What the Research Found on Structure

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1. Aage 1989. The brigade-managed enterprise, University of Copenhagen, Department of Economics, Discussion Paper 89-05

   Smaller brigades for a given workforce make internal pay less equal and more in proportion to effort, make distribution between brigades less tied to final results because of measurement problems, and make members' decisions more collective; it follows that workers' effort is greatest in brigades of intermediate size. The author notes that the brigade system had been only partly implemented, with minor effects.

   Grade

   A conceptual model

   Design

   A theoretical argument: from empirical evidence on how the size of Soviet brigades changes pay and decision making, it derives the brigade size at which workers' effort is greatest.

   Year

   1989

   Sample, limits, and later work

   Sample

   None; a theoretical model motivated by the Soviet brigade system.

   Limits

   A working paper and a model; the text was not read.

2. Aaltonen and Lanzara 2015. Building governance capability in online social production: insights from Wikipedia, Organization Studies 36(12), 1649 to 1673

   Online social production systems develop a collective governance capability; governance mechanisms emerge from individual and collective learning made possible by technology and evolve as routines respond to new problems in a growing system, so governance is evolving, enabling, and embedded.

   Grade

   One case used to build theory

   Design

   Process-oriented theorizing using Wikipedia as a paradigmatic example.

   Year

   2015

   Sample, limits, and later work

   Sample

   Wikipedia.

   Limits

   One case used to build theory; the abstract does not describe the data.

   Later work

   Agrees with O'Mahony and Ferraro (2007) that community governance emerges over time rather than being designed at the start.

3. Adler and Borys 1996. Two types of bureaucracy: enabling and coercive, Administrative Science Quarterly 41(1), from p. 61

   Treating workflow formalization as an organizational technology, the authors distinguish enabling formalization, which helps employees master their tasks, from coercive formalization, by which management tries to force effort and compliance. Whether formalization makes employees' attitudes better or worse depends on which type it is.

   Grade

   A conceptual argument with no new test

   Design

   Conceptual article.

   Year

   1996

   Sample, limits, and later work

   Sample

   None; draws on research on the design of equipment technology.

   Limits

   Conceptual; offers no test.

   Later work

   Adler, Goldoftas, and Levine (1999) and Bunderson and Boumgarden (2010) report findings consistent with the enabling view; Monteiro and Adler (2022) place it in a century of bureaucracy research.

4. Adler and colleagues 1997. Ergonomics, employee involvement, and the Toyota production system: a case study of NUMMI's 1993 model introduction, Industrial and Labor Relations Review 50(3), 416 to 437

   Employee involvement did not remove all divergence of interests between management and workers but changed the terms of that divergence; when management's reliance on employee involvement is complemented by strong employee voice and strong regulators, managers may find it in their interest to improve safety as a means of keeping employee commitment high and so improving business performance.

   Grade

   One case study of a single plant

   Design

   Case study of one plant's 1993 model introduction, for which OSHA cited it, analyzing the origins of its ergonomic problems and the responses of the company, the union, and regulators, with a more ergonomically successful model introduction two years later.

   Year

   1997

   Sample, limits, and later work

   Sample

   NUMMI, the GM and Toyota joint venture.

   Limits

   One plant; read from the abstract, not the text.

   Later work

   Adler, Goldoftas, and Levine (1999) studied two major model changeovers at the same plant.

5. 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

   NUMMI relied on a highly bureaucratic organization for efficiency yet combined it with exceptional flexibility through four mechanisms: metaroutines for changing other routines, workers and suppliers contributing to nonroutine tasks during routine production, temporal separation of routine and nonroutine work, and novel partitioning so that differentiated subunits worked in parallel. These depended on training, trust, and leadership.

   Grade

   One case study of a single plant

   Design

   Single-plant case study of two major model changeovers.

   Year

   1999

   Sample, limits, and later work

   Sample

   NUMMI, a Toyota subsidiary in Fremont, California.

   Limits

   One plant; its success may rest on context (the Toyota system, the joint venture, the union agreement).

   Later work

   Cited as the main evidence that a machine bureaucracy can learn; Adler, Goldoftas, and Levine (1997) studied the same plant's ergonomic problems in an earlier model launch.

6. Adler 2012. The sociological ambivalence of bureaucracy: from Weber via Gouldner to Marx, Organization Science 23(1), 244 to 266

   Adler argues that reports of bureaucracy's demise are greatly exaggerated, and challenges both Weber's iron-cage account and the Gouldner-inspired enabling account: even where bureaucracy's enabling role is salient to employees, it typically appears to them as ambivalent, enabling and coercive at once, rather than either one. He reads Marx to explain the ambivalence.

   Grade

   A conceptual essay

   Design

   Conceptual perspective essay contrasting Weber's, Gouldner's, and Marx's accounts of bureaucracy.

   Year

   2012

   Sample, limits, and later work

   Sample

   None; the argument draws on prior research on enabling and coercive bureaucracy.

   Limits

   Conceptual; no new data.

   Later work

   On our reading, it qualifies Adler and Borys's (1996) distinction between enabling and coercive formalization, on which the machine bureaucracy entry's Enabling and coercive bureaucracy variant rests. Monteiro and Adler (2022) review bureaucracy research since.

7. Adler and colleagues 2019. Amoeba management and organizational ambidexterity: similarities, differences, and implications for organizational fit and success, International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management 69(2), 405 to 427 (issue dated 2020)

   Compares the performance management characteristics of amoeba management and organizational ambidexterity to guide research design and adoption.

   Grade

   A conceptual review

   Design

   Literature review and conceptual comparison

   Year

   2019

   Sample, limits, and later work

   Sample

   About 100 references selected from almost 2,500 books and articles, English and Japanese

   Limits

   Conceptual; no new data.

8. Ahmadjian and Lincoln 2001. Keiretsu, governance, and learning: case studies in change from the Japanese automotive industry, Organization Science 12(6), 683 to 701

   Keiretsu supply relations were drifting from hybrid, network governance toward the extremes of arm's-length contracting and top-down administration. Toyota internalized its dealings with Daihatsu by taking a controlling interest, while it built its own capability in electronic components to reduce its dependence on Denso; as quality, reliability, and speed in supply became routine, the need for keiretsu-style governance declined.

   Grade

   Several case studies by scholars

   Design

   Three case studies of change in assembler-supplier relations, read through transaction cost and learning perspectives.

   Year

   2001

   Sample, limits, and later work

   Sample

   The Japanese automotive industry: Toyota and Daihatsu, Toyota and Denso, and the industry-wide trend toward standardized parts.

   Limits

   One industry, three cases; written before the later restructuring of the vertical keiretsu.

9. Albert 2018. Organizational module design and architectural inertia: evidence from structural recombination of business divisions, Organization Science 29(5), 890 to 911

   Visibility and information hiding in the design of a division, as modular design theory predicts, affect whether the division is recombined, that is, split or merged; the post hoc analysis suggests that divisions' and subunits' political influence also shapes recombination, so reorganization decisions have both a design and a politics component.

   Grade

   A quantitative study of divisions in many firms

   Design

   Longitudinal quantitative study of modularity-informed predictions about which business divisions are split and merged, with a post hoc analysis of political influence.

   Year

   2018

   Sample, limits, and later work

   Sample

   222 divisions in 18 of the largest European universal banks.

   Limits

   One industry; the political explanation comes from a post hoc analysis.

   Later work

   Extends the recombination studies of the M-form (Galunic and Eisenhardt; Karim and Kaul) to which divisions can be recombined in the first place.

10. Aldrich 1972. Technology and organizational structure: a reexamination of the findings of the Aston group, Administrative Science Quarterly 17(1), from page 26

    The Aston group had concluded that technology matters much less to structure than other variables such as size. Reanalyzing their findings with path analysis, Aldrich developed a plausible theory that treats technology as an independent variable and reconstructed a more complex model of structure from the same data; both efforts, he concluded, reaffirm the value of treating technology as an independent variable.

    Grade

    A reanalysis of a multi-organization data set

    Design

    Reanalysis of the Aston group's published data with path analysis, followed by a reconstructed model of organizational structure.

    Year

    1972

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    The Aston group's data on work organizations in the English Midlands.

    Limits

    A reanalysis of one data set; the abstract does not give the reconstructed model's paths.

    Later work

    Part of the debate over whether size, technology, or something else causes bureaucratic structure.

11. Allred and colleagues 1996. Characteristics of managerial careers in the 21st century, Academy of Management Executive 10(4), 17 to 27

    The competencies a successful manager needs shift with organization structure; the authors describe careers in hierarchical organizations, the effects of the network form on careers, and the managerial characteristics and careers of a new cellular structure.

    Grade

    An interview and survey study of unstated size

    Design

    Analysis of organizational trends plus interviews and a questionnaire survey on the competencies managerial careers will require.

    Year

    1996

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    Interviews and a questionnaire survey; the abstract does not describe the respondents or their number.

    Limits

    The sample is not described in the abstract; the cellular part is anticipatory.

