Machine bureaucracy

Routine operating work is standardized by a technostructure of analysts, and authority runs down a formal hierarchy of rules.

What it is

A machine bureaucracy runs routine work through standards. Analysts in the technostructure, a staff unit beside the line (Mintzberg 1979, 1980), design each job; operators carry out narrow tasks in large units. Authority runs down a formal hierarchy; the functions meet only at the top, where major decisions are made.

Reports toAdvises, or reports indirectlyWStandardization of work processes

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.Strategic apex. Layer: Strategic apex. Reports to no one. Holds formal power: only here are the functional responsibilities brought together, so only here can major decisions be made (Mintzberg 1980). A second view, drawn from the Aston replications, holds that the form need not be centralized.Analysts. Layer: Middle line and staff. Reports to Strategic apex. The technostructure, a staff unit beside the line that designs each job and standardizes everyone else's work; informal power flows to it, Mintzberg's Type B. Its dotted line to the function manager carries work standards to apply, not advice the manager may decline.Function manager. Layer: Middle line and staff. Reports to Strategic apex. A manager in the middle line, in an elaborate administrative structure with narrow spans above the operating core.Function manager. Layer: Middle line and staff. Reports to Strategic apex. A second function; the functions meet only at the strategic apex, and decisions follow the chain of authority.Support staff. Layer: Middle line and staff. Reports to Strategic apex. Supplies the organization's own support services, since it prefers to make rather than buy so it can control them.Operators. Layer: Operating core. Reports to Function manager. By function. Carry out highly specialized, routine tasks in a large unit, under very formalized procedures.Operators. Layer: Operating core. Reports to Function manager. By function. A second large unit of operators, grouped by function as the whole structure is.W, standardization of work processes. The content of the work is specified or programmed in advance, usually by analysts.

The structure in words

1. Strategic apex
   • Strategic apex, reports to no one. Holds formal power: only here are the functional responsibilities brought together, so only here can major decisions be made (Mintzberg 1980). A second view, drawn from the Aston replications, holds that the form need not be centralized.
2. Middle line and staff
   • Analysts, reports to Strategic apex. The technostructure, a staff unit beside the line that designs each job and standardizes everyone else's work; informal power flows to it, Mintzberg's Type B. Its dotted line to the function manager carries work standards to apply, not advice the manager may decline.
   • Function manager, reports to Strategic apex. A manager in the middle line, in an elaborate administrative structure with narrow spans above the operating core.
   • Function manager, reports to Strategic apex. A second function; the functions meet only at the strategic apex, and decisions follow the chain of authority.
   • Support staff, reports to Strategic apex. Supplies the organization's own support services, since it prefers to make rather than buy so it can control them.
3. Operating core
   • Operators, reports to Function manager, grouped by function. Carry out highly specialized, routine tasks in a large unit, under very formalized procedures.
   • Operators, reports to Function manager, grouped by function. A second large unit of operators, grouped by function as the whole structure is.

• Analysts and Function manager: advises, or reports indirectly.
• By function: coordinated by standardization of work processes.

Analysts in the technostructure, a staff unit beside the line, design each job, and operators carry out narrow tasks in large units grouped by function. Authority runs down a formal hierarchy, and the functions meet only at the strategic apex, where major decisions are made.

Source: Mintzberg 1980, a synthesis of earlier research, offering propositions without a new test.

Mintzberg (1980) supplies the profile, unless named otherwise: grouping by function or process; specialization, standardization, and formalization high; layers and span tall, with a sharp line and staff distinction; formal power at the apex and informal power with the analysts; coordination by standardizing work processes, with lateral mechanisms stopping at hierarchy, rules, and goals; low differentiation and light integration; exchange by bureaucracy (Ouchi 1980); boundaries closed.

Centralization is contested. Mintzberg rates the form centralized. The Aston replications tied structuring and centralization to different contexts (Hinings and Lee 1971); Child (1973, ungraded here) has size as the major predictor of decentralization; and Donaldson and colleagues (1975) took up Child's earlier argument that delegation and bureaucratic control compensate for each other. On that reading the level spans mixed to decentralized.

Basis of groupingTheoryFunction or processProduct or purposeClient or market segmentPlaceTwo or more at onceSpecializationTheoryLowMediumHighStandardization and formalizationTheoryLowMediumHighCentralizationContestedTheoryCentralizedMixedDecentralizedLayers and span of controlTheoryFlatModerateTallDecision rights and the locus of authorityTheoryVertical and horizontal centralizationLimited horizontal decentralizationLimited vertical decentralizationSelective vertical and horizontal decentralizationVertical and horizontal decentralizationPrime coordinating mechanismTheoryMutual adjustmentDirect supervisionStandardization of work processesStandardization of outputsStandardization of skillsStandardization of normsLateral mechanismsTheoryHierarchy, rules, and goals onlyDirect contact and liaison rolesTask forces and teamsIntegrating roles and managerial linking rolesMatrixDifferentiation against integrationTheoryLow differentiation, light integrationModerate differentiation, some integrating rolesHigh differentiation, heavy integrationMode of exchange and controlTheoryMarketBureaucracyClanBoundary permeabilityTheoryClosedSelectivePermeable

Basis of groupingTheoryFunction or processSpecializationTheoryHighStandardization and formalizationTheoryHighCentralizationContestedTheoryCentralizedLayers and span of controlTheoryTallDecision rights and the locus of authorityTheoryLimited horizontal decentralizationPrime coordinating mechanismTheoryStandardization of work processesLateral mechanismsTheoryHierarchy, rules, and goals onlyDifferentiation against integrationTheoryLow differentiation, light integrationMode of exchange and controlTheoryBureaucracyBoundary permeabilityTheoryClosed

Select a dimension to read why the form sits there, and on what basis.Basis of grouping: Function or process. Basis: Theory. Reliance on the functional basis for grouping tasks throughout the structure. Sources: Mintzberg 1980.Specialization: High. Basis: Theory. Highly specialized, routine operating tasks: horizontal and vertical job specialization are both high. Sources: Mintzberg 1980; Pugh and colleagues 1968.Standardization and formalization: High. Basis: Theory. Very formalized procedures; rules and regulations permeate the entire structure. Sources: Mintzberg 1980; Weber 1922.Centralization: Centralized. Basis: Theory. Relatively centralized power: only at the strategic apex are the functional responsibilities brought together, so only there can major decisions be made. Sources: Mintzberg 1980; Hinings and Lee 1971; Donaldson and colleagues 1975; Child 1973. View 2: Mixed to decentralized. In the Aston replications, structuring of activities and centralization formed separate groups tied to different contexts (size against dependence), Child argued for a compensatory relation between delegation and bureaucratic control, and size remained the major predictor of decentralization, so large, highly structured organizations need not be centralized. Sources: Hinings and Lee 1971; Donaldson and colleagues 1975; Child 1973.Layers and span of control: Tall. Basis: Theory. Large units at the bottom, narrow spans elsewhere, and an elaborate administrative structure with a sharp line and staff distinction. Sources: Mintzberg 1980.Decision rights and the locus of authority: Limited horizontal decentralization. Basis: Theory. Mintzberg's Type B: formal power at the apex, with informal power flowing to the analysts of the technostructure who standardize everyone else's work. Sources: Mintzberg 1980.Prime coordinating mechanism: Standardization of work processes. Basis: Theory. Standardization of work processes, designed by the technostructure. Sources: Mintzberg 1980.Lateral mechanisms: Hierarchy, rules, and goals only. Basis: Theory. Little use of the liaison devices; formal communication is favored at all levels and decisions follow the chain of authority. Sources: Mintzberg 1980.Differentiation against integration: Low differentiation, light integration. Basis: Theory. Mintzberg reads Lawrence and Lorsch's container firm as this configuration, the firm with low differentiation integrated through the managerial hierarchy. Sources: Mintzberg 1980; Lawrence and Lorsch 1967a.Mode of exchange and control: Bureaucracy. Basis: Theory. Control by rules, close evaluation, and the hierarchy of offices: Ouchi's bureaucracy and Weber's rational-legal administration. Sources: Ouchi 1980; Weber 1922.Boundary permeability: Closed. Basis: Theory. It prefers to make rather than buy, supplying its own support services so it can control them, and it favors formal channels at every level. Sources: Mintzberg 1980.

