factor. Partial means neither favored nor strained.

The hybrid structure against the twelve contingency factors

Each factor at its three levels, Fits, Partial, or Strain, or Contested where a contested cell's views disagree; select a row for its reason, sources, and grade.

Select a factor to read its reason, sources, basis, and grade.Size. Mixing bases pays when the firm is big enough that some activities need central scale and others need their own units. Basis: Judgment. Sources: Daft 1995; Mintzberg 1980; Ketchen and colleagues 1997; Doty and colleagues 1993.Age. Hybrids often arise as an established organization moves from one configuration to another. Basis: Judgment. Sources: Mintzberg 1980; Hannan and Freeman 1984; Amburgey and colleagues 1993. View 1: Young partial, Established fits, Old fits. Hybrids often arise as an established organization moves from one configuration to another. Sources: Mintzberg 1980. View 2: Young partial, Established fits, Old partial. Inertia rises with age, and attempts at reorganization raise death rates, so reorganizing an old organization into this form is itself a hazard at the old level. Sources: Hannan and Freeman 1984.Environmental uncertainty (unpredictability, dynamism). Central functions keep stable, scale-sensitive work efficient while units adapt to their markets; when everything is changing, the stable central part is what lags. Basis: Judgment. Sources: Daft 1995; Mintzberg 1980; Galbraith 1973; Ketchen and colleagues 1997; Doty and colleagues 1993; Schoonhoven 1981; Pennings 1975.Environmental complexity. Grouping different parts on different bases lets each part face its own slice of a complex environment; in a simple one a single basis is enough. Basis: Judgment. Sources: Lawrence and Lorsch 1967a; Mintzberg 1980; Pennings 1975.Munificence and hostility. A hybrid can centralize some parts under threat and leave others alone; the factor does not settle it. Basis: Judgment. Sources: Burton and Obel 2004.Diversity of products and markets. Mixing a shared functional core with product divisions fits businesses that share some functions and differ in others. Basis: Judgment. Sources: Williamson 1975; Mintzberg 1980.Strategy type. An analyzer splits into stable and changing areas managed differently, which a hybrid's mix of bases can house; Miles and Snow name the matrix for this, so the hybrid's fit is inferred. Basis: Judgment. Sources: Miles and Snow 1978; Burton and Obel 2004; Mintzberg 1980.Technology and routineness. A hybrid lets each part be grouped for its own work, so the whole organization's routineness does not decide it; the factor's middle level means engineering or craft work, not a mix of routine and novel units. Basis: Judgment. Sources: Mintzberg 1980; Perrow 1967.Interdependence. Whether a hybrid fits depends on where the interdependence falls: within units grouped on one basis it is handled, and across units on different bases it sets functional managers against business-unit managers. Basis: Judgment. Sources: Dessein and colleagues 2010; Thompson 1967; Zhou 2013.Knowledge intensity and professionalization. Different parts of a hybrid can sit at different training levels, so the factor gives no reason for or against the form as a whole. Basis: Judgment. Sources: Mintzberg 1980; Daft 1995.Global integration pressure. Keeping some functions central while businesses or regions run the rest matches the case where some activities gain from coordination across countries and others can be run country by country. Basis: Judgment. Sources: Daft 1995; Mintzberg 1980.Local responsiveness pressure. Keeping some functions central while regions or businesses run the rest matches the case where some products or functions must be adapted country by country and others need not be. Basis: Judgment. Sources: Daft 1995; Mintzberg 1980.

Counting the contested age cell by its first view, the 36 settings read Fits at 11, Partial at 25, and Strain at 0, so no setting strains the form. Only age is contested, and all twelve cells rest on judgment.

Source: Daft 1995; Mintzberg 1980, a synthesis of earlier research, offering propositions without a new test; Ketchen and colleagues 1997, a meta-analysis of 40 tests; Doty and colleagues 1993, a quantitative test across a sample of organizations; Hannan and Freeman 1984; Amburgey and colleagues 1993, a quantitative study of organizational change and failure rates; Galbraith 1973; Schoonhoven 1981, a quantitative study of hospital operating room suites; Pennings 1975, a quantitative field test of the structural-contingency model; Lawrence and Lorsch 1967a, a multi-firm comparative field study; Burton and Obel 2004; Williamson 1975; Miles and Snow 1978; Perrow 1967; Dessein and colleagues 2010, a formal model with no new data; Thompson 1967; Zhou 2013, an archival study of many US manufacturers over 11 years.

