Works
- Organization Theory and Design, West Publishing, St. Paul, MN (first edition, xxiv and 543 pages; many later editions, now Cengage), 1983
- Organizational information requirements, media richness and structural design, Management Science 32(5), 554 to 571, 1986
- Where are the theories for the 'new' organizational forms? An editorial essay, Organization Science 4(4), R1 to R6, 1993
- Organization Theory and Design, West Publishing, Minneapolis/St. Paul, fifth edition, 1995
- Organization Theory and Design, Cengage Learning (12th edition, copyright 2016; ISBN 978-1-285-86634-5), 2016
- Organization Theory & Design, Cengage Learning (13th edition, copyright 2021; hardcover ISBN 978-0-357-44514-3, eBook ISBN 978-0-357-70239-0), 2021
In Organizational Structures
Known for
The textbook Organization Theory and Design.
Ideas
Hybrid structure in the textbook canon. The standard textbook treatment of hybrid structure, mixing functional and divisional grouping in one organization. Caveat: The book was not read, so its treatment of hybrid structure is not confirmed.
Equivocality and media richness. With Lengel, defined uncertainty and equivocality as two forces on information processing and argued that structure must both supply data and resolve equivocality, since the main problem is often lack of clarity, not lack of data. Caveat: Models, not a test.
Hybrid structure in the textbook canon (fifth edition). The fifth edition treats the hybrid structure under its own heading and illustrates it with Sun Petroleum Products Company, which restructured from a functional to a hybrid structure by combining three product divisions with several functional departments. Caveat: Only passages were read; the example rests on Ackerman (1982), which was not read.
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.