All eleven levels rest on theory, ten of them drawing on Mintzberg's (1980) synthesis. One row is contested: centralization, which Mintzberg rates centralized and a second view, drawn from the Aston replications, Child (1973), and Donaldson and colleagues (1975), places at mixed to decentralized.

Source: Mintzberg 1980, a synthesis of earlier research, offering propositions without a new test; Pugh and colleagues 1968, a multi-organization comparative survey; Weber 1922; Hinings and Lee 1971, a small multi-firm replication; Donaldson and colleagues 1975; Child 1973; Lawrence and Lorsch 1967a, a multi-firm comparative field study; Ouchi 1980, a conceptual article.

Structure as Aston measured it

Structuring of activities

Specialization

Standardization

Formalization

Concentration of authority

Centralization

Lack of autonomy

Line control of workflow

Size of supportive component

1. Structure as Aston measured it
   1. Structuring of activities
      1. Specialization
      2. Standardization
      3. Formalization
   2. Concentration of authority
      1. Centralization
      2. Lack of autonomy
   3. Line control of workflow
   4. Size of supportive component

Links between branches:A disputed relation

Select a box to read what the records say of it.Structure as Aston measured it. The Aston group built scales for five primary dimensions of structure (specialization, standardization, formalization, centralization, and configuration) from 64 component variables in 52 work organizations in England, and four underlying dimensions emerged. The authors concluded that the concept of the bureaucratic type is no longer useful (Pugh and colleagues 1968). Configuration is not hung below, since the records read do not say where it loaded. Hinings and Lee (1971) judged that their replication's findings "closely parallel those of Pugh et al."Structuring of activities. Predicted from size and technology, with a multiple correlation of 0.75, in 46 organizations in the English Midlands (Pugh and colleagues 1969). Hinings and Lee (1971) found its three measures related to size in nine manufacturing organizations.Specialization. Aston scored functional specialization by how many specialist functions were held by full-time specialists, and this series' dimension note records it loading with standardization and formalization on structuring of activities. Hinings and Lee (1971) found the three in one group. Hanging it here is this series' reading, since the 1968 paper was read only in its abstract.Standardization. Aston's dimension for procedures. This series' note on standardization and formalization records the two loading together with specialization on structuring of activities, and Hinings and Lee (1971) found the three in one group. The 1968 paper was read only in its abstract, so placing it here is this series' reading.Formalization. Aston's dimension for written documents, which this series' note on standardization and formalization records loading with standardization and specialization on structuring of activities. Hinings and Lee (1971) found the same three in one group. Hanging it here is this series' reading, since the 1968 paper was read only in its abstract.Concentration of authority. Predicted from dependence on other organizations and location, with a multiple correlation of 0.75 (Pugh and colleagues 1969). Hinings and Lee (1971) found centralization and lack of autonomy related to dependence on other organizations.Centralization. Aston measured centralization by the level in the hierarchy with authority to take each of a list of decisions, and this series' centralization note records it loading with lack of autonomy on concentration of authority. Hinings and Lee (1971) found the two in one group. Hanging it here is this series' reading, since the 1968 paper was read only in its abstract.Lack of autonomy. This series' centralization note records it loading with centralization on concentration of authority, and Hinings and Lee (1971) found the two in one group. With the 1968 paper read only in its abstract, its place here is this series' reading.Line control of workflow. Predicted from the operating variability scale of charter, with a multiple correlation of 0.57 (Pugh and colleagues 1969).Size of supportive component. The fourth underlying dimension in Pugh and colleagues (1968). The records read give it no context predictor: the 1969 context study predicts only the other three.A disputed relation. Donaldson, Child, and Aldrich (1975) report moderately high negative correlations between structuring of activities and centralization in Child's national study of 82 organizations, and lower ones at Aston. It is one of the grounds on which this series contests the machine bureaucracy's centralization cell.

What had been treated as one bureaucratic type came apart into four underlying dimensions, three of them predicted by different parts of context. Wagner (2021) found that many of the links among formalization, standardization, specialization, vertical differentiation, and decentralization have weakened since an earlier meta-analysis found them significantly intercorrelated.

Source: Pugh and colleagues 1968, a multi-organization comparative survey; Pugh and colleagues 1969a, a multi-organization comparative survey of 46 organizations; Hinings and Lee 1971, a small multi-firm replication; Wagner 2021, a meta-analysis of 346 correlations from 155 published articles; Donaldson and colleagues 1975, a discussion.

Where it came from

Max Weber set out the ideal type in Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (1922): legal authority exercised through a hierarchy of offices, written rules and files, and officials appointed by qualification.

The forms by first year

Schools that treat this form: Bureaucracy and its critics; Classical administration; Structural contingency theory; the French bureaucratic school (strategic analysis); Configuration theory; Labor process and critical theory; Population ecology; and Societal effect and comparative business systems.

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.

Henry Mintzberg named the machine bureaucracy in The Structuring of Organizations (1979; summarized 1980), one of five configurations, answering how to run large volumes of routine work predictably, impersonally, and at low unit cost. The Aston studies measured its dimensions (Pugh and colleagues 1968, 1969).

Where it fits

Mintzberg (1980) and Burton and Obel (2004), the most developed scholarly fit model, ground most cells in theory. The Aston studies measured dimensions, not this form; they are premises. Pennings (1975), a quantitative field test of the structural-contingency model, found the fit of environment and structure did not explain effectiveness, a limit on the uncertainty and complexity cells; Donaldson (2001) blames this and Mohr's null result on method. Child (1972), an argument, objects that contingency theory leaves out power-holders' choice of structure.