Your own situation against the hybrid structure

Set any factor to outline its cell in the strip above; the lines under the switches give the counts, the form's place among the 41, and the misfit rules that fire.

Size
Age
Environmental uncertainty (unpredictability, dynamism)
Environmental complexity
Munificence and hostility
Diversity of products and markets
Strategy type
Technology and routineness
Interdependence
Knowledge intensity and professionalization
Global integration pressure
Local responsiveness pressure

Set: 0 of 12 factors. Fits on 0, Partial on 0, Strain on 0, Contested on 0.

Its place in the explorer's rankingEvery factor is on Any: all 41 forms tie, and the explorer lists them alphabetically.1st of 411st of 41, tied with one other1st of 41, tied with 0 othersSunk by a misfit rule: 1st of 41Sunk by a misfit rule: 1st of 41, tied with one otherSunk by a misfit rule: 1st of 41, tied with 0 others

  • Flagged (it meets the form only through part of its profile): Reciprocal work coordinated by standards. Source: Thompson 1967; Van de Ven and colleagues 1976.

Ranking rule: by count of Fits on the factors the reader has set, then fewest Strains, then alphabetical; a fired misfit rule that no source disputes sinks the form to the bottom when every level of the form's profile meets it, a disputed one, or one that meets the form only through one end of a spanned level, one view of a contested profile cell, or one part of a two-part form, is flagged on the row (with both views where it is disputed), and a misfit between two of the reader's own settings is shown once above the list; a contested cell counts only where its views agree at the reader's level, and otherwise shows as Contested; factors on "Any" count for nothing; with every factor on "Any" the list is alphabetical and says so.

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The misfit rules that can fire for this form

  • Reciprocal work coordinated by standards fires when Interdependence at Reciprocal: flagged (it meets the form only through part of its profile). Source: Thompson 1967; Van de Ven and colleagues 1976.

One of the 39 contingency misfit rules can fire for this form, reciprocal work coordinated by standards, and it only flags the form, since it meets only the functions' standardization of work processes, one end of the spanned coordinating mechanism.

Source: Burton and Obel 2004; Burton and colleagues 2020a.

  • Size. Partial small, fits medium and large. Premise: Daft (1995), for whom headquarters functions require economies of scale.
  • Age. Contested. On Mintzberg's (1980) premise that hybrids arise as organizations move between configurations: partial young, fits established and old. On Hannan and Freeman's (1984) premise that inertia rises with age and attempts at reorganization raise death rates: partial at old too. Amburgey, Kelly, and Barnett (1993), a quantitative study of organizational change and failure rates, qualify the second: the effect of change on failure varies by type of change and over time.
  • Environmental uncertainty. Fits stable and shifting, partial unpredictable: when everything changes, the stable central part lags (premises: Daft 1995; Mintzberg 1980; Galbraith 1973). Schoonhoven (1981), a quantitative study of hospital operating room suites, found contingency hypotheses drawn from Galbraith unsupported and more precise interactive, nonmonotonic ones better supported; she tested work units' technology, not the environment, and named no form, so she limits the premise without testing the cell.
  • Environmental complexity. Partial simple and moderate, fits complex: each part faces its own slice of the environment (premise: Lawrence and Lorsch 1967).
  • Munificence and hostility. Partial throughout; Burton and Obel's (2004) model, the most developed scholarly fit model, speaks only to the hostile end.
  • Diversity. Partial single business, fits related, partial unrelated: a shared functional core suits businesses that share some functions and differ in others (premises: Williamson 1975; Mintzberg 1980).
  • Strategy. Partial defender, fits analyzer, partial prospector. Miles and Snow (1978) give the analyzer the matrix for its stable and changing areas and say mixed strategies go with mixed structures; a hybrid's fit is inferred. Burton and Obel's model gives an analyzer a functional or divisional configuration, or with innovation a matrix or divisional one, and in the rules read names no mix.
  • Technology. Partial throughout: each part can be grouped for its own work, and the factor's middle level means engineering or craft work, not a mix of routine and novel units (premises: Perrow 1967; Mintzberg 1980).
  • Knowledge intensity. Partial throughout: parts can sit at different training levels, though no work read ties hybrids to them (premises: Mintzberg 1980; Daft 1995).
  • Interdependence. Partial throughout: inside a unit it is handled, and across units on different bases it sets functional against business-unit managers (premises: Dessein, Garicano, and Gertner 2010; Thompson 1967).
  • Global integration and local responsiveness. On each, partial low, fits moderate, partial high: the moderate level, some activities coordinated across countries and others adapted country by country, matches central functions beside divisions (premises: Daft 1995; Mintzberg 1980).