    Later work

    Among the earliest scholarly articles on the cellular form; Clarke (1994), a management book, already describes a cellular organization of small autonomous teams (the Dutch software house BSO) two years earlier. Later work by the same authors (Miles and colleagues 1997) is conceptual.

12. Amburgey and colleagues 1993. Resetting the clock: the dynamics of organizational change and failure, Administrative Science Quarterly 38(1), from p. 51

    The effects of change on the hazard of failure vary by type of change and over time. Rates of change depend both on how often an organization has changed and on the time since its last change.

    Grade

    A quantitative study of organizational change and failure rates

    Design

    Analysis of duration dependence in organizational failure rates and in rates of organizational change.

    Year

    1993

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    Not given in the abstract read.

    Limits

    Only the abstract was read, so the population, the period, and the types of change studied were not checked; the abstract does not say that change raises or lowers failure overall.

13. Annosi and colleagues 2017. The interaction of control systems and stakeholder networks in shaping the identities of self-managed teams, Organization Studies 38(5), 619 to 645

    Managerial and stakeholder interventions shaped teams' self-constructed identity and commitment to work objectives; team identity became isomorphic to organizational identity under a dense network of managers and stakeholders, team routines and feedback loops, and coordinating roles that reinforce convergence.

    Grade

    Several case studies in one company

    Design

    Multiple case study through a multilevel model of controls (micro, meso, and macro).

    Year

    2017

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    Several self-managed teams in one major multinational telecommunications company.

    Limits

    One company; qualitative.

    Later work

    Extends Barker's (1993) concertive-control argument to identity: autonomy is shaped from above even where teams are the building block.

14. Annosi and colleagues 2020. When agile harms learning and innovation: (and what can be done about it), California Management Review 63(1), 61 to 80

    The article identifies six potential pitfalls of implementing agile practices at scale that may harm individual learning, ideation, and exploitation capabilities, and gives advice on avoiding them.

    Grade

    One multi-site case study

    Design

    Multi-site case study over five years (2012 to 2017): interviews with more than 100 informants at team, middle-management, and top-management levels, with observation, documents, and archival records.

    Year

    2020

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    One multinational telecommunications company (Company E) implementing Agile Scrum practices in large-scale software development.

    Limits

    One firm; qualitative.

    Later work

    A rare report of negative consequences in a literature the authors describe as having paid them little attention; Bremer, Rylander Eklund, and Elmquist (2025) also question scaling as the route to organization-level agility.

15. Anthony 2021. When knowledge work and analytical technologies collide: the practices and consequences of black boxing algorithmic technologies, Administrative Science Quarterly 66(4), 1173 to 1212

    Groups followed two paths to validate analyses. Where validating practices were partitioned between junior and senior roles, both routinely black boxed the algorithms in their tools; where juniors and seniors co-constructed analyses, they understood the algorithms and their potential impact. Black boxing shaped the bankers' outputs and constrained juniors' expertise and careers.

    Grade

    An ethnography of four groups in one bank

    Design

    Two-year inductive ethnography.

    Year

    2021

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    Four groups in one investment bank using analytical technologies.

    Limits

    One bank; analytical tools rather than algorithmic management of work.

    Later work

    Read with Lebovitz and colleagues (2022): how work is divided around an algorithm affects whether people understand and use it, a design question Puranam (2021) frames as the division of labor between human and algorithm.

16. Aoki 1986. Horizontal vs. vertical information structure of the firm, American Economic Review 76(5), 971 to 983

    The paper compares the efficiency of two information structures for coordinating operating decisions among technologically interrelated shops whose costs are uncertain: a hierarchical structure, in which management's ability to monitor and respond to events at the shop level is bounded, and a horizontal structure, in which shops coordinate production without centralizing information and their semi-autonomous problem solving improves over time through learning by doing and on-the-spot knowledge. The abstract does not say which structure is more efficient or under what conditions.

    Grade

    A formal economic model

    Design

    Formal model comparing two information structures for coordinating operating decisions

    Year

    1986

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    None (formal model, set against a comparison of Japanese and American practice)

    Limits

    A model; its conditions are not tested on firm data in the paper, and its comparative result was not read here.

    Later work

    Aoki (1988, 1990) extended the model into an account of the J-firm, with the ranking hierarchy as its incentive scheme.

17. Aoki 2010. Corporations in Evolving Diversity: Cognition, Governance, and Institutions, Oxford University Press, Oxford (Clarendon Lectures in Management Studies)

    Not verified against its source: only the book's abstract and one chapter's abstract were read, and neither names the J-firm. Treats the corporation as an organization of cognitive and physical actions creating value broader than shareholder value, identifies five modes of organizational architecture, each with a governance structure suited to it, and examines the evolving diversity of corporations worldwide.

    Grade

    A conceptual analysis

    Design

    Conceptual and comparative-institutional analysis, from Aoki's 2008 Clarendon Lectures.

    Year

    2010

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    None.

    Limits

    Only the book's abstract and chapter 2's abstract were read; neither names the J-firm, so the j-form page cannot rely on this study until chapter 2's text is read.

    Later work

    Aoki's later and broader treatment of corporate architecture after his J-firm model (Aoki 1986; Aoki 1988); the book's description and chapter 2's abstract do not say whether its five modes include the J-firm's horizontal architecture.

18. Aoki and Wilhelm 2017. The role of ambidexterity in managing buyer-supplier relationships: the Toyota case, Organization Science 28(6), 1080 to 1097

    Toyota's deliberate use of ambiguity and explicitness can work as a countervailing mechanism against overemphasizing either exploration (product development) or exploitation (mass production), and structural separation and structural integration are two organizational systems a buyer can use to help its suppliers become ambidextrous; the authors argue that requisite security can help motivate suppliers to take on the tensions the buyer deliberately creates.

    Grade

    One case study

    Design

    In-depth case study of how Toyota manages its long-standing suppliers.

    Year

    2017

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    Toyota Motor Corporation and its suppliers, in mass production and in product development.

    Limits

    One buyer and its suppliers; the relationships cross the firm's boundary, which the site points elsewhere.

    Later work

    Extends the ambidexterity entry's structural separation (Tushman and O'Reilly 1996) to the Japanese buyer-supplier system.

19. Aoki 2026. Managerial actions using historical values for tackling hyper-competitive environments: the case of Toyota, Strategic Management Journal 47(6), 1640 to 1670 (online February 2026)

    Toyota's managers used the firm's historical values in three kinds of action, filtering, integrating, and modifying, which bore on strategic diagnosis, choice, and action in turn; this let Toyota take in key elements of rivals' new strategies while keeping the core capabilities it had long relied on, the Toyota Production System and its longstanding supplier relations among them.

    Grade

    A historical case study of one firm compared with a rival

    Design

    Historical methods (hermeneutics, contextualization, and source criticism) applied to sources on Toyota's strategic response to modularization in the automotive industry, compared with Nissan's.

    Year

    2026

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    Toyota, with Nissan as its comparison, in the 1990s and 2000s.

    Limits

    One firm against one rival; it explains how capabilities were sustained through managerial rhetoric, not how the J-form's horizontal coordination structure performs; the summaries were read, not the full text.

20. Arando and colleagues 2015. Efficiency in employee-owned enterprises: an econometric case study of Mondragon, ILR Review 68(2), 398 to 425 (online 2014)

    Cooperative hypermarkets grew sales significantly faster than stores with modest employee ownership and limited voice; among supermarkets overall there were no significant differences, though small cooperative supermarkets outperformed conventional ones.

    Grade

    An econometric study of stores inside one cooperative

    Design

    Econometric panel with first-difference models across three ownership types of stores

    Year

    2015

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    Eroski, Mondragon's largest member: 9,800 monthly observations for supermarkets and 2,150 for hypermarkets

    Limits

    Stores inside one cooperative retailer, so the comparison is within one organization.

21. Argyres and colleagues 2020. Organizational change and the dynamics of innovation: formal R&D structure and intrafirm inventor networks, Strategic Management Journal 41(11), 2015 to 2049

    Centralizing R&D budget authority increased the connectedness of internal inventor networks, which in turn increased the breadth of innovation impact and technological search; decentralizing did not have the opposite effect, and the effects came with a lag the authors attribute to inertia.

    Grade

    A quantitative study of diversified corporations

    Design

    Analysis of changes in the centralization of R&D budget authority, internal inventor networks, and innovation outcomes in firms.

    Year

    2020

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    Diversified corporations that changed how centralized their R&D was (the abstract does not give the sample or its size).

    Limits

    One function (R&D) in diversified firms; the sample is not described in the abstract.

    Later work

    On our reading, it speaks to the hybrid design choice of which functions to centralize above the divisions.

22. Armour and Teece 1978. Organizational structure and economic performance: a test of the multidivisional hypothesis, Bell Journal of Economics 9(1), 106 to 122

    M-form structure was associated with higher profitability while the form was spreading through the industry; the relationship was no longer observed once an organizational form equilibrium had been reached. The authors read this as support for the markets and hierarchies paradigm and call for more studies before the finding is generalized.

