Works
- What really drives the adoption of modular organizational forms? An institutional perspective from Italian industry-level data, Industry and Innovation 16(3), 291 to 314, 2009
- Beyond the 'mirroring' hypothesis: product modularity and interorganizational relations in the air conditioning industry, Organization Science 23(3), 686 to 703, 2012
- When the mirror gets misted up: modularity and technological change, Strategic Management Journal 35(6), 789 to 807, 2014
- Complementarities and organizational (mis)fit: a retrospective analysis of the Toyota recall crisis, Journal of Organization Design 5, article 4, 2016
- Does losing temporary workers matter? The effects of planned turnover on replacements and unit performance, Academy of Management Journal 62(4), 979 to 1002, 2019
In Organizational Structures
Known for
Field studies of modularity and the mirroring hypothesis in supply relationships, and of the Toyota Way's complementarities.
Ideas
When the mirror holds. With Cabigiosu, found in 100 components and supply relationships at three air conditioning firms that, when component architecture is stable, loosely coupled components go with less buyer and supplier information sharing, so product and organizational coupling vary together; performance depended on information sharing, and modularity weakened the effect of information sharing on performance, which the authors say confirms that it works as an ex ante, embedded substitute for high-powered interorganizational integration mechanisms. Caveat: A study of three firms in one industry.
When the mirror mists up. With Furlan and Cabigiosu, found that across-firm mirroring does not hold for technologically dynamic components: buyers and suppliers share information even when components are highly modular. Caveat: A study of supply relationships in one industry, read in its abstract, which does not give the sample size.
What drives modular organizational forms. With Campagnolo, replicated Schilling and Steensma's model on 68 Italian manufacturing industries and found that organizational modularity there was driven by labor intensity, industry specificities, and nation-specific factors, unlike the U.S. findings. Caveat: Industry-level data from one country.
Misfit made by the firm itself. With Wilhelm, argued from Toyota's experience from 2000 to 2010 that decisions aimed at extensive growth and globalization distorted the complementarities of the Toyota Way, so misfit can be the unintended result of the firm's own choices, not only of environmental change. Caveat: A retrospective case study of one firm, built largely on secondary sources.
The cost of losing temporary workers. With De Stefano and Bonet, found in one multinational food and beverage company that planned turnover of temporary workers has an inverted U-shaped relationship with unit performance. Caveat: A study of the units of one company.
In this section, “read” means read by the Organizational Structures series: where a line says a work, or part of one, was not read, the series did not read it.