Rivkin and Siggelkow (2003), in a simulation, find that design elements encouraging broad search raise the value of elements giving stability, interactions the computational-design school holds bivariate fit cannot capture.

What it does well

On our reading, it keeps central the functions that need economies of scale (Daft 1995) and gives the rest to divisions.

Argyres, Rios, and Silverman (2020), a quantitative study of diversified corporations, found that centralizing R&D budget authority made internal inventor networks more connected, which broadened innovation impact and technological search. Zhou (2013), an archival study of many US manufacturers over 11 years, found firms divisionalized more as tasks grew complex and less as tasks became less decomposable. On our reading, a hybrid divisionalizes what decomposes and keeps central what does not.

What it costs

Dessein, Garicano, and Gertner (2010), a formal model with no new data, show one cost, modeled but not measured: a hybrid creates an incentive conflict between functional managers, who want excessive standardization, and business-unit managers, who want excessive local adaptation, and the allocation of authority and tasks has to manage it.

The parts differ in outlook. Lawrence and Lorsch (1967), a multi-firm comparative field study, found that functional departments facing different parts of the environment develop different orientations, and that high performers integrate in proportion. On our reading, a hybrid adds a difference between functions and divisions, which its profile joins by hierarchy, integrators, direct contact, and liaison roles.

Whether mixing costs coherence is open. Whittington and colleagues (1999), a panel survey of European firms, found piecemeal changes, IT excepted, delivered little, while the full set of changes went with high performance; on our reading that cuts against building a hybrid a function at a time, though no hybrid was tested. Doty, Glick, and Huber (1993), under research, cut the other way only for Mintzberg's types.

How it fails

How the hybrid structure fails, and the coordination failures behind it

The entry's failure modes at the left, each tied to the Coordination Failures patterns it names at the right; a pattern links its entry there.

Local optimization against the global constraintJurisdictional gap or overlapRegulator overloadSiloed knowledge
Local optimization against the global constraintJurisdictional gap or overlapRegulator overloadSiloed knowledge

How many ties the failure has. Highest: Central functions over-standardize while divisions over-adaptQuarrels the integrators cannot settle climb to the topWork that crosses the line is run by procedureLocal optimization against the global constraintJurisdictional gap or overlapRegulator overloadSiloed knowledge

Select a failure to read its place in the network.Central functions over-standardize while divisions over-adapt. Degree 2Quarrels the integrators cannot settle climb to the top. Degree 1Work that crosses the line is run by procedure. Degree 1Local optimization against the global constraint. Degree 1Jurisdictional gap or overlap. Degree 1Regulator overload. Degree 1Siloed knowledge. Degree 1
FailureDegree
Central functions over-standardize while divisions over-adapt2
Quarrels the integrators cannot settle climb to the top1
Work that crosses the line is run by procedure1
Local optimization against the global constraint1
Jurisdictional gap or overlap1
Regulator overload1
Siloed knowledge1

Three failure modes name four patterns, and only the first names two: local optimization against the global constraint, and a jurisdictional gap or overlap.

Source: Dessein and colleagues 2010, a formal model with no new data; Lawrence and Lorsch 1967a, a multi-firm comparative field study; Thompson 1967; Van de Ven and colleagues 1976, a quantitative study of 197 work units in one agency; Drazin and Van de Ven 1985, a quantitative study of 629 work units in two states' employment security agencies; Volberda and colleagues 2012, a survey of 3,259 respondents in 1,904 companies.