    Grade

    A multi-firm statistical study in one industry

    Design

    Quantitative comparison of profitability by organizational form over time in one industry.

    Year

    1978

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    Petroleum firms, 1955 to 1973.

    Limits

    One industry; the advantage is transitory by the authors' own account, so it supports adoption as an innovation more than a lasting edge of the form.

    Later work

    Hoskisson, Hill, and Kim (1993) reviewed the transaction cost, strategic management, and sociological perspectives on the M-form and examined what the empirical evidence finds about them; the abstract read does not state their verdict on this study or on the M-form hypothesis.

23. Arora and colleagues 2014. Make, buy, organize: the interplay between research, external knowledge, and firm structure, Strategic Management Journal 35(3), 317 to 337 (online 2013)

    Centralized firms invested more in research and patented more per R&D dollar than decentralized firms; both bought technology through mergers and acquisitions but differed in the frequency, size, and integration of their acquisitions; centralized firms drew more value from internal R&D and decentralized firms relied more on external knowledge.

    Grade

    A large-sample quantitative study

    Design

    Quantitative study using within-firm patent assignment patterns to measure how centralized each firm's research structure is.

    Year

    2014

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    A large sample of American firms (the abstract does not give the number).

    Limits

    Centralization of R&D is inferred from patent assignment, not from organization charts; American firms only.

24. Asakawa 2020. Disaggregating the headquarters: implications for overseas R&D subsidiaries' reporting and the subsidiaries' knowledge-sharing patterns, Journal of Organization Design 9, article 19

    Subsidiaries reporting to corporate R&D headquarters showed the highest external knowledge sharing and those reporting to divisional headquarters the lowest; subsidiaries reporting to top management showed the highest internal knowledge sharing and those reporting to regional headquarters the lowest. The author concludes that a subsidiary's knowledge sharing cannot be understood without asking which part of a disaggregated headquarters it reports to.

    Grade

    An empirical comparison of R&D subsidiaries across multinationals

    Design

    Comparison of the external and internal knowledge-sharing levels of overseas R&D subsidiaries grouped by the part of headquarters they report to: corporate R&D headquarters, top management, divisional headquarters, or regional headquarters. The abstract does not describe the method.

    Year

    2020

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    Overseas R&D subsidiaries of multinational corporations; the abstract does not give the count, the home country, or the years, and the methods section was not read.

    Limits

    Associations, not effects of a reporting change; the sample and method were not read, so the grade rests on the abstract.

25. Askim and colleagues 2011. One-stop shops for social welfare: the adaptation of an organizational form in three countries, Public Administration 89(4), 1451 to 1468

    In all three countries the reforms meant mergers, driven by hopes for a single entrance to services and proximity to citizens, but the shops differed in task portfolios, participant structure, instruments, and autonomy, and the configurations that emerged were partly the product of compromises and negotiations shaped by central government's political and performance priorities. The trade-off between specialization and coordination persists, though by offering users ICT-based services an organization can to some extent keep specialization behind the frontline while providing services coordinated from the user's side.

    Grade

    A three-country comparative case study by scholars

    Design

    A conceptualization of the one-stop shop, then a comparative case study of welfare one-stop shop reforms in three countries, examining their drivers and how each was adapted.

    Year

    2011

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    One-stop shop reforms of welfare services in three Western European countries (the abstract does not name them).

    Limits

    Three national cases; the abstract reports how the form was adapted, not its effects on users or costs.

26. Banerjee 2026. Revealing violence in the structure of sociotechnical systems theory: the historiography of the Tavistock Institute's 'Ahmedabad Experiment', Organization (online first, article 13505084261454759)

    The experiment's success was achieved by erasing the needs and voices of the lowest-caste workers, who did the spinning, and by silencing the labor union; structural, symbolic, and epistemic forms of violence shaped how socio-technical systems theory was universalized from this case.

    Grade

    One historical case reread from archives

    Design

    Archival historical study of the social and political context of the Tavistock Institute's consultancy at Calico Mills.

    Year

    2026

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    The Ahmedabad Experiment, the Tavistock Institute's work in the weaving sheds of Calico Mills in India, 1953 to 1963.

    Limits

    One case, reread from archives; it addresses how the theory was built and spread, not whether the redesigned groups performed as Rice reported.

    Later work

    Revisits Rice (1958) and Miller (1975), the sources of the Ahmedabad experiment, a variant of the socio-technical autonomous work groups entry.

27. Barker 1993. Tightening the iron cage: concertive control in self-managing teams, Administrative Science Quarterly 38(3), 408 to 437

    Workers developed a system of value-based normative rules that controlled their actions more powerfully and completely than the former bureaucratic system. Concertive control evolved from the team workers' value consensus into increasingly rationalized normative rules and, contrary to some proponents, did not free them from Weber's iron cage but drew it tighter.

    Grade

    One ethnographic case study

    Design

    Ethnography of how one organization's control system evolved after management replaced hierarchical, bureaucratic control with self-managing teams.

    Year

    1993

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    One organization and its team workers (the abstract names neither the organization nor its industry).

    Limits

    One organization; an interpretive account.

    Later work

    A founding study for the critical reading of team-based control; Annosi and colleagues (2017) extend the argument from control to team identity.

28. Barkey and Godart 2013. Empires, federated arrangements, and kingdoms: using political models of governance to understand firms' creative performance, Organization Studies 34(1), 79 to 104

    Both empires and federated arrangements performed better than kingdoms, and federated arrangements performed best in this creative setting, which the authors explain by their being hybrids of empires and kingdoms.

    Grade

    A multi-firm quantitative study in one industry

    Design

    Asks, from a center and periphery perspective, how firms affiliated with various types of business groups perform against unaffiliated firms. Defines three regimes of governance (empires, federated arrangements, and kingdoms) by their regulation (the type of rule from center to periphery, the autonomy of peripheral units, and the regime's flexibility) and integration (how far the projects of center and periphery are consonant, and the local elites' type of mobility), then tests their creative performance with organizational and network analysis.

    Year

    2013

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    293 fashion houses over seven seasons.

    Limits

    One creative industry and one outcome (creative performance); only the abstract was read. The authors' federated arrangement is a regime of business-group governance drawn from political models of governance, not Handy's federal organization, so the federal page cites it as a major-journal study that uses the word and says so.

29. Baron and colleagues 1999. Building the iron cage: determinants of managerial intensity in the early years of organizations, American Sociological Review 64(4), 527 to 547

    Founding conditions leave an enduring imprint on how much management and administration a start-up develops. Firms whose founders held a bureaucratic employment model later became more administratively intense than otherwise similar firms, especially compared with firms whose founders held a commitment model; firms with proportionately more women in their first year later bureaucratized less. The authors read this as path dependence in the evolution of structure, shaped by the logics of organizing that founders bring.

    Grade

    A longitudinal study of many young firms

    Design

    Longitudinal quantitative and qualitative analysis of how founding conditions shape later managerial intensity.

    Year

    1999

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    Young technology start-ups in California's Silicon Valley (the Stanford Project on Emerging Companies).

    Limits

    One region and one industry; the start-ups are technology firms only.

    Later work

    The same project later studied how changing the founding employment model related to employee turnover (Baron, Hannan, and Burton 2001; title read only). DeSantola and Gulati (2017) treat this line of work as the main source of the endurance narrative in research on scaling.

30. Bartlett and Ghoshal 1989. Managing Across Borders: The Transnational Solution, Harvard Business School Press, Boston

    Bartlett and Ghoshal set the multinational, global, and international companies against the transnational and argued that the environment now requires global efficiency, multinational flexibility, and worldwide learning at the same time, which calls for a transition from a multinational, global, or international posture to the transnational mode of management.

    Grade

    Case studies of nine multinational companies in three industries

    Design

    Comparative case research in nine core companies, built on interviews with managers at corporate headquarters and in national operations, supplemented (as the appendix describes) by questionnaire surveys in three of the companies and a mailed questionnaire survey of headquarters.

    Year

    1989

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    Nine multinational companies in three industries: consumer electronics (General Electric, Philips, and Matsushita), branded packaged products (Procter and Gamble, Unilever, and Kao), and telecommunications switching (ITT, Ericsson, and NEC); 236 managers interviewed from January 1984 to May 1986.

    Limits

    Case research on nine firms in three industries; the typology was built from those cases and tested later by others. Only full-text search snippets of the book were read, so how each company was classed and how the surveys were used were not checked.

    Later work

    Leong and Tan (1993) found partial support; Harzing (2000) confirmed three of the types in 37 MNCs; Devinney, Midgley, and Venaik (2000) argued that no single form, transnational included, is optimal; Meyer and Su (2015) found the transnational strategy pays only under some subsidiary conditions.

31. Basterretxea and colleagues 2022. Corporate governance as a key aspect in the failure of worker cooperatives, Economic and Industrial Democracy 43(1), 362 to 387 (online 2020)

    The cooperative model affected the speed and quality of decision making, and the General Assembly, Governing Council, and Social Council were limited in supervising and working with management on difficult strategic decisions.