SizeContestedTheorySmallStrainMediumPartialLargeContestedAgeContestedTheoryYoungContestedEstablishedPartialOldFitsEnvironmental uncertainty (unpredictability, dynamism)ContestedTheoryStableFitsShiftingContestedUnpredictableContestedEnvironmental complexityContestedTheorySimpleFitsModeratePartialComplexContestedMunificence and hostilityContestedJudgmentHostileContestedNeutralPartialMunificentContestedDiversity of products and marketsTheorySingle or dominant businessFitsRelated diversificationStrainUnrelated diversificationStrainStrategy typeTheoryDefender (exploitation)FitsAnalyzer (exploitation and exploration)PartialProspector (exploration)StrainTechnology and routinenessContestedTheoryRoutineFitsMixedContestedNonroutineContestedInterdependenceTheoryPooledFitsSequentialFitsReciprocalStrainKnowledge intensity and professionalizationTheoryLowFitsModeratePartialHighStrainGlobal integration pressureJudgmentLowPartialModeratePartialHighPartialLocal responsiveness pressureJudgmentLowPartialModeratePartialHighStrain

SizeContestedTheorySmallStrainMediumPartialLargeContestedAgeContestedTheoryYoungContestedEstablishedPartialOldFitsEnvironmental uncertainty (unpredictability, dynamism)ContestedTheoryStableFitsShiftingContestedUnpredictableContestedEnvironmental complexityContestedTheorySimpleFitsModeratePartialComplexContestedMunificence and hostilityContestedJudgmentHostileContestedNeutralPartialMunificentContestedDiversity of products and marketsTheorySingle or dominant businessFitsRelated diversificationStrainUnrelated diversificationStrainStrategy typeTheoryDefender (exploitation)FitsAnalyzer (exploitation and exploration)PartialProspector (exploration)StrainTechnology and routinenessContestedTheoryRoutineFitsMixedContestedNonroutineContestedInterdependenceTheoryPooledFitsSequentialFitsReciprocalStrainKnowledge intensity and professionalizationTheoryLowFitsModeratePartialHighStrainGlobal integration pressureJudgmentLowPartialModeratePartialHighPartialLocal responsiveness pressureJudgmentLowPartialModeratePartialHighStrain

Select a factor to read its reason, sources, basis, and grade.Size. Larger organizations are more specialized, standardized, and formalized, which is what this form is made of; a small organization has too little routine volume to justify a technostructure. Basis: Theory. Grade: conceptual only, no empirical test. Sources: Hinings and Lee 1971; Pugh and colleagues 1969a; Child and Mansfield 1972; Hickson and colleagues 1974; Blau 1970; Mintzberg 1980; Child 1973; Pugh and colleagues 1969b; Aldrich 1972; Maurice and colleagues 1980; Tolbert and Zucker 1983. View 1: Small strain, Medium partial, Large fits. Mintzberg places the machine bureaucracy in older, larger organizations, and the Aston program and its replications relate size to structuring, the specialization, formalization, and standardization this form is made of. Sources: Hinings and Lee 1971; Pugh and colleagues 1969a; Hickson and colleagues 1974; Child and Mansfield 1972; Mintzberg 1980. View 2: Small strain, Medium partial, Large partial. Size is not itself the major determinant of formalization, which follows complexity more directly, and size is the major predictor of decentralization, against this form's central control. Sources: Child 1973.Age. Rules and standards accumulate with time, and older organizations favor the reliable, repeatable structure this form provides. Basis: Theory. Grade: conceptual only, no empirical test. Sources: Mintzberg 1980; Hannan and Freeman 1984; Greiner 1972; Sine and colleagues 2006; Baron and colleagues 1999. View 1: Young strain, Established partial, Old fits. Machine bureaucracy goes with older, larger organizations (Mintzberg 1980), and inertia and the value of reliable routines rise with age (Hannan and Freeman 1984). Sources: Mintzberg 1980; Hannan and Freeman 1984. View 2: Young partial, Established partial, Old fits. Young ventures with more formalized, specialized founding teams outperformed organic ones, so formal structure can serve a young firm. Sources: Sine and colleagues 2006.Environmental uncertainty (unpredictability, dynamism). Standardized work and central rules are efficient while conditions are predictable; when they change often and unforeseeably, the rules lag and exceptions flood the hierarchy. Basis: Theory. Grade: conceptual only, no empirical test. Sources: Mintzberg 1980; Burns and Stalker 1961; Burton and Obel 2004; Galbraith 1973; Burton and colleagues 2020a; Sine and colleagues 2006; Bigley and Roberts 2001; Adler and colleagues 1999; Pennings 1975; Doty and colleagues 1993. View 1: Stable fits, Shifting partial, Unpredictable strain. Machine bureaucracy belongs in simple, stable environments (Mintzberg 1980), mechanistic systems in conditions close to stability (Burns and Stalker 1961), and a nonflexible structure in a turbulent environment is a misfit (Burton and Obel 2004). Sources: Mintzberg 1980; Burns and Stalker 1961; Burton and Obel 2004. View 2: Stable fits, Shifting fits, Unpredictable partial. Bureaucratic structure can be made flexible: formalized new ventures did better in a dynamic sector, and a fire department and an auto plant combined strict rules with adaptability. Sources: Sine and colleagues 2006; Bigley and Roberts 2001; Adler and colleagues 1999.Environmental complexity. Rules written by analysts work when few, similar factors bear on decisions; a complex environment pushes decisions down, which the centralized bureaucracy resists. Basis: Theory. Grade: conceptual only, no empirical test. Sources: Mintzberg 1980; Burton and Obel 2004; Bigley and Roberts 2001; Pennings 1975. View 1: Simple fits, Moderate partial, Complex strain. Rules written by analysts work when few, similar factors bear on decisions; a complex environment pushes decisions down, which the centralized bureaucracy resists. Sources: Mintzberg 1980; Burton and Obel 2004. View 2: Simple fits, Moderate partial, Complex partial. In one fire department a distinctively bureaucratic command system produced flexible, reliable temporary organizations for complex and volatile tasks. Sources: Bigley and Roberts 2001.Munificence and hostility. Works disagree: placed on the fit model's rules the bureaucracy half fits a hostile environment, while a survey of small firms found mechanistic structures paying off only in benign environments, and Mintzberg has crises suspend standard procedures. Basis: Judgment. Sources: Burton and Obel 2004; Covin and Slevin 1989; Mintzberg 1980. View 1: Hostile partial, Neutral partial, Munificent partial. Placed on the fit model's rules, the bureaucracy meets the call for high centralization under extreme hostility and fails the call for low formalization and a fast reaction; the rules say nothing about benign environments. Sources: Burton and Obel 2004. View 2: Hostile strain, Neutral partial, Munificent fits. Among 161 small manufacturers, mechanistic structures went with better performance in benign environments and organic ones in hostile environments; and extreme hostility drives most organizations to the simple structure for a time, suspending their standard operating procedures. Sources: Covin and Slevin 1989; Mintzberg 1980.Diversity of products and markets. A centralized rule-bound bureaucracy runs one mass-production business; diversification overloads the center that writes the rules. Basis: Theory. Grade: conceptual only, no empirical test. Sources: Chandler 1962; Mintzberg 1980; Burton and Obel 2004.Strategy type. High formalization and centralization are what Burton and Obel prescribe for a defender, and they name the machine bureaucracy as a configuration a prospector should not use. Basis: Theory. Grade: conceptual only, no empirical test. Sources: Burton and Obel 2004; Mintzberg 1980; Miles and Snow 1978.Technology and routineness. Standardizing the work process is the answer to routine work, and Burton and Obel prescribe high formalization and rules for it; work with many unanalyzable exceptions cannot be written into standards in advance. Basis: Theory. Grade: conceptual only, no empirical test. Sources: Burton and Obel 2004; Mintzberg 1980; Perrow 1967; Thompson 1967; Pugh and colleagues 1969b; Hickson and colleagues 1974; Aldrich 1972; Child and Mansfield 1972; Hickson and colleagues 1969; Adler and colleagues 1999; Lincoln and colleagues 1986; Doty and colleagues 1993; Mohr 1971. View 1: Routine fits, Mixed partial, Nonroutine strain. Routine work is what standardized work processes and high formalization are for, and Burton and Obel prescribe rules and planning for it. Sources: Burton and Obel 2004; Mintzberg 1980; Perrow 1967. View 2: Routine fits, Mixed fits, Nonroutine partial. One highly bureaucratic plant handled nonroutine model changeovers efficiently through routines for changing routines, temporal separation of routine and nonroutine work, and partitioned subunits, so standards can reach exceptions that have known methods. Sources: Adler and colleagues 1999.Interdependence. Standards coordinate units that only share resources, and in mass production the line itself coordinates sequential work; work that must go back and forth calls for mutual adjustment the form does not supply. Basis: Theory. Grade: conceptual only, no empirical test. Sources: Thompson 1967; Burton and Obel 2004; Mintzberg 1980.Knowledge intensity and professionalization. Work standards set by analysts suit work learned on the job; complex professional work cannot easily be formalized, and professionalization and bureaucratization are generally inversely related. Basis: Theory. Grade: conceptual only, no empirical test. Sources: Mintzberg 1980; Hall 1968.Global integration pressure. Central work standards can be applied in every country, but no work read ties the machine bureaucracy to integration pressure across countries, so this factor gives no reason for or against. Basis: Judgment. Sources: Hickson and colleagues 1974.Local responsiveness pressure. Standard work processes set centrally suit simple, stable settings; strong pressure to adapt offerings and operations country by country makes the setting complex and works against one set of standards. Basis: Judgment. Sources: Mintzberg 1980.