Central functions over-standardize while divisions over-adapt. In Dessein, Garicano, and Gertner's (2010) model, each side favors its part over the whole (local optimization against the global constraint); on our reading, both also claim shared activities (jurisdictional gap or overlap). No study here measures it in firms.

Quarrels the integrators cannot settle climb to the top. Disputes the integrators, direct contact, and liaison roles cannot settle go up, and the executive above both becomes the bottleneck (regulator overload). The premise is Lawrence and Lorsch's (1967) finding that integration must match differentiation; the failure is our reading.

Work that crosses the line is run by procedure. The misfit rule "Reciprocal work coordinated by standards" (uncontested, judgment) meets this form only through one end of its spanned coordinating mechanism, the functions' standardization of work processes, which Thompson (1967) pairs with pooled work, not the divisions' outputs, so it flags the row without sinking it. That reciprocal work lacks mutual adjustment is the rule's judgment; that what each side knows stays apart (siloed knowledge) is ours, as is that direct contact and liaison roles supply some adjustment. Van de Ven, Delbecq, and Koenig (1976), a quantitative study of 197 work units in one agency, found Thompson's propositions largely supported, with modes added as a mix. Two limits stand against the rule: it pairs one factor with one structure, the interaction form of fit, which Drazin and Van de Ven (1985), a quantitative study of 629 work units in two states' employment security agencies, found unsupported, where the selection form (the explorer's) and the systems form were supported. And Volberda and colleagues (2012), a survey of 3,259 respondents in 1,904 companies, found contingency and institutional fit complementary: firms in quasi fit gain from improving either, firms with high contingency fit are less vulnerable to institutional misfit, but firms with perfect institutional fit slightly lose performance striving for contingency fit, so a firing rule does not show that moving toward fit helps a firm whose field treats it as legitimate. The interdependence cell says partial where the rule fires.

What the research found

No study tests a hybrid structure by that name.

Is mixing a lapse or a choice? Mintzberg (1980), a synthesis offering propositions without a new test, claimed effective organizations favor a consistent configuration. Doty, Glick, and Huber (1993), a quantitative test across a sample of organizations, did not support it: resembling Mintzberg's ideal types did not predict effectiveness, while fit to Miles and Snow's types predicted 24 percent of the variance. Ketchen and colleagues (1997), a meta-analysis of 40 tests, found configuration partly explains performance, though it pools definitions, many of them strategy types, not structures, and tests of pure structural types stay mixed. Krabberød (2015) argues the Doty test has not been shown exhaustive and that its citers' silence on what it means for Mintzberg's theory has explanations other than agreement. Fiss (2011), a set-theoretic analysis of 205 British high-technology manufacturers, found several configurations of strategy, structure, and environment reaching high performance. Mintzberg later qualified the pure types: in a practitioner article (1991) he expects some forms to be most common in hybrid combinations, and in a 1992 book version of a similar text he concludes that truly effective organizations do not exist in pure form.

Argyres, Rios, and Silverman (2020), the most recent study filed under this form, found decentralizing R&D did not have the opposite effect of centralizing it, and the effects came with a lag the authors attribute to inertia.

Tests of fit itself disagree. Pennings (1975), a quantitative field test of the structural-contingency model, found that the fit between environment and structure did not explain effectiveness, a failure Donaldson (2001) puts down to methodological limitations; Burton, Lauridsen, and Obel (2002), a quantitative study of 224 Danish small and medium-sized firms, found that firms with misfits had lower return on assets.

Configuration theory holds that organizations tend toward a few coherent types, moving between them in large jumps; Donaldson (2001) replies that fits form a continuum with most organizations at intermediate points, and that change is mostly incremental, not quantum. Strategic choice (Child 1972, largely conceptual) holds that power-holders choose structure, so which functions stay central, on our reading, may record a decision as much as a fit. Donaldson replies that organizations mostly adopt the structures their contingencies dictate, so choice is at most limited, and ecologists that inertia limits how far choice can change core structure (Hannan and Freeman 1984). Institutional theorists hold that structures are adopted for legitimacy and decoupled from work, so fit explains less than contingency theory claims (Meyer and Rowan 1977; DiMaggio and Powell 1983). Donaldson (1995) replies that such theories paint managers negatively and argues from the evidence for adaptation to regain fit, and Kraatz and Zajac (1996), a longitudinal study of 631 private liberal arts colleges whose change was curricular, not structural, found little support for neoinstitutional predictions.