    Grade

    One case study

    Design

    Case study of governance before a bankruptcy

    Year

    2022

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    Fagor Electrodomésticos, for decades the world's largest industrial cooperative

    Limits

    One case, read after the failure.

32. Batt 2004. Who benefits from teams? Comparing workers, supervisors, and managers, Industrial Relations 43(1), 183 to 212

    Participation in self-managed teams was associated with higher perceived discretion, employment security, and satisfaction for workers and with the opposite for supervisors. Middle managers who initiated team innovations reported higher employment security but otherwise did not differ. Participation in off-line problem-solving teams had no significant outcomes for employees.

    Grade

    A regression study of about 1,200 employees in one company

    Design

    Regression analyses of the outcomes of team structures for workers, supervisors, and middle managers.

    Year

    2004

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    About 1,200 workers, supervisors, and middle managers in one large unionized telecommunications company.

    Limits

    One company; cross-sectional perceptions.

    Later work

    Offers a political explanation for the diffusion and sustainability of team systems: supervisors fared worse where workers joined self-managed teams. Cohen and Ledford (1994), in one telecommunications company, found self-managing teams more effective than comparable traditionally managed groups.

33. Baumann and colleagues 2020. Ensuring adaptation while seeking efficiency: tiered outsourcing and skip-level supplier ties in the Airbus A350 program, Organization Science 31(5), 1176 to 1197

    The authors argue that in hierarchical supplier systems, relational contracts between contractual partners become more important but harder to establish than in single-tier systems, and illustrate the challenge with the adaptive frictions in the Airbus A350 program. Airbus came to resolve the frictions through skip-level ties, direct informal contacts with lower-tier suppliers with which it had no contract, replacing a strict supplier hierarchy with a more complex relationship structure.

    Grade

    One case study of an aircraft program

    Design

    In-depth case study of adaptive frictions in tiered outsourcing.

    Year

    2020

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    The Airbus A350 program and its multitier supplier system.

    Limits

    One program; the authors offer propositions rather than tests and discuss boundary conditions.

    Later work

    Shows a cost of the network form at scale: contracts that buy efficiency can block adaptation, and informal ties across tiers are the repair.

34. Bazzoli and colleagues 1999. A taxonomy of health networks and systems: bringing order out of chaos, Health Services Research 33(6), 1683 to 1717

    A reliable, internally valid, and stable five-cluster solution for health systems (centralized, centralized physician and insurance, moderately centralized, decentralized, and independent) and a four-cluster solution for networks; differentiation and centralization did most to distinguish the clusters, and high differentiation typically came with low centralization, which the authors read as a broader scope of activity being harder to coordinate centrally. About 90 percent of hospital-led health systems fell into well-defined clusters.

    Grade

    A cluster analysis of several hundred health systems from a national survey

    Design

    A taxonomy built from theory and national survey data: three strategic and structural dimensions (differentiation, integration, and centralization, the last defined as the extent to which activities take place at centralized against dispersed locations) applied to hospital services, physician arrangements, and provider-based insurance, with cluster analysis of the aggregated hospital data.

    Year

    1999

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    295 health systems and 274 health networks in 1994, and 297 systems and 306 networks in 1995, from the American Hospital Association Annual Surveys.

    Limits

    Hospital-level survey items aggregated to the system; Luke (2006) argues that these data, designed to capture local hospital and system relationships, are not appropriate for classifying multihospital systems at the company level.

    Later work

    Dubbs, Bazzoli, Shortell, and Kralovec (2004) found a shift toward a more diverse set of decentralized forms by 1998; Luke (2006) disputed the data's fit to company-level systems; Shortell, Gottlieb, Martinez Camblor, and O'Malley (2021) rebuilt the taxonomy on 2016 data.

35. Bazzoli and colleagues 2000. The financial performance of hospitals belonging to health networks and systems, Inquiry 37(3), 234 to 252

    Hospitals in health systems with unified ownership generally performed better financially than hospitals in contractually based health networks; among networks, highly centralized ones did better than decentralized ones; among systems, hospitals in moderately centralized systems performed better than those in highly centralized systems; and hospitals in networks or systems with little differentiation or centralization did worst.

    Grade

    A quantitative study of hospitals across many health systems and networks

    Design

    Four hypotheses on hospital financial performance tested across the clusters of the 1999 taxonomy.

    Year

    2000

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    Hospitals in hospital-led health networks and systems in American Hospital Association data for 1994 and 1995.

    Limits

    Cross-sectional associations by cluster, on the taxonomy's survey measures; the full text was not read.

36. Bechky 2006. Gaffers, gofers, and grips: role-based coordination in temporary organizations, Organization Science 17(1), 3 to 21

    Temporary organizations are not ephemeral and unstable: they are organized around structured role systems whose nuances are negotiated in place, through enthusiastic thanking, polite admonishing, and role-oriented joking. Careers that progress across organizations and projects that act as temporary total institutions provide the context for coordination.

    Grade

    An ethnography of one kind of temporary organization

    Design

    Ethnographic study of one type of temporary organization.

    Year

    2006

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    Film projects (the abstract does not give the number of sets).

    Limits

    One industry; ethnographic.

    Later work

    Bechky and Okhuysen (2011) extend the account to how crews handle surprises; Valentine and Edmondson (2015) to hospital teams.

37. Bechky and Okhuysen 2011. Expecting the unexpected? How SWAT officers and film crews handle surprises, Academy of Management Journal 54(2), 239 to 261

    Members engaged in organizational bricolage, restructuring their activities by shifting roles, reorganizing routines, and reassembling the work. Bricolage depended on sociocognitive resources the members built by drafting agreement on the work, reinforcing and elaborating task activities, and building cross-member expertise.

    Grade

    A comparative ethnography of two settings

    Design

    Comparative ethnography of two kinds of organization that regularly face surprises.

    Year

    2011

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    A police SWAT team and film production crews.

    Limits

    Two settings; ethnographic; the unit is the crew, not the whole organization.

    Later work

    Does not test adhocracy by name; it shows how temporary groups coordinate by mutual adjustment under surprise, the mechanism the adhocracy rests on.

38. Beekun 1989. Assessing the effectiveness of sociotechnical interventions: antidote or fad?, Human Relations 42(10), 877 to 897

    Interventions that formed autonomous (rather than semi- or non-autonomous) groups, that included increased monetary incentives, and that took place outside the United States raised productivity more; interventions that also changed technology improved productivity less. A curvilinear relationship between duration and productivity rejected the hypothesis that gains are temporary and a Hawthorne effect.

    Grade

    A meta-analysis of 17 studies

    Design

    Meta-analysis of the mean effect of sociotechnical interventions and of moderating variables.

    Year

    1989

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    17 sociotechnical studies.

    Limits

    Only 17 studies; moderator tests on a small base.

    Later work

    The pay moderator supports Kelly's (1978) critique.

39. Behuria 2015. Between party capitalism and market reforms: understanding sector differences in Rwanda, The Journal of Modern African Studies 53(3), 415 to 450

    In some Rwandan sectors party and military owned enterprises predominate, used by ruling elites to centralize rents and control the direction of economic policy; in pyrethrum this brought higher productivity with unequal outcomes, while mining, opened to market reforms and foreign investment, grew rapidly.

    Grade

    A comparison of two sectors in one country

    Design

    Comparison of two sectors of the Rwandan economy, one led by party and military owned enterprises and one opened to market-led reforms.

    Year

    2015

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    Rwanda's pyrethrum sector and mining sector.

    Limits

    A political-economy study of two sectors in one country; its abstract does not describe how the party and military owned enterprises are organized as a group, and the text was not read, so it shows only that such enterprises exist in Africa and why ruling elites use them.

40. Behuria 2021. The curious case of domestic capitalists in Africa: towards a political economy of diversified business groups, Journal of Contemporary African Studies 40(1), 1 to 17 (online 30 April 2021; issue dated 2022)

    Diversified business groups are the predominant form that large-scale domestic investment takes in Africa. Crossing Schneider's three diversification pathways (organic, policy-induced, and portfolio groups) with ownership (private, state-owned, and party-affiliated), the typology shows domestic political economy, above all state-business relations, shaping the form and the diversification path of groups, private ones included; in the working paper's cases groups rarely sustained their growth without political support.

    Grade

    Several country case studies by a scholar

    Design

    Inductively informed typology of African diversified business groups, from three country case studies and interviews with group representatives.

    Year

    2021

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    Rwanda, Kenya, and Tanzania, with interviews of Kenyan, Ugandan, Tanzanian, Ethiopian, and Rwandan groups, October 2011 to August 2018 (as given in the 2019 working paper).

    Limits

    The author notes a paucity of data; the categories are fluid and overlap; the journal article was read in abstract and its typology in the 2019 working paper.

41. Belasco and Alutto 1969. Line staff conflicts: some empirical insights, Academy of Management Journal 12(4), 469 to 477

    Verification pending: only the first sentence of the abstract was read. Data reported indicate that staff and line conflicts may be less severe and essentially different in nature than had been previously assumed.