Counting each contested cell by its first view, the 36 settings read Fits at 10, Partial at 15, and Strain at 11. Six of the twelve factor cells are contested, and three rest on judgment.

Source: Hinings and Lee 1971, a small multi-firm replication; Pugh and colleagues 1969a, a multi-organization comparative survey of 46 organizations; Child and Mansfield 1972, a multi-firm comparative study; Hickson and colleagues 1974, a multi-firm study in three countries; Blau 1970; Mintzberg 1980, a synthesis of earlier research, offering propositions without a new test; Child 1973; Pugh and colleagues 1969b, a multi-organization comparative survey; Aldrich 1972, a reanalysis of a multi-organization data set; Maurice and colleagues 1980, a comparison of matched factories in three countries; Tolbert and Zucker 1983; Hannan and Freeman 1984; Greiner 1972, a conceptual model with no systematic test; Sine and colleagues 2006, a quantitative study of new ventures in one sector; Baron and colleagues 1999, a longitudinal study of many young firms; Burns and Stalker 1961, a field study of twenty firms; Burton and Obel 2004; Galbraith 1973; Burton and colleagues 2020a; Bigley and Roberts 2001, one inductive case study; Adler and colleagues 1999, one case study of a single plant; Pennings 1975, a quantitative field test of the structural-contingency model; Doty and colleagues 1993, a quantitative test across a sample of organizations; Covin and Slevin 1989, a survey of 161 small manufacturers; Chandler 1962, several independent case histories by a historian; Miles and Snow 1978; Perrow 1967; Thompson 1967; Hickson and colleagues 1969, a multi-organization comparative survey; Lincoln and colleagues 1986, a survey of about a hundred plants in two countries; Mohr 1971, a quantitative field study of technology and structure; Hall 1968, a study of professionals across several occupations and their organizations.

Size

SmallMediumLargeAny

Age

YoungEstablishedOldAny

Environmental uncertainty (unpredictability, dynamism)

StableShiftingUnpredictableAny

Environmental complexity

SimpleModerateComplexAny

Munificence and hostility

HostileNeutralMunificentAny

Diversity of products and markets

SingleRelatedUnrelatedAny

Strategy type

DefenderAnalyzerProspectorAny

Technology and routineness

RoutineMixedNonroutineAny

Interdependence

PooledSequentialReciprocalAny

Knowledge intensity and professionalization

LowModerateHighAny

Global integration pressure

LowModerateHighAny

Local responsiveness pressure

LowModerateHighAny

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 (its sources disagree): A prospector bound by heavy rules. Disputed: Burton and Obel 2004; against it, Sine and colleagues 2006; Adler and Borys 1996.
• Flagged (its sources disagree): A prospector that decides everything at the top. Disputed: Burton and Obel 2004; against it, Burton and Obel 2004.
• Flagged (its sources disagree): A defender with authority spread wide. Disputed: Burton and Obel 2004; against it, Mintzberg 1980.
• Flagged (it meets the form only through part of its profile): An analyzer with authority spread wide. Source: Burton and Obel 2004.
• Flagged (its sources disagree): A large organization that decides everything at the top. Disputed: Burton and Obel 2004; against it, Mintzberg 1980.
• Flagged (its sources disagree): A small organization with a large one's rules. Disputed: Burton and Obel 2004; against it, Sine and colleagues 2006.
• Flagged (its sources disagree): Nonroutine work bound by procedures. Disputed: Burton and Obel 2004; against it, Adler and colleagues 1999; Adler and Borys 1996; against it, Hickson and colleagues 1969; Child and Mansfield 1972.
• Flagged (its sources disagree): Nonroutine work decided at the top. Disputed: Burton and Obel 2004; against it, Hickson and colleagues 1969; Child and Mansfield 1972; Mohr 1971.
• Flagged (its sources disagree): Heavy rules in an unpredictable environment. Disputed: Burton and Obel 2004; against it, Sine and colleagues 2006; Bigley and Roberts 2001; Adler and Borys 1996.
• Flagged (it meets the form only through part of its profile): Central decisions in a turbulent environment. Source: Burton and Obel 2004.
• Flagged (its sources disagree): Reactor: a prospector's strategy on a defender's structure. Disputed: Miles and Snow 1978; Burton and Obel 2004; against it, Burton and colleagues 2015b; Snow and Hrebiniak 1980.
• Flagged (its sources disagree): Reactor: a defender's structure kept after the environment changed. Disputed: Miles and Snow 1978; Burton and Obel 2004; against it, Sine and colleagues 2006; Bigley and Roberts 2001; Adler and Borys 1996.
• Sinks the form: One way of working for very different parts of the environment. Source: Lawrence and Lorsch 1967a; Lawrence and Lorsch 1967b.
• Flagged (its sources disagree): The hierarchy alone carries an unpredictable environment. Disputed: Galbraith 1974; Galbraith 1973; against it, Burton and Obel 2004; Mintzberg 1980.
• Flagged (its sources disagree): The hierarchy alone carries nonroutine work. Disputed: Galbraith 1974; Galbraith 1973; against it, Schoonhoven 1981.
• Sinks the form: The hierarchy alone carries reciprocal work. Source: Galbraith 1973; Galbraith 1974; Thompson 1967.
• Sinks the form: 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.