The evidence ledger holds 9 studies filed under this form.

In practice: one published case

Sun Petroleum Products Company (SPPC) is one case study: one company's reorganization as a textbook reports it, in the fifth edition of Daft's Organization Theory and Design (1995), which draws it from Linda Ackerman's "Transition Management" (1982). Ackerman's article was not read for this entry, and only passages of Daft's account were.

SPPC had sales of about $7 billion in the early 1980s and a work force of 5,400. It was traditionally organized by function.

In this edition's account, it restructured from a functional to a hybrid structure by combining three product divisions, each headed by a product line vice president, with several functional departments.

Daft judges the new structure just right for SPPC because of the company's large size, moderate environmental change, and interdependence, among the reasons he gives. That is a textbook author's judgment, not a measured result, and the passages read give no figures on how the company performed after the change.

The label is Daft's in this edition. An earlier edition of the same textbook files the same change under the product structure and speaks of four divisions, so the editions agree on product divisions kept beside functions and differ on the label and the count.

Source: Daft 1995. Organization Theory and Design, West Publishing, Minneapolis/St. Paul, fifth edition.

Variants and near relatives

Functional-divisional hybrid. Product or regional divisions run the businesses while some functions, such as research or purchasing, stay central. Daft's (1995) case is one. Mintzberg's (1980) incomplete divisionalization is its regional or client case.

Mixed enterprise (Williamson's X-form). In Williamson's (1975) classification, a divisionalized enterprise in which some divisions are essentially of the holding-company variety, others are M-form, and still others are under the close supervision of the general management. He doubts the mix can reliably be expected to last, though he calls the judgment that it lacks rationality properties probably too strong. Its divisions differ in control, not grouping: the side-by-side mix on another axis. The H-form and his transitional and corrupted M-forms are taught under Holding company and Multidivisional.

The Matrix organization is the nearest neighbor: it puts the same people under two lines of authority at once, where the hybrid gives different units different bases side by side, each with a single boss.

The Multidivisional (M-form) by product turns on a general office that allocates capital among divisions and monitors them; a hybrid keeps some operating functions out of the divisions. The line is one of degree: in Dessein, Garicano, and Gertner (2010), hybrids keep business units but centralize some activities. The International division, under Divisional by region, puts all foreign activity in one division beside the domestic product divisions, an early multinational stage; no source read draws the line between it and this form. The corporate center and shared services designs what the center does and pools, where a hybrid designs how the operating units are cut. Front-back organization sets customer fronts and product backs along one value chain, joined by designed linking processes. Two forms are set against this one: the Ambidextrous organization separates units by learning mode and joins them at the top, not mixing grouping bases for efficiency; the Transnational and multidimensional organization gives subsidiaries different roles in an integrated network.

The hybrid beside its nearest neighbor, the matrix

Select a number to fill what it marks in both drawings; the list under them gives the dimensions on which the two profiles differ.

It gives different parts of the organization different bases of grouping side by side, functional departments beside product or regional divisions, each unit under a single boss, not two bases laid over the same people or one basis over the whole.

Hybrid structure

Strategic apexFunctions anddivisionsChiefexecutiveFunctionaldepartmentFunctionaldepartmentProductdivisionProductdivisionBy functionBy productWO11112233
Strategic apexFunctions and divisionsChiefFunctionFunctionDivisionDivisionBy functionBy productWO11112233

Reports toAdjust to each other directlyWStandardization of work processesOStandardization of outputs

Matrix organization

Adjust between the linesStrategic apexThe two linesTwo bossesSharedsuperiorFunctionalheadProjectmanagerSpecialist inboth lines2By functionBy projectM12223
Adjust between the linesStrategic apexThe two linesTwo bossesSuperiorFunctionProjectSpecialist2By functionBy projectM12223

Reports toAdjust to each other directlyMMutual adjustment2Two superiors

  1. Every department and division in the hybrid answers to one boss; the matrix's specialist answers to a functional head and a project manager at once.
  2. The hybrid's two bases cover different parts, central functions serving the whole beside divisions running their own businesses; the matrix's two lines both cover the same specialist's work.
  3. The departments coordinate by standardized work and the divisions by standardized outputs, each unit by its own mechanism; the matrix leans on its two lines adjusting to each other directly.