    Grade

    An empirical study (design not read)

    Design

    Empirical study of line and staff conflict.

    Year

    1969

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    Not read (the abstract was truncated).

    Limits

    Only the first sentence of the abstract was read; sample and method unknown here.

    Later work

    Its abstract sets its finding against what had been previously assumed about line and staff conflict; the part read names no earlier study.

42. Belenzon and colleagues 2019. The architecture of attention: group structure and subsidiary autonomy, Strategic Management Journal 40(10), 1610 to 1643

    The authors argue that the greater a subsidiary's organizational distance from headquarters (the number of intermediate subsidiaries between them), the less attention headquarters gives it and the greater its autonomy, and they report several pieces of evidence consistent with this; they find little support for the view that tall pyramids are built to magnify the voting control of large shareholders.

    Grade

    A large multi-group quantitative study

    Design

    Quantitative study of how the position of a subsidiary in a corporate group's structure relates to its autonomy, from the attention-based view.

    Year

    2019

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    A large data set on the structure of corporate groups in Western Europe.

    Limits

    Attention and autonomy are inferred, chiefly from how subsidiaries at each layer respond to changing external conditions compared with similar unaffiliated firms, rather than observed directly; the study does not use the term federal.

    Later work

    Recent evidence that the number of layers between a unit and the center bears on how much attention and autonomy the unit gets.

43. Berger and Ofek 1995. Diversification's effect on firm value, Journal of Financial Economics 37(1), 39 to 65

    Diversification implied an average value loss of 13 to 15 percent, smaller when segments shared a two-digit industry code; overinvestment and cross-subsidization contributed, and tax benefits reduced the loss modestly.

    Grade

    A multi-firm statistical study

    Design

    Comparison of the firm's value with the imputed stand-alone values of its segments.

    Year

    1995

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    Diversified firms with business segment data, 1986 to 1991 (the abstract does not name the country).

    Limits

    Measures diversification, not structure; segment data are self-reported.

    Later work

    Campa and Kedia (2002) found the discount falls once self-selection is modeled, and Villalonga (2004) found a premium with establishment-level data.

44. Berggren 1992. Alternatives to Lean Production: Work Organization in the Swedish Auto Industry, ILR Press, Ithaca, NY

    The Swedish plants moved from the paced line toward long-cycle assembly in small groups, and Volvo's Uddevalla plant toward complete assembly in long cycles with group autonomy. In one official evaluation Kalmar's assembly hours per car were 25 percent lower than Torslanda's, a differential the author says has since persisted. The book disputes the claim that lean production will supplant mass production and all other forms.

    Grade

    Six case studies in the Swedish auto industry by one scholar

    Design

    Six case studies of organizational and technical change in the Swedish auto industry, drawing on extensive interviews with managers, with comparative data from five assembly plants.

    Year

    1992

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    Plants of Volvo and Saab-Scania, among them Volvo's Torslanda (TC), Kalmar, and Uddevalla plants and Saab's Malmö plant, covering change from 1974 on.

    Limits

    Read through Internet Archive full-text search snippets of the 1992 scan, not in full; one country's auto industry; the book argues a position, as its title says.

    Later work

    Adler and Cole (1993), an ungraded article by two management scholars in Sloan Management Review comparing NUMMI with Uddevalla, held NUMMI's standardized work the better design for organizational learning.

45. Berntzen and colleagues 2023. A taxonomy of inter-team coordination mechanisms in large-scale agile, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering 49(2), 699 to 718

    The authors identified 27 inter-team coordination mechanisms, grouped as coordination meetings (communities of practice, inter-team stand-ups, retrospectives), coordination roles (program architects, a platform team), and coordination tools and artifacts (Slack, JIRA, inter-team boards, backlogs, roadmaps), each combining technical, organizational, physical, and social characteristics.

    Grade

    One case study

    Design

    Case study over 1.5 years: thematic analysis of 31 interviews, 113 hours of observation, and supplemental material.

    Year

    2023

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    One large-scale software development firm.

    Limits

    One firm.

    Later work

    Extends Dingsøyr, Moe, and Seim (2018) on coordination in multiteam programs.

46. Berti and Pitelis 2022. Open team production, the new cooperative firm, and hybrid advantage, Academy of Management Review 47(2), 309 to 330

    In open team production, where team members are both internal and external to the firm, the firm must not only monitor team members within it but also give both internal and external members incentives to commit to firm-specific cospecialized investments, and orchestrate and monitor those investments; in that setting a new type of hybrid firm can hold comparative efficiency advantages over both traditional cooperative and capitalist firms.

    Grade

    Conceptual

    Design

    Conceptual comparison of capitalist and cooperative firms using team production as the frame.

    Year

    2022

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    None (theory).

    Limits

    Conceptual.

    Later work

    Answers the property-rights case against cooperatives (Jensen and Meckling 1979) in the terms of team production.

47. Besseyre des Horts 2014. HCL Technologies since the global 2008-09 crisis: creating value through employee empowerment, Teaching case, HEC Paris (18 pages; prepared under the Webhelp-HEC research chair Human Capital and Performance)

    Under the philosophy 'Employees First, Customers Second', one of four tenets was inverting the organization pyramid, and the company built systems to make the enabling functions (HR, finance, administration, and training) accountable to employees: through its Smart Service Desk any employee could raise a ticket against any department or internal service provider, each ticket bound by a service level agreement and closable only by the employee who raised it, with about 52,000 tickets a month after a few years. The company's management shifted its focus to supporting the employees in contact with customers.

    Grade

    One teaching case

    Design

    Teaching case written from company sources, published cases, and the author's interviews.

    Year

    2014

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    HCL Technologies, an Indian IT services company, 2005 to 2013.

    Limits

    A teaching case drawing largely on company materials and executives' accounts; the performance figures it reports are the company's and a consultancy's, and the case does not test whether the inversion caused them.

48. Bianchi and colleagues 2012. The organizational selection of status characteristics: status evaluations in an open source community, Organization Science 23(2), 341 to 354

    The organization developed its own belief system about which status characteristics matter: members created a new status marker (location) and nullified others (education and age).

    Grade

    A study of one community

    Design

    Quantitative analysis of status rankings using status characteristics theory.

    Year

    2012

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    Programmers in one open source software organization.

    Limits

    One organization; status rankings rather than outcomes.

    Later work

    Read with Dahlander and O'Mahony (2011) and Smirnova, Reitzig, and Sorenson (2022) on how standing is earned in communities without formal hierarchy.

49. Bidwell 2012. Politics and firm boundaries: how organizational structure, group interests, and resources affect outsourcing, Organization Science 23(6), 1622 to 1642

    Only a weak link was found between transaction characteristics and outsourcing decisions. Managers' pursuit of their own interests inside the organization helps explain why; the consequences of outsourcing matched transaction cost and capabilities theories (less authority, weaker controls, and different capabilities), but the way managers evaluated them often reflected their own interests, shaped by differentiated goals and responsibilities, administrative controls, and interdependent workflows, and the distribution of authority and other resources shaped which projects were outsourced.

    Grade

    One case study of a firm's outsourcing decisions

    Design

    Qualitative study of outsourcing decisions, with a check of decisions against transaction characteristics.

    Year

    2012

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    The information technology department of one large financial services firm.

    Limits

    One department of one firm.

    Later work

    A challenge to the efficiency account of where the network firm draws its boundary: internal structure and politics shape what is outsourced.

50. Bigley and Roberts 2001. The incident command system: high-reliability organizing for complex and volatile task environments, Academy of Management Journal 44(6), 1281 to 1299

    Three main factors enabled this distinctively bureaucratic system to produce remarkably flexible and reliable temporary organizations for complex and volatile tasks, suggesting new forms that capture bureaucracy's control and efficiency benefits while avoiding its inertia.

    Grade

    One inductive case study

    Design

    Inductive field study of a fire department's use of the incident command system.

    Year

    2001

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    One fire department.

    Limits

    One organization.

    Later work

    A counterpoint to the claim that adaptability requires abandoning hierarchy: the incident command system assembles teams fast inside a formal structure.

51. Birkinshaw and colleagues 2001. Global account management in multinational corporations: theory and evidence, Journal of International Business Studies 32(2), 231 to 248

    Each theory was supported on its own, and structures that raise information processing capacity worked better when the multinational depended heavily on the customer.

    Grade

    A quantitative study of accounts in many firms

    Design

    Hypothesis tests of information processing and resource dependency predictions on data about global accounts.

    Year

    2001

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    106 global accounts in 16 multinationals.

    Limits

    Accounts within 16 multinationals; the abstract does not say how the data were collected.

    Later work

    Supports the global account variant of the customer division.

52. Blau 1968. The hierarchy of authority in organizations, American Journal of Sociology 73(4), 453 to 467

    Organizations that require higher qualifications of their personnel are more decentralized; their larger proportion of supervisors comes partly from narrower spans of control for first-line supervisors and partly from more managerial levels. Where automation and personnel standards make operations relatively self-regulating, squat, centrally governed structures become tall hierarchies with decentralized authority.