Open these settings in the explorerReset

The misfit rules that can fire for this form

• A prospector bound by heavy rules fires when Strategy type at Prospector (exploration): flagged (its sources disagree). Disputed: Burton and Obel 2004; against it, Sine and colleagues 2006; Adler and Borys 1996.
• A prospector that decides everything at the top fires when Strategy type at Prospector (exploration): flagged (its sources disagree). Disputed: Burton and Obel 2004; against it, Burton and Obel 2004.
• A defender with authority spread wide fires when Strategy type at Defender (exploitation): flagged (its sources disagree). Disputed: Burton and Obel 2004; against it, Mintzberg 1980.
• An analyzer with authority spread wide fires when Strategy type at Analyzer (exploitation and exploration): flagged (it meets the form only through part of its profile). Source: Burton and Obel 2004.
• A large organization that decides everything at the top fires when Size at Large: flagged (its sources disagree). Disputed: Burton and Obel 2004; against it, Mintzberg 1980.
• A small organization with a large one's rules fires when Size at Small: flagged (its sources disagree). Disputed: Burton and Obel 2004; against it, Sine and colleagues 2006.
• Nonroutine work bound by procedures fires when Technology and routineness at Nonroutine: flagged (its sources disagree). Disputed: Burton and Obel 2004; against it, Adler and colleagues 1999; Adler and Borys 1996; against it, Hickson and colleagues 1969; Child and Mansfield 1972.
• Nonroutine work decided at the top fires when Technology and routineness at Nonroutine: flagged (its sources disagree). Disputed: Burton and Obel 2004; against it, Hickson and colleagues 1969; Child and Mansfield 1972; Mohr 1971.
• Heavy rules in an unpredictable environment fires when Environmental uncertainty (unpredictability, dynamism) at Unpredictable: flagged (its sources disagree). Disputed: Burton and Obel 2004; against it, Sine and colleagues 2006; Bigley and Roberts 2001; Adler and Borys 1996.
• Central decisions in a turbulent environment fires when Environmental uncertainty (unpredictability, dynamism) at Unpredictable and Environmental complexity at Complex: flagged (it meets the form only through part of its profile). Source: Burton and Obel 2004.
• Reactor: a prospector's strategy on a defender's structure fires when Strategy type at Prospector (exploration): flagged (its sources disagree). Disputed: Miles and Snow 1978; Burton and Obel 2004; against it, Burton and colleagues 2015b; Snow and Hrebiniak 1980.
• Reactor: a defender's structure kept after the environment changed fires when Strategy type at Defender (exploitation) and Environmental uncertainty (unpredictability, dynamism) at Unpredictable: flagged (its sources disagree). Disputed: Miles and Snow 1978; Burton and Obel 2004; against it, Sine and colleagues 2006; Bigley and Roberts 2001; Adler and Borys 1996.
• One way of working for very different parts of the environment fires when Environmental complexity at Complex: sinks the form. Source: Lawrence and Lorsch 1967a; Lawrence and Lorsch 1967b.
• The hierarchy alone carries an unpredictable environment fires when Environmental uncertainty (unpredictability, dynamism) at Unpredictable: flagged (its sources disagree). Disputed: Galbraith 1974; Galbraith 1973; against it, Burton and Obel 2004; Mintzberg 1980.
• The hierarchy alone carries nonroutine work fires when Technology and routineness at Nonroutine: flagged (its sources disagree). Disputed: Galbraith 1974; Galbraith 1973; against it, Schoonhoven 1981.
• The hierarchy alone carries reciprocal work fires when Interdependence at Reciprocal: sinks the form. Source: Galbraith 1973; Galbraith 1974; Thompson 1967.
• Reciprocal work coordinated by standards fires when Interdependence at Reciprocal: sinks the form. Source: Thompson 1967; Van de Ven and colleagues 1976.

Of the 39 contingency misfit rules, 17 can fire for this form: three would sink it and 14 would only flag it.

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

• Size. Contested. Mintzberg (1980) and the Aston program: fits large, partial medium, strain small. Child (1973): size predicts decentralization, so large is partial. Tolbert and Zucker (1983, ungraded here) give the institutional dissent: cities' early, unrequired adoption of civil service rules followed city characteristics; late adoption did not.
• Age. Contested. Fits old, partial established, strain young (Mintzberg 1980; Hannan and Freeman 1984). Sine and colleagues (2006), a quantitative study of new ventures in one sector, where formalized founding teams outperformed: young is partial; they measured the team, not the form.
• Environmental uncertainty. Contested. Fits stable, partial shifting, strain unpredictable (Mintzberg 1980; Burns and Stalker 1961, as theory; Burton and Obel 2004). The dissent rests on Sine and colleagues (2006) and two cases, a fire department (Bigley and Roberts 2001, one inductive case study) and NUMMI: fits stable and shifting, partial unpredictable.
• Environmental complexity. Contested. Fits simple, partial moderate, strain complex (Mintzberg 1980; Burton and Obel 2004). Bigley and Roberts (2001), one temporary organization: partial for complex.
• Munificence and hostility. Our judgment, and contested. Burton and Obel's (2004) rules speak only to hostility, calling for high centralization only when it is extreme and for low formalization: partial there, and partial elsewhere as placements. Covin and Slevin (1989), a survey of 161 small manufacturers (Mintzberg puts this form in large ones), found mechanistic structure paid off in benign environments, and Mintzberg (1980) has extreme hostility suspend standard procedures: strain hostile, partial neutral, fits munificent.
• Diversity. Fits a single business; strain for diversification (Mintzberg 1980; Burton and Obel 2004; Chandler 1962, as theory).
• Strategy. Fits defender, partial analyzer, strain prospector; Burton and Obel (2004) name this form as one a prospector should not use. The defender's fit is our judgment: their defender rule calls for high formalization and centralization but names a functional configuration.
• Technology. Contested. Fits routine, partial mixed, strain nonroutine (Burton and Obel 2004; Mintzberg 1980; Perrow 1967). Adler and colleagues (1999), one case study of NUMMI's model changeovers: fits routine and mixed (reading changeovers as mixed is our judgment), partial nonroutine. Limits: Hickson, Pugh, and Pheysey (1969), a multi-organization comparative survey, found the technological imperative generally not supported, and Mohr (1971), a quantitative field study of technology and structure, no support for effectiveness depending on how technology and structure match.
• Interdependence. Fits pooled and sequential, strain reciprocal (Thompson 1967; Burton and Obel 2004; Mintzberg 1980).
• Knowledge intensity. Fits low, partial moderate (interpolated), strain high (Mintzberg 1980; Hall 1968, as theory).
• Global integration pressure. Partial throughout, our judgment: no work read ties the form to it.
• Local responsiveness pressure. Partial low and moderate, strain high, our judgment on Mintzberg's (1980) premise that the form suits simple settings.

What it does well

In theory, it turns out routine work at volume, predictably, and cheaply (Mintzberg 1979), and Weber claimed for bureaucracy technical superiority in precision, speed, and reliability.

Adler and colleagues (1999), one case study, found a highly bureaucratic plant exceptionally flexible. Bunderson and Boumgarden (2010), a field study of many teams in one firm, studied the form's ingredients, not the form: more specialization, formalization, and hierarchy promoted learning in self-managed teams with stable tasks.

What it costs

In theory, it pays for a large staff beside the line, and rules cost flexibility. George and colleagues (2021), a meta-analysis of public administration studies, found that red tape (burdensome rules, not formalization as such) has a small-to-medium negative effect on performance and employee outcomes, worse when self-imposed.

Braverman (1974) argued that separating conception from execution deskills work, which Adler (2007) disputes, arguing for long-term skill upgrading; Edwards (1979) traced bureaucratic control through rules and careers; Acker (1990) argues that abstract jobs assume a worker who is in fact a man. At NUMMI, Adler, Goldoftas, and Levine (1997), one case study of a single plant, report a 1993 OSHA citation over ergonomics in a model introduction and conclude that involvement did not remove all divergence of interests between management and workers but changed its terms. The human relations school stresses what impersonal rules cost motivation and cooperation (McGregor 1960, an argument) and that informal groups shaped output whatever the design (Roethlisberger and Dickson 1939, ungraded here). Lee and Edmondson (2017), a literature review, describe the managerial hierarchy's persistence and its limitations in dynamic conditions.