Differs on 7 of 11 dimensions

  • Basis of grouping Function or process and product or purpose; Matrix organization: Two or more at once
  • Specialization Medium; Matrix organization: Medium to high
  • Decision rights and the locus of authority Limited horizontal decentralization to limited vertical decentralization; Matrix organization: Limited vertical decentralization to selective vertical and horizontal decentralization
  • Prime coordinating mechanism Standardization of work processes and standardization of outputs; Matrix organization: Mutual adjustment
  • Lateral mechanisms Direct contact and liaison roles; Matrix organization: Matrix
  • Differentiation against integration Moderate differentiation, some integrating roles; Matrix organization: High differentiation, heavy integration
  • Boundary permeability Closed; Matrix organization: Selective

Both forms use two bases of grouping. The hybrid gives each part of the organization one basis and one boss, side by side, and the matrix lays the two bases over the same people.

Source: Daft 1995; Mintzberg 1980, a synthesis of earlier research, offering propositions without a new test; Davis and Lawrence 1977; Galbraith 1971.

Moving into or out of it

One recorded path in is from the functional form: carving out product divisions and leaving some functions central, as Sun Petroleum did (Daft 1995). Mintzberg (1980) sees some organizations pass through hybrids of configurations in transition; on our reading, a mix of bases too can be a destination or a waypoint.

Raveendran (2020), a multi-firm panel study of reorganizations in one industry, found that the more function-like units a structure had, the likelier its next reorganization moved toward product- or market-based units, and the reverse; function-heavy structures also reorganized sooner. The hazard of change for older organizations is under Where it fits, on age, and the dispute over large jumps under research.

Against a standing hybrid stands alternation between pure forms. Nickerson and Zenger (2002), a formal model with no new data, find that when a firm wants functionality between what two forms deliver, modulating between them over time may gain efficiency, and Siggelkow and Levinthal (2003), a computer simulation with no field data, model decentralizing and then reintegrating.

The work of running a reorganization sits under Change & Transformation.

The thinking behind it

Henry Mintzberg, "Structure in 5's" (1980) and a 2024 article: some organizations are hybrids of his configurations or forms, from contradictory pressures or in transition. Richard Daft, Organization Theory and Design (1995): the hybrid structure under its own heading. Oliver Williamson, Markets and Hierarchies (1975): the M-form hypothesis, that the multidivisional form economizes on bounded rationality and opportunism better than the functional form (tests are mixed); on our reading, a hybrid keeps parts of both.

Jay Lorsch, with Arthur Walker (1968): product or function as a choice. Paul Lawrence (1967): differentiation and integration. Wouter Dessein and Luis Garicano (2010): the built-in conflict between functional and business-unit managers. Nicholas Argyres, Luis Rios, and Brian Silverman (2020): what centralizing R&D does. James Thompson (1967) and Andrew Van de Ven (1976): interdependence and coordination modes.

Harold Doty, William Glick, and George Huber (1993): the null result for Mintzberg's ideal types. Robert Drazin (1985): three forms of fit. Jan Rivkin and Nicolaj Siggelkow (2003): design elements jointly balance search and stability. Michael Hannan (1984): selection favors inert structures, inertia rises with age, and attempts at reorganization raise death rates.

Also called

Mixed structure and mixed form. Mintzberg (1980) writes of hybrids of configurations, Williamson (1975) of mixed forms, the X-form among them.

Elsewhere the word has other senses. Foss's internal hybrid (2003), under internal market, is a hierarchy infused with market control. Hybrid work, under distributed, splits home and office. Front-back has a customer-product hybrid. Hybrid organizing (Battilana and Lee 2014), kept out of the explorer, combines organizational forms. In computational design, hybrids of hierarchy and polyarchy trade errors of omission against commission (Joseph and Gaba 2020). Transaction cost economics treats the hybrid as a generic form between market and hierarchy (Williamson 1991); Powell (1990) holds the hybrid or intermediate notion unhelpful and networks a distinct form.

Works cited

On this page, “read” means read by this series: where a line says a work, or part of one, was not read, the series did not read it.

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