Works
- Matrix, Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA, 1977
- Problems of matrix organizations, Harvard Business Review (May 1978), 1978
In Organizational Structures
Known for
The matrix as a named organizational form, with Paul Lawrence.
Ideas
Matrix organization. With Paul Lawrence, the book-length treatment of the matrix as a form with a dual authority structure. Caveat: Known only from its bibliographic record.
Pathologies of the matrix. With Lawrence, Davis held that no design is perfect and that any form can suffer problems that come from the design itself, particularly when a company tries a new form; the matrix, relatively new and popular, has some significant pathologies. Caveat: A Harvard Business Review article; only its opening was read, so the pathologies themselves are not given here. Wolf and Egelhoff (2013) found higher conflict only in product-by-region matrices.
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.