How it fails

Degree

Exceptions climb faster than the top can decideRules written for yesterday's conditionsFollowing the rule becomes the goalThe bureaucracy cannot learn from its errorsRegulator overloadEnvelope-edge collapseGoal displacement and metric gamingSignal attenuation up the hierarchy

Exceptions climb faster than the top can decideRules written for yesterday's conditionsFollowing the rule becomes the goalThe bureaucracy cannot learn from its errorsRegulator overloadEnvelope-edge collapseGoal displacement and metric gamingSignal attenuation up the hierarchy

How many ties the failure has. Highest: Exceptions climb faster than the top can decideRules written for yesterday's conditionsFollowing the rule becomes the goalThe bureaucracy cannot learn from its errorsRegulator overloadEnvelope-edge collapseGoal displacement and metric gamingSignal attenuation up the hierarchy

Select a failure to read its place in the network.Exceptions climb faster than the top can decide. Degree 1Rules written for yesterday's conditions. Degree 1Following the rule becomes the goal. Degree 1The bureaucracy cannot learn from its errors. Degree 1Regulator overload. Degree 1Envelope-edge collapse. Degree 1Goal displacement and metric gaming. Degree 1Signal attenuation up the hierarchy. Degree 1

Failure	Degree
Exceptions climb faster than the top can decide	1
Rules written for yesterday's conditions	1
Following the rule becomes the goal	1
The bureaucracy cannot learn from its errors	1
Regulator overload	1
Envelope-edge collapse	1
Goal displacement and metric gaming	1
Signal attenuation up the hierarchy	1

Four failure modes name four patterns, and no pattern is named by more than one.

Source: Galbraith 1973; Galbraith 1974; Burton and Obel 2004; Thompson 1967; Burns and Stalker 1961, a field study of twenty firms; Merton 1940, a conceptual essay with no test; Crozier 1964, two case studies by a scholar; Crozier 1963; d'Iribarne 1989.

Exceptions climb faster than the top can decide (regulator overload). Galbraith (1973, 1974) explains it as information load; the pure form lacks his remedies, such as slack or lateral relations.

1. Rules, hierarchy, and goals
2. Direct contact
3. Liaison roles
4. Task forces
5. Teams
6. Integrating roles
7. Managerial linking roles
8. Matrix

Overloaded: add the nextStep backReset

Rules, hierarchy, and goals. Coordination runs through rules and programs, referral up the hierarchy, and goal setting, with no designed lateral links.Lateral mechanisms, level 1 of 5: Hierarchy, rules, and goals only.Direct contact. Managers who share a problem settle it between themselves.Lateral mechanisms, level 2 of 5: Direct contact and liaison roles.Liaison roles. Where contact between two departments is heavy, a liaison role is set up to handle it.Lateral mechanisms, level 2 of 5: Direct contact and liaison roles.Task forces. Temporary groups of representatives from several departments solve shared problems.Lateral mechanisms, level 3 of 5: Task forces and teams.Teams. Recurring problems turn the temporary groups into permanent teams.Lateral mechanisms, level 3 of 5: Task forces and teams.Integrating roles. A product, program, or project manager integrates across departments, at first with expert power only.Lateral mechanisms, level 4 of 5: Integrating roles and managerial linking roles.Managerial linking roles. The integrating manager gains formal power over budgets.Lateral mechanisms, level 4 of 5: Integrating roles and managerial linking roles.Matrix. Two lines of authority are held at once, so some positions report both to a function and to a product or project.Lateral mechanisms, level 5 of 5: Matrix.

His three other strategies, beside the ladder: slack resources, self-contained tasks, and vertical information systems.

Galbraith's order: the processes 'evolve as follows with increases in uncertainty', each taken up when the one before no longer suffices. The figure takes no uncertainty input and shows no cost per step: he gives none, saying only that more lateral relations mean more managerial intensity.

1. Rules, hierarchy, and goals. Coordination runs through rules and programs, referral up the hierarchy, and goal setting, with no designed lateral links. Level 1 of 5: Hierarchy, rules, and goals only.
2. Direct contact. Managers who share a problem settle it between themselves. Level 2 of 5: Direct contact and liaison roles.
3. Liaison roles. Where contact between two departments is heavy, a liaison role is set up to handle it. Level 2 of 5: Direct contact and liaison roles.
4. Task forces. Temporary groups of representatives from several departments solve shared problems. Level 3 of 5: Task forces and teams.
5. Teams. Recurring problems turn the temporary groups into permanent teams. Level 3 of 5: Task forces and teams.
6. Integrating roles. A product, program, or project manager integrates across departments, at first with expert power only. Level 4 of 5: Integrating roles and managerial linking roles.
7. Managerial linking roles. The integrating manager gains formal power over budgets. Level 4 of 5: Integrating roles and managerial linking roles.
8. Matrix. Two lines of authority are held at once, so some positions report both to a function and to a product or project. Level 5 of 5: Matrix.

Galbraith gives an order, not thresholds: as uncertainty rises, each lateral process is taken up when the one before no longer suffices, up to the matrix, and the more of them in use, the greater the managerial intensity. Beside the ladder he names three other strategies: slack resources, self-contained tasks, and vertical information systems.

Source: Galbraith 1974; Galbraith 1973.

Rules written for yesterday's conditions. Outside them the form loses function, close to envelope-edge collapse. Burns and Stalker (1961), a field study of twenty firms, set mechanistic systems in conditions close to stability.

Following the rule becomes the goal. In Merton's (1940) conceptual essay, rule-following turns from means to end, the pattern Coordination Failures calls goal displacement.

The bureaucracy cannot learn from its errors. Crozier (1964), two case studies of French public organizations, describes isolated strata in an organization unable to correct its errors, close to signal attenuation up the hierarchy; in his French original (1963) it changes only through crisis, alternating with routine. D'Iribarne (1989) explains by a national logic of honor what Crozier attributed to power.

Each misfit rule is a proposition; an earlier version of Burton and Obel's rules was tested only as a set: Burton, Lauridsen, and Obel (2002), a quantitative study of 224 Danish small and medium-sized firms, none large, found lower return on assets with misfits but no further loss from added ones. Ten pair one factor with one structure, the interaction form of fit, which Drazin and Van de Ven (1985), a quantitative study of 629 work units, found unsupported.

Five rules fire undisputed; three sink the form, meeting every level its profile records: reciprocal work left to the hierarchy (Galbraith 1973, 1974) or to procedures, and one way of working for very different parts of the environment, the last two judgments (Thompson 1967; Lawrence and Lorsch 1967). Two only flag it: central decisions amid many unpredictable factors and wide authority in an analyzer (Burton and Obel 2004).