    Grade

    A comparison of 250 government agencies, replicating an earlier study of 150

    Design

    Comparative study of the formal structure of government agencies, correlating personnel qualifications with supervisory ratios, spans of control, and the number of levels.

    Year

    1968

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    250 government agencies of one type, checked against an earlier study of 150 agencies and data on a third type of agency.

    Limits

    Public agencies only; cross-sectional correlations, with the causal reading offered as interpretation.

    Later work

    Bears on Mintzberg's claim (1980) that a skilled operating core is coordinated by standardized skills with extensive decentralization; Blau finds decentralization goes with more, not fewer, levels of hierarchy.

53. Bloom and colleagues 2015. Does working from home work? Evidence from a Chinese experiment, Quarterly Journal of Economics 130(1), 165 to 218

    Working from home raised performance 13 percent (9 points from more minutes per shift, 4 from more calls per minute); satisfaction rose and attrition halved, but promotion conditional on performance fell. When the option was offered firm-wide and employees could reselect, over half switched and the gains almost doubled to 22 percent.

    Grade

    A randomized experiment in one firm

    Design

    Randomized experiment.

    Year

    2015

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    Call center employees at Ctrip, a 16,000-employee Chinese travel agency, who volunteered to work from home, randomly assigned to home or office for nine months.

    Limits

    One firm; routine, individually measured work; volunteers.

    Later work

    Bloom, Han, and Liang (2024) found in a later randomized trial that hybrid work cut quits by a third with no effect on performance or promotion; Yang and colleagues (2022) found collaboration costs of firm-wide remote work, an outcome this study did not measure.

54. Bloom and colleagues 2024. Hybrid working from home improves retention without damaging performance, Nature 630(8018), 920 to 925

    Hybrid working (two days a week at home) improved job satisfaction and cut quit rates by one third, significantly for non-managers, women, and long commuters; null equivalence tests showed no effect on performance grades or on lines of code written, and no difference in promotions. Managers revised their view of hybrid work's effect on productivity from negative to positive.

    Grade

    A randomized trial in one firm

    Design

    Six-month randomized controlled trial with two years of follow-up on reviews and promotions.

    Year

    2024

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    1,612 employees of a Chinese technology company, 2021 to 2022.

    Limits

    Hybrid, not fully remote, work; one firm.

    Later work

    Extends Bloom and colleagues (2015) from call center work to engineers and others; does not address the network effects Yang and colleagues (2022) found.

55. Boisot and Child 1996. From fiefs to clans and network capitalism: explaining China's emerging economic order, Administrative Science Quarterly 41(4), from page 600

    The limited codification of information in China and its communal property rights, together with the way economic transactions are organized, suggest that decentralization from the former state-command system is producing a distinctive institutional form, network capitalism, unlike Western experience.

    Grade

    Conceptual

    Design

    Conceptual and institutional analysis of China's business system within a framework of information codification and diffusion.

    Year

    1996

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    China's economy during the reforms.

    Limits

    Conceptual; the abstract reports no sample of firms.

    Later work

    Gives the Chinese business groups variant (Keister 1998) its institutional account; the danwei variant (Walder 1986) describes the system it grew from.

56. Boone and Özcan 2014. Why do cooperatives emerge in a world dominated by corporations? The diffusion of cooperatives in the U.S. bio-ethanol industry, 1978 to 2013, Academy of Management Journal 57(4), 990 to 1012

    The founding rate of cooperatives fell where local corporate ethanol production capacity was high, but this competitive effect was weaker where corporations threatened local farmers' autonomy, where the climate was anti-corporate, and where an organizational infrastructure supported a cooperative ideology; the spread of plants owned by big business into anti-corporate communities especially spurred cooperative founding.

    Grade

    A county-level panel study across one national industry

    Design

    Community ecology study of the county-level founding of cooperatives, with panel data.

    Year

    2014

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    Cooperative ethanol plants in U.S. counties, 1978 to 2013.

    Limits

    One industry in one country; explains the founding of the form, not its internal structure.

57. Boumgarden and colleagues 2012. Sailing into the wind: exploring the relationships among ambidexterity, vacillation, and organizational performance, Strategic Management Journal 33(6), 587 to 610

    Vacillation, shifting between structures over time, may give higher long-run performance than ambidexterity, while ambidexterity enhances performance at the margin when used within larger epochs of vacillation; the two are complements.

    Grade

    A reanalysis of several published cases

    Design

    Mapping of two approaches onto a common performance landscape, and analysis of canonical cases from both literatures.

    Year

    2012

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    Canonical published cases of ambidexterity and of vacillation.

    Limits

    Reanalysis of a few published cases.

    Later work

    A dissent from simultaneous structural separation as the best route; it builds on Siggelkow and Levinthal (2003).

58. Bowers and Seashore 1966. Predicting organizational effectiveness with a four-factor theory of leadership, Administrative Science Quarterly 11(2), 238 to 263

    Both peer and supervisory leadership measures related to outcomes, and prediction was usually improved by taking account of certain nonleadership variables; leadership's relation to outcomes is best studied when both leadership and effectiveness are multidimensional.

    Grade

    A study of 40 agencies of one company

    Design

    Study evaluating a four-factor model of leadership (support, interaction facilitation, goal emphasis, and work facilitation), for both supervisory and peer leadership, against satisfaction and factorial performance measures.

    Year

    1966

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    40 agencies of one leading life insurance company.

    Limits

    One company; correlational.

    Later work

    Part of the Michigan program behind Likert's System 4; peer leadership is the group-level process the linking-pin model relies on. Franklin (1975) later found influence runs mostly downward across levels.

59. Bowers 1973. OD techniques and their results in 23 organizations: the Michigan ICL study, Journal of Applied Behavioral Science 9(1), 21 to 43

    Survey feedback was associated with significant improvement on a majority of measures and interpersonal process consultation with improvement on a majority; task process consultation was associated with little or no change, and laboratory training and no treatment with declines. Organizational climate emerged as a potentially important conditioner, with survey feedback the only treatment associated with substantial climate improvement.

    Grade

    A longitudinal study of 23 organizations

    Design

    Longitudinal comparison of four organizational development treatments (survey feedback, interpersonal process consultation, task process consultation, and laboratory training) and two controls, using pre and post measures from the Survey of Organizations questionnaire.

    Year

    1973

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    More than 14,000 respondents in 23 organizations (the Michigan Inter-Company Longitudinal Study).

    Limits

    Treatments were not randomly assigned; the study tests change techniques from the Michigan program, not the linking-pin form itself.

    Later work

    Pasmore (1976) offered an alternative explanation of the results (title read only). Its tie to this form is through the Michigan Institute for Social Research program that carried Likert's System 4 into practice.

60. Bowman and Helfat 2001. Does corporate strategy matter?, Strategic Management Journal 22(1), 1 to 23

    The view that corporate strategy does not matter rests largely on early variance decomposition studies that found little corporate effect. Taken as a group, the studies show that corporate-level factors contribute to profitability differences, and the evidence suggests that factors specifically associated with corporate strategy contribute to these corporate effects.

    Grade

    A review of several independent quantitative studies

    Design

    Review and analysis of the variance decomposition studies of profitability differences among businesses.

    Year

    2001

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    The published variance decomposition studies up to 2000 (the abstract does not give their number).

    Limits

    A review whose own analysis the abstract does not detail; the corporate effect is not a measure of the center's structure. The full text was not read.

    Later work

    Vanneste (2017) meta-analyzes the same tradition on comparable measures and finds corporate effects larger than industry effects and about half as large as business effects.

61. Bremer and colleagues 2025. Scaling or growing agile? Proposing a manifesto for agile organization development, Journal of Organization Design 14(1), 23 to 34

    Considering four common challenges of organization-level agile, the authors argue for growing rather than scaling agile, rooted in the original Agile Manifesto, and propose a Manifesto for Agile Organization Development with four values and five principles.

    Grade

    One case study with a normative proposal

    Design

    Case analysis of one company's journey, used to propose a manifesto.

    Year

    2025

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    A Swedish software company.

    Limits

    One case used to illustrate a normative proposal.

    Later work

    Dissents from the scaling-framework route that Leffingwell (2007) and Larman and Vodde (2008) set out; it is the only 2010 to 2026 article on agile at scale found in the major management journals searched.

62. Broschak and Davis-Blake 2006. Mixing standard work and nonstandard deals: the consequences of heterogeneity in employment arrangements, Academy of Management Journal 49(2), 371 to 393

    Higher proportions of nonstandard workers were associated with less favorable attitudes toward supervisors and peers, increased turnover intentions, and decreased work-related helping behaviors. These consequences depended on workers' locations in their firm's mobility system, the type of nonstandard arrangement, and the amount and type of contact between standard and nonstandard workers.

    Grade

    A study of work groups (sample not confirmed)

    Design

    Study of how the proportions of standard and nonstandard workers in work groups affect members' relationships with supervisors, social relations with coworkers, willingness to assist others, and intentions to leave, testing Blalock's theory of majority-minority group relations.

