Works
- Organizational Consultant: creating a useable theory for organizational design, Management Science 42(12), 1648 to 1662, 1996
- Return on assets loss from situational and contingency misfits, Management Science 48(11), 1461 to 1485, 2002
- Strategic organizational diagnosis and design: the dynamics of fit, Kluwer Academic Publishers (third edition), 2004
- How to get the matrix organization to work, Journal of Organization Design 4(3), 37 to 45, 2015
- The science of organizational design: fit between structure and coordination, Journal of Organization Design 7, article 5, 2018
- Organizational design: a step-by-step approach (fourth edition), Cambridge University Press, 2020
In Organizational Structures
Known for
The multi-contingency model of organization design
Ideas
Multi-contingency fit and misfit. With Obel, Burton built a multi-contingency model of design with explicit fit and misfit rules, implemented in the OrgCon expert system. Caveat: The rules are synthesized from the literature; the test of misfits in 224 Danish small and medium-sized firms is Burton, Lauridsen, and Obel (2002), not this book.
Conditions for a working matrix. A matrix works when chosen for a strong purpose, when the contingencies align with that purpose, and when its junctions are managed. Caveat: Conceptual, with no test.
Organizational Structures that draw on Richard M. Burton (30)
- Adhocracy (innovative organization)
- Agile at scale
- Algorithmically managed organization
- Ambidextrous organization
- Boundaryless organization
- Co-determined organization
- Distributed (all-remote) organization
- Divisional by customer or market segment
- Divisional by region
- Federal organization
- Front-back organization
- Functional structure
- Hypertext organization
- Internal market organization
- J-form (the Japanese firm)
- Line and staff
- Linking-pin organization (System 4)
- Machine bureaucracy
- Matrix organization
- Open-source and community-based organization
- Professional bureaucracy
- Professional partnership (P2 form)
- Self-managing organization (less-hierarchical forms)
- Shamrock organization
- Simple structure
- Socio-technical autonomous work groups
- Stratified hierarchy (requisite organization)
- Team of teams
- Team-based organization
- The corporate center and shared services