Twelve more fire, disputed: Burton and Obel's rules against heavy rules meet Adler and Borys (1996) on enabling formalization (prospector, unpredictability, nonroutine work), Sine and colleagues' ventures (prospector, unpredictability, small size), the incident command system (unpredictability), and, for nonroutine work, NUMMI, Hickson and colleagues (1969), and Child and Mansfield (1972). The unpredictability dissent meets our reading of Miles and Snow's (1978) reactor as a defender keeping its rules there. Their rules against central decisions meet, for nonroutine work, those last two and Mohr (1971); at large size, Mintzberg's centralized form; for a prospector, their own book, recommending a centralized simple configuration as one of three. Galbraith's overload rules meet Burton and Obel's (2004) and Mintzberg's (1980) simple configurations for simple environments and, on the task, Schoonhoven (1981), a quantitative study of hospital operating room suites. The reactor rule for a prospector, a judgment, meets Burton and colleagues' later book (2015), where a reactor strategy fits a calm environment, and Snow and Hrebiniak (1980), a study of top managers' perceptions in four industries: on data they call only suggestive, reactors trailed in competitive industries but not a regulated one, so where competition is weak the pairing need not cost performance.

Seven meet only one view of centralization, so none sinks the form: the four against central decisions and the prospector reactor rule meet Mintzberg's centralized level; the defender (disputed, Mintzberg 1980) and analyzer rules against wide authority, the Aston span's decentralized end.

What the research found

Pugh and colleagues (1968), a comparative survey of 52 English organizations, judged the bureaucratic type no longer useful; Hinings and Lee (1971), a small replication in nine firms, tied structuring to size; Child and Mansfield (1972), a multi-firm comparative study of 82 organizations, found size related to structure far more than technology; Aldrich (1972), a reanalysis of the Aston data, rebuilt the model with technology as an independent variable. Hickson and others (1974), a multi-firm study of 70 organizations in three countries, found context and structure related alike in each. The societal-effect school disputes this: Maurice and colleagues (1980), a comparison of matched factories in three countries, found national differences more pervasive than usually recognized, and Lincoln and colleagues (1986), a survey of about a hundred plants in two countries, found Japanese plants taller and less shaped by operations technology than American plants.

Doty and colleagues (1993), a quantitative test across a sample of organizations, found resemblance to Mintzberg's (1980) types did not predict effectiveness; Krabberød (2015), reviewing the 218 articles citing that test, found none discussed what it meant for his theory and argues it has not been shown exhaustive. Ketchen and colleagues (1997), a meta-analysis of 40 tests, found configurations partly explain performance, but pooled definitions, many of them strategy types; tests of pure structural types are mixed.

Adler (2012), a conceptual essay, argues that even enabling bureaucracy typically appears to employees as enabling and coercive at once.

Wagner (2021), a meta-analysis of 346 correlations from 155 articles, found many links among five structural dimensions weakened since an earlier meta-analysis, which he reads as failing to give consistent support to the tenet that they go together. Monteiro and Adler (2022), the most recent study of the form here, is a review with no new data arguing that bureaucracy remains the predominant form.

The evidence ledger holds 27 studies filed under this form.

In practice: one published case

NUMMI, a Toyota subsidiary in Fremont, California, is the subject of Adler, Goldoftas, and Levine (1999), one case study of a single plant.

The authors start from a claim common in organization theory: efficiency requires bureaucracy, bureaucracy impedes flexibility, and organizations therefore face a tradeoff between the two. Some researchers argue the tradeoff can be shifted; others point to obstacles. NUMMI, an auto assembly plant that appeared far above average industry performance in both efficiency and flexibility, relied on a highly bureaucratic organization to achieve its high efficiency. The authors analyzed two major model changeovers there to understand those obstacles and how they might be overcome.

They found four mechanisms. Metaroutines, routines for changing other routines, facilitated the efficient performance of nonroutine tasks. Workers and suppliers contributed to nonroutine tasks while they worked in routine production. Routine and nonroutine tasks were separated in time, and workers switched between them in sequence. And novel partitioning let differentiated subunits work in parallel on routine and nonroutine tasks.

The authors concluded that the efficiency and flexibility tradeoff that organization theory assigns to bureaucracy can be shifted, but that NUMMI's success with these mechanisms depended on the wider organizational context, most notably training, trust, and leadership.

Source: Adler and colleagues 1999. Flexibility versus efficiency? A case study of model changeovers in the Toyota production system, Organization Science 10(1), 43 to 68; one case study of a single plant.

Variants and near relatives

Workflow, personnel, and full bureaucracy (Pugh, Hickson, and Hinings 1969, a multi-organization comparative survey): seven types, six of them bureaucracies, from full bureaucracy to implicitly structured organizations, which this site places nearest the simple structure.

Crozier's French bureaucratic model, the vicious circle (Crozier 1963, 1964): impersonal rules and centralization protect members from depending on one another, and power gathers around the uncertainties the rules cannot remove.

Mock, representative, and punishment-centered bureaucracy (Gouldner 1954, one case study of a gypsum plant): rules ignored by all, rules both sides support, and rules one side enforces on the other, which the other evades. Kingsley's (1944) representative bureaucracy belongs to People & Talent.

Enabling and coercive bureaucracy (Adler and Borys 1996, conceptual): formalization that helps users master their work against formalization that forces compliance.

Soft bureaucracy and the neo-bureaucratic state answers the claim, made for collaborative community under the missionary organization, that post-bureaucratic forms replace bureaucracy: central control carried by looser, entrepreneurial units, not a tall line (Courpasson 2000); Farrell and Morris (2003) argue that public-service reforms may have reduced hierarchy yet increased bureaucratic tendencies. Delayering is a different move, though Wulf (2012), a summary for managers of multi-firm panel studies, finds more control at the top of flattened firms.

Mechanistic management system (Burns and Stalker 1961): the stable pole of a continuum to organic systems.

Communist neo-traditional enterprise, the danwei (Walder 1986): workers' organized dependence on the enterprise for employment and nonwage needs, on party and management, and on superiors, run through patronage, read in passages. Edinonachalie, Soviet one-man management, is a matter of decision rights, not a form; Kuromiya (1984) contests the Western reading, despotic managers.

Instrument and closed system (Mintzberg 1984): this structure controlled from outside through performance standards, or by its own administrators pursuing growth.

Incident command system (Bigley and Roberts 2001): a distinctively bureaucratic system that assembles flexible, reliable temporary organizations for volatile tasks. The Disaster Research Center typology (Dynes and colleagues 1972) sorts a community's responders, not one organization's design.

Infinitely flat organization (Quinn and colleagues 1996): no inherent limit to its span, because the intellect sits at the center and every node links to it through systems and rules; it is not delayering. The algorithmically managed organization goes further: software directs, evaluates, and disciplines the work continuously.

The sala (Riggs 1961, 1962): the prismatic office, where administrative rationality meets family and communal ties, read in passages only.

Patrimonial administration (Scott and Davis 2007, presenting Weber): the household writ large, the type bureaucracy was set against, read in passages only.

This form standardizes the work process itself, through its own analysts; the nearest neighbor, the professional bureaucracy, standardizes skills learned outside it.

Lipsky's (1980) street-level bureaucracy, Wilson's (1989) procedural organization, and Goffman's (1961) total institution are covered elsewhere.

Its analysts, inside the organization, design and standardize the work process itself; the professional bureaucracy standardizes skills learned outside it and leaves the work to the professional.

Machine bureaucracy

Reports toAdvises, or reports indirectlyWStandardization of work processes

Professional bureaucracy

Reports toSStandardization of skillsLayers contested: Blau (1968) found narrower first-line spans and more levels in agencies needing higher qualifications.