    Year

    2006

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    Not confirmed (the abstract does not give the sample).

    Limits

    Only the abstract was read, and it gives no sample; the grade assumes a multi-firm sample, which has not been confirmed. Attitudes and behaviors of workers, not firm performance.

    Later work

    Davis-Blake, Broschak, and George (2003) found similar costs of blending for standard employees' loyalty and intent to leave; Wilkin (2013) pooled contingent workers' own job satisfaction.

63. Browne and Golembiewski 1974. The line-staff concept revisited: an empirical study of organizational images, Academy of Management Journal 17(3), 406 to 417

    Not verified against its source: only the opening of the abstract was read. Not recorded: the part of the abstract read states the design, a conceptual model and operational measure of organizational images seen as contributors to collaboration and conflict between units, but not the result.

    Grade

    An empirical study of line and staff units (design partly read)

    Design

    Measurement of the images line and staff units hold of each other.

    Year

    1974

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    Line and staff units (organization not read).

    Limits

    Finding not read.

    Later work

    Revisits the line and staff concept a quarter century after Dalton (1950).

64. Bruderl and Schussler 1990. Organizational mortality: the liabilities of newness and adolescence, Administrative Science Quarterly 35(3), from page 530

    The liability of newness hypothesis, which expects the highest failure risk in young organizations, is not a good representation of the mortality hazard of West German business organizations. The authors propose a liability of adolescence, an inverted U-shaped risk pattern in which mortality, depending on a firm's initial resource endowments, peaks between one and fifteen years after founding, and they reinterpret the liabilities of smallness and legal form from this perspective.

    Grade

    A quantitative study of business mortality in West Germany

    Design

    Theoretical discussion and empirical test of Stinchcombe's liability of newness hypothesis, using a log-logistic rate model of business mortality.

    Year

    1990

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    West German business organizations, with data provided by the Munich Chamber of Commerce.

    Limits

    One national population of business organizations; the abstract does not give the number of firms or the period.

    Later work

    Bears on Freeman, Carroll, and Hannan (1983) as a disagreement over the shape of age dependence.

65. Brusoni and colleagues 2001. Knowledge specialization, organizational coupling, and the boundaries of the firm: why do firms know more than they make?, Administrative Science Quarterly 46(4), 597 to 621

    Firms that rely on several technologies need knowledge beyond what they make in house, to cope with uneven rates of development among those technologies and unpredictable product-level interdependences; knowing more lets them coordinate loosely coupled networks of suppliers and keep a capability for systems integration.

    Grade

    A study of one technology in one industry

    Design

    Analysis of developments in one technology, aircraft engine control systems, and of the firms that integrate it, with examples from other industries.

    Year

    2001

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    Developments in aircraft engine control systems and the engine makers that integrate their suppliers.

    Limits

    One industry and one subsystem.

    Later work

    A qualification of the mirroring hypothesis: outsourcing production is not outsourcing knowledge (Colfer and Baldwin 2016 review the exceptions to mirroring).

66. Buchanan 1997. The limitations and opportunities of business process re-engineering in a politicized organizational climate, Human Relations 50(1), 51 to 72

    An ambitious reengineering agenda was compromised in two ways: the lack of precision in its focus and method let politically motivated actors shape the terms of reference, and the complexity and indeterminacy of the patient trail diluted redesign. Rapid, radical, blank-sheet change was impractical; the main opportunity was the fresh process perspective it brought to a functionally fragmented setting.

    Grade

    One case study

    Design

    Case study with the researcher as participant observer, adviser to the project team, and field interviewer.

    Year

    1997

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    A reengineering project in a hospital operating theaters department with scheduling problems and delays.

    Limits

    Research in progress at the problem-definition and planning stages; one department.

    Later work

    Echoed by McNulty and Ferlie (2004).

67. Bunders and colleagues 2022. The feasibility of platform cooperatives in the gig economy, Journal of Co-operative Organization and Management 10(1), article 100167

    The challenges are most likely to be overcome by platform cooperatives that organize taxi rides and professional jobs, and are much harder to overcome in food delivery, homecare, and micro-tasking.

    Grade

    A conceptual feasibility analysis, illustrated with a table of 31 platform cooperatives

    Design

    A taxonomy of platform cooperatives along ownership of the platform and employment by the cooperative, then a feasibility analysis of worker-run matchmaking platforms for gigs against three challenges (raising capital, collective decision making, and institutional support), with the obstacles assigned by sector from the literature and illustrated in a table of platform cooperatives.

    Year

    2022

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    31 platform cooperatives in Europe and North America in all (13 in taxi rides, 5 in delivery, 6 in professional jobs, 3 in odd jobs, 1 in cleaning, 2 in healthcare, 1 in micro-tasking; 8 of them failed), taken from two directories (the Platform Co-op Directory and the #PlatformCoop Directory) and supplemented by five found by manual search.

    Limits

    A feasibility judgment, not a measure of survival or performance; the obstacles are assigned by sector from the literature, and only each cooperative's start-up status and whether it was active or failed come from its own website; directory-listed cooperatives in Europe and North America only.

68. Bunderson and Boumgarden 2010. Structure and learning in self-managed teams: why 'bureaucratic' teams can be better learners, Organization Science 21(3), 609 to 624

    At least for self-managed teams with stable tasks, greater structure promoted learning by encouraging information sharing, reducing conflict, and fostering psychological safety; the mediation was more complex than predicted. Higher structure was also associated with actual productivity improvements in a subsample.

    Grade

    A field study of many teams in one firm

    Design

    Field study testing a mediated model in which team structure (specialization, formalization, and hierarchy) affects learning and improvement through psychological safety, information sharing, and conflict frequency.

    Year

    2010

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    Self-managed production teams in one Fortune 100 high-technology firm, with productivity data for a subsample.

    Limits

    One firm and stable tasks only, as the authors state.

    Later work

    Cuts against the view that self-managing teams should be unstructured; Lee (2024) makes a parallel point at the organizational level about clear boundaries of authority.

69. Burbano and colleagues 2026. A platform rating system and vulnerable workers: evidence from field experiments in Singapore, Organization Science 37(4), 1511 to 1532

    Employers were on average indifferent to a proposed rating system, even when its benefits to them were highlighted, and the highest-income employers responded negatively; workers reacted negatively, and those informed of the proposed system disengaged from the platform completely. The authors attribute the workers' response to the power differential.

    Grade

    Two field experiments with one platform

    Design

    Two field experiments, with post hoc interviews and analyses.

    Year

    2026

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    A Singapore labor platform connecting foreign domestic workers with employing families.

    Limits

    One platform and one occupation; a proposed system, not a running one.

    Later work

    Qualifies the assumption, which the paper attributes to prior research, that rating systems benefit both sides of a platform; consistent with the qualitative findings of Rahman (2021) and Curchod and colleagues (2020) on workers' vulnerability to ratings.

70. Burdín 2014. Are worker-managed firms more likely to fail than conventional enterprises? Evidence from Uruguay, ILR Review 67(1), 202 to 238

    The hazard of dissolution was 29 percent lower for worker-managed firms than for conventional firms, associated with their greater employment stability.

    Grade

    A survival study of many firms in one country

    Design

    Survival analysis of a long panel of firms with frailty duration models

    Year

    2014

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    Uruguayan worker-managed and conventional firms, microenterprises excluded

    Limits

    One country; results controlled for the tax burden the two types face.

71. Burgelman 1983. A process model of internal corporate venturing in the diversified major firm, Administrative Science Quarterly 28(2), from p. 223

    Autonomous strategic initiatives of people at the operating level supplied the ideas for much of the firm's corporate entrepreneurship, management found these initiatives hard to place and often neglected administrative issues, and middle managers played the key role in linking the initiatives to corporate strategy.

    Grade

    One inductive case study

    Design

    Qualitative field study building a grounded process model of internal corporate venturing.

    Year

    1983

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    One large US high-technology firm with a new venture division formed in the early 1970s; six venture projects; interviews with 61 people.

    Limits

    One firm; the new venture division is the setting, not a compared design.

    Later work

    Burgelman (1984) turned the findings into a set of structural designs for new ventures.

72. Burns and Stalker 1961. The Management of Innovation, Tavistock Publications, London (first edition 1961); the DOI is for the Oxford University Press revised edition of 1994

    Management systems lie on a continuum from extremely mechanistic to extremely organic. Effective organization does not approximate one ideal type of management system but alters with the rate of technical or market change. Members' self-interest, political systems, and status structures shape how working organizations adjust to change.

    Grade

    A field study of twenty firms

    Design

    Field study of management systems inside firms, chiefly firms entering electronics development, observing how people deal with each other and how management adjusts to change.

    Year

    1961

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    Twenty firms: fifteen that invested in electronics development and five others, four of them with research and development interests in other fields, after a preliminary study of two firms (one in textiles, one in electronics).

    Limits

    Qualitative field material; most firms in one industry; the Crossref book and chapter abstracts of the 1994 edition were read, not the full text.