1. 1Analysts inside the machine bureaucracy design the work process the operators follow; in the professional bureaucracy, skills its professionals learned in training outside it do the coordinating.
2. 2The machine bureaucracy groups its operators by function alone; the professional bureaucracy groups its operating core by expertise and by client type at once.
3. 3The machine bureaucracy is tall, with an elaborate middle line; the professional bureaucracy is flat to moderate on our judgment, though Blau (1968) found more levels where higher qualifications were required.

Differs on 10 of 11 dimensions

• Basis of grouping Function or process; Professional bureaucracy: Two or more at once
• Standardization and formalization High; Professional bureaucracy: Low
• Centralization Centralized; Professional bureaucracy: Decentralized
• Layers and span of control Tall; Professional bureaucracy: Flat to moderate
• Decision rights and the locus of authority Limited horizontal decentralization; Professional bureaucracy: Vertical and horizontal decentralization
• Prime coordinating mechanism Standardization of work processes; Professional bureaucracy: Standardization of skills
• Lateral mechanisms Hierarchy, rules, and goals only; Professional bureaucracy: Task forces and teams
• Differentiation against integration Low differentiation, light integration; Professional bureaucracy: Moderate differentiation, some integrating roles
• Mode of exchange and control Bureaucracy; Professional bureaucracy: Bureaucracy and clan
• Boundary permeability Closed; Professional bureaucracy: Selective

Each coordinates its operating core by standardization and keeps support staff beside the line. The machine bureaucracy standardizes the work process through its own analysts, and the professional bureaucracy standardizes skills learned outside it and leaves the work to the professional.

Source: Mintzberg 1980, a synthesis of earlier research, offering propositions without a new test; Blau 1968, a comparison of 250 government agencies, replicating an earlier study of 150.

Moving into or out of it

Organizations may grow into it. In Greiner's (1972) conceptual model, with no systematic test, functions, specialized jobs, budgets, and work standards arrive in the second phase, Direction. DeSantola and colleagues (2023), a longitudinal quantitative study of thousands of young ventures, qualify such stage accounts: ventures do not march uniformly toward professionalization. Founding matters too: in Baron, Hannan, and Burton (1999), a longitudinal study of many young firms, firms whose founders held a bureaucratic employment model later grew more administratively intense than similar firms.

Phase 1Creativity: crisis of leadershipPhase 2Direction: crisis of autonomyPhase 3Delegation: crisis of controlPhase 4Coordination: crisis of red tapePhase 5Collaboration: crisis unnamed in 1972

Phase 1Creativity: crisis of leadershipPhase 2Direction: crisis of autonomyPhase 3Delegation: crisis of controlPhase 4Coordination: crisis of red tapePhase 5Collaboration: crisis unnamed in 1972

Select a phase to read where a form in this series meets it.Phase 1. Creativity, the first phase, is led by founders and ends in a crisis of leadership. It is the phase of the simple structure, run by one leader, often the founder or owner.Phase 2. Under Direction, functions come in as the firm grows past its founders, which brings it from a simple structure into the functional form after the founders' crisis of leadership. Jobs grow specialized, budgets and work standards are adopted, and communication grows formal and impersonal, so on this series' reading organizations may grow toward the machine bureaucracy here. The phase ends in a crisis of autonomy.Phase 3. Delegation ends in a crisis of control. The line and staff page reads the coordination phase that follows as a headquarters above the units this phase delegated to, more than advisers beside one line.Phase 4. In Coordination, decentralized units are merged into product groups, and formal systems and headquarters staff multiply until the phase ends in a crisis of red tape. The line and staff form's ratings for size and age draw on this phase's headquarters staff.Phase 5. Collaboration: a matrix-type structure comes in, though Greiner's later commentary confines it largely to senior management, and the commentary has fewer consulting experts replacing control-oriented staff. Greiner marked the crisis ending this phase with a question mark in 1972, guessing at employees' psychological saturation; his later commentary calls that guess wrong and names a crisis of finding no internal solution for further growth.

1. Phase 1. Creativity, the first phase, is led by founders and ends in a crisis of leadership. It is the phase of the simple structure, run by one leader, often the founder or owner.
2. Phase 2. Under Direction, functions come in as the firm grows past its founders, which brings it from a simple structure into the functional form after the founders' crisis of leadership. Jobs grow specialized, budgets and work standards are adopted, and communication grows formal and impersonal, so on this series' reading organizations may grow toward the machine bureaucracy here. The phase ends in a crisis of autonomy.
3. Phase 3. Delegation ends in a crisis of control. The line and staff page reads the coordination phase that follows as a headquarters above the units this phase delegated to, more than advisers beside one line.
4. Phase 4. In Coordination, decentralized units are merged into product groups, and formal systems and headquarters staff multiply until the phase ends in a crisis of red tape. The line and staff form's ratings for size and age draw on this phase's headquarters staff.
5. Phase 5. Collaboration: a matrix-type structure comes in, though Greiner's later commentary confines it largely to senior management, and the commentary has fewer consulting experts replacing control-oriented staff. Greiner marked the crisis ending this phase with a question mark in 1972, guessing at employees' psychological saturation; his later commentary calls that guess wrong and names a crisis of finding no internal solution for further growth.

Greiner's model opens with the founder-led phase of the simple structure; functions, specialized jobs, and work standards come in second, and formal systems and headquarters staff multiply over product groups in the fourth, the phase the line and staff page draws on. He calls the phases approximations drawn from case histories, and his later commentary replaces his 1972 guess at the crisis that ends the fifth.

Source: Greiner 1972, a conceptual model with no systematic test; DeSantola and colleagues 2023, a longitudinal quantitative study of thousands of young ventures.

For Hannan and Freeman (1984), older organizations are more inert and reorganization resets the liability-of-newness clock; Amburgey and colleagues (1993), a quantitative study of organizational change and failure rates, found the effects of change on failure vary by type of change and over time. Donaldson (1995) argues ecology understates managers' capacity to adapt structure; Astley and Van de Ven (1983) set selection against strategic choice. The configuration school holds that organizations move between types in large jumps; Donaldson (2001) replies that fits form a continuum, with most organizations at intermediate points, not in a few types, and that change toward fit is mostly incremental. Girod and Whittington (2016), a multi-firm panel study, found pervasive restructuring generally went with better performance, reversed in dynamic environments.

Change & Transformation takes up how a reorganization is run.

The thinking behind it

Max Weber (1922): the ideal type of rational-legal authority, the form's promise.

Henry Mintzberg (1979, 1980): coordination by work standards from the technostructure; the caveat is the Aston conclusion that bureaucracy takes several forms, not one type.

Derek Pugh (1968, 1969, with Hickson and others): dimensions of structure and a taxonomy of bureaucracies, why the form is read here as dimensions.

Paul Adler (1996, with Borys; 2012): enabling and coercive bureaucracy, why its costs depend on design, and its ambivalence, both at once.

Richard Burton and Børge Obel (2004): multi-contingency fit and misfit rules, the source of most cells here.

Also called

Weberian bureaucracy and classic bureaucracy; mechanistic organization, after Burns and Stalker (1961); the machine organization (Mintzberg 1989); and the programmed machine (Mintzberg 2023, 2024; Adinolfi and Rebora 2024). Mintzberg (1980) equates it with workflow bureaucracy (Pugh, Hickson, and Hinings 1969).

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