73. Burns and Wholey 1993. Adoption and abandonment of matrix management programs: effects of organizational characteristics and interorganizational networks, Academy of Management Journal 36(1), 106 to 138

    Matrix adoption was influenced not only by task diversity but also by a hospital's sociometric location, the dissemination of information, and the cumulative force of adoption in interorganizational networks. These variables had little influence on decisions to abandon matrix programs.

    Grade

    A quantitative study of matrix adoption and abandonment in a group of hospitals

    Design

    Multivariate analyses of the adoption and abandonment of matrix management, testing the design theorists' technical explanation (internal coordination and information processing) against the network explanation (mimetic forces and normative pressures).

    Year

    1993

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    A group of hospitals (the abstract gives neither the number nor the country).

    Limits

    One sector (hospitals); adoption is measured, not whether the matrix worked.

    Later work

    Widely cited as evidence that structures spread by imitation as well as by fit, the institutional reading the explorer's dissent panel draws on (DiMaggio and Powell 1983).

74. Burton and colleagues 2002. Return on assets loss from situational and contingency misfits, Management Science 48(11), 1461 to 1485

    Firms with situational misfits, contingency misfits, or both had lower return on assets than firms with no misfits. Contrary to the hypotheses, additional misfits did not add further loss, which suggests that one misfit of any kind may significantly compromise performance.

    Grade

    A quantitative study of 224 Danish small and medium-sized firms

    Design

    A rule-based misfit model (a set of if-then misfit rules derived from Burton and Obel's 1998 multi-contingency model of strategic organizational design), with misfits identified in firm data and performance hypotheses tested by regression.

    Year

    2002

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    224 small and medium-sized Danish firms.

    Limits

    Small and medium-sized firms in one country; the misfit rules come from the authors' own model; only the abstract was read.

75. Burton and colleagues 2015a. How to get the matrix organization to work, Journal of Organization Design 4(3), 37 to 45

    The authors argue that three factors are critical for a matrix to succeed: a strong purpose (choose the matrix only for strong reasons), alignment among contingencies with that purpose, and management of the junctions where the matrix's lines meet.

    Grade

    A conceptual essay with no new data

    Design

    Translational essay applying the multi-contingency model to the matrix.

    Year

    2015

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    No new data.

    Limits

    Conceptual; no test reported.

    Later work

    Draws on the multi-contingency model this series treats as the most developed scholarly fit model (Burton and Obel 2004; Burton, Obel, and Håkonsson 2020).

76. Burton and colleagues 2017. GitHub: exploring the space between boss-less and hierarchical forms of organizing, Journal of Organization Design 6(1)

    GitHub, like Valve, delegated the choice of projects and project allocation to its workers, but after years of praising its unorthodox structure it abandoned it for something much more traditional.

    Grade

    One case description

    Design

    Organization Zoo case with invited expert commentaries.

    Year

    2017

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    One firm, GitHub.

    Limits

    A descriptive case.

    Later work

    Joins Oticon (Foss 2003) as a documented reversion.

77. Buttrick 1952. The Inside Contract System, The Journal of Economic History 12(3), 205 to 221

    Under inside contracting the firm's management provided floor space and machinery, supplied raw material and working capital, and arranged for the sale of the finished product, while the production job was delegated to inside contractors, who hired their own employees, supervised the work process, and received a piece rate from the company. In the account of one contractor, his income was day pay, his salary from the company as a contractor, plus profit, the difference between revenue and costs; contractors in turn paid their employees piece rates. At Winchester the contractors in the gun shop fell from 18 in 1904 to none by 1914, replaced by company foremen; costs rose under the non-contract system, but the superintendent judged the jobs better run because the company had better control.

    Grade

    A historical case study of one firm

    Design

    A historical study of the inside contract system in American manufacturing and of the reasons for its elimination, drawing largely on the records of the gun shop of one firm, the Winchester Repeating Arms Company.

    Year

    1952

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    One firm, the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, mainly its gun shop: by 1880 a separate contractor was in charge of each of the operations in making gun barrels, and in 1881, 48 percent of the gun-shop workforce worked for contractors.

    Limits

    One firm's records, mostly its gun shop. The article was read in Cambridge Core's notes and in passages found by Internet Archive full-text search of the scanned issue, not through. Williamson's widely cited quotation of the definition inserts the word negotiated before piece rate; the word is his, not Buttrick's.

    Later work

    Williamson (1975, 1985) uses it as his source for the Inside Contracting mode of organization, sets the mode between putting-out and the authority relation, and lists its defects, a bilateral monopoly position among them; Fleischman and Tyson (1996) reassess inside contracting at the Waltham Watch Company from economic rationalist and labor process perspectives.

78. Byrne and colleagues 2004. The effects of organization on medical utilization: an analysis of service line organization, Medical Care 42(1), 28 to 37

    About half the facilities had set up service lines, which varied in duration and in how far they restructured. The mere presence of a service line had no positive and several negative effects on the measures; some types of service line had significant, mostly negative effects; newly set up service lines improved significantly less over time than facilities with none. The authors conclude that service lines may bring an initial period of disruption, with little evidence of benefit even for older ones.

    Grade

    A survey of every medical center in one national health system, joined to administrative data

    Design

    A survey of every Veterans Health Administration medical center on whether it had set up a primary care or mental health service line before fiscal 1997, joined to facility-level utilization data from administrative databases; descriptive and multivariate regression analyses of utilization and of its change from fiscal 1997 to 1998.

    Year

    2004

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    All VHA medical centers; nine primary care and five mental health utilization measures.

    Limits

    One public health system over two years; utilization measures rather than clinical outcomes; facilities chose whether and how to adopt, so selection is not ruled out.

79. Cabigiosu and Camuffo 2012. Beyond the 'mirroring' hypothesis: product modularity and interorganizational relations in the air conditioning industry, Organization Science 23(3), 686 to 703

    When component architecture is stable, supplier relations for loosely coupled components involve less information sharing, so product coupling and organizational coupling vary together (the mirroring hypothesis holds). Supply relationship performance depends on buyer and supplier information sharing, not on component modularity, and modularity weakens the effect of information sharing on performance, which the authors say confirms that component modularity works as an ex ante, embedded substitute for high-powered interorganizational integration mechanisms.

    Grade

    A study of 100 supply relationships at three firms

    Design

    Regression analysis of product and organizational architectures, testing whether modular products go with modular (loosely coupled) supplier relations.

    Year

    2012

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    Three firms in the air conditioning industry; an original data set of 100 components and supply relationships.

    Limits

    Three firms in one industry; component-level data on 100 components and supply relationships.

    Later work

    The same authors (Furlan and colleagues 2014) found the mirror breaks down for technologically dynamic components; Colfer and Baldwin (2016) reviewed the wider evidence.

80. Cable and Dirrheimer 1983. Hierarchies and markets: an empirical test of the multidivisional hypothesis in West Germany, International Journal of Industrial Organization 1(1), 43 to 62

    Against the multidivisional hypothesis, the multidivisional form had a large, significant negative effect on profitability, about equal to the sample's mean rate of return, which survived extensive respecification, while owner control and bank voting rights had strong positive effects. The authors trace the result to German institutional and cultural features and partly to recent reorganization, and expect the long-run effect to be smaller but not positive.

    Grade

    A multi-firm statistical study

    Design

    Cross-sectional regressions of return on capital on a multidivisional-form dummy, diversification strategy, owner and bank control, ownership type, and industry.

    Year

    1983

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    48 usable observations from Thanheiser's sample of the 100 largest West German industrial firms, 27 of them multidivisional, with profits averaged over 1968 to 1972.

    Limits

    Finding read in the 1981 working-paper version; the published article's text was not reachable. One country and a cross-section of large firms, with profits measured during a period of heavy reorganization.

    Later work

    Contrasts with Steer and Cable (1978), the most comparable British study, which found a significant positive multidivisional effect.

81. Cameron and colleagues 1987. Organizational Effects of Decline and Turbulence, Administrative Science Quarterly 32(2), from p. 222

    Attributes tied to the actions of top managers, such as centralization, were significantly affected by turbulence but not by decline; attributes tied to the actions of members who are not top managers, such as scapegoating, were affected by decline but not by turbulence. The authors infer that different sources of uncertainty may affect organizations differently, so loosely coupled structures may not always buffer the technical core from decline-induced uncertainty.

    Grade

    A six-year study of 334 institutions of higher education

    Design

    Study separating organizational decline from turbulence, stagnation, and environmental decline, relating attributes the literature ties to decline (conflict, turnover, resistance to change, centralization, scapegoating of leaders, and others) to objective measures of each institution's decline and turbulence.

    Year

    1987

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    334 institutions of higher education over six years.

    Limits

    One sector; read from the abstract, not the text.

82. Cameron and Rahman 2022. Expanding the locus of resistance: understanding the co-constitution of control and resistance in the gig economy, Organization Science 33(1), 38 to 58

    Algorithmically mediated customer control, in which customers rate workers and algorithms tally the ratings to control future opportunities, expands the service encounter so that control and resistance extend well before and after the task. Workers have the most room to resist early in the labor process, and that room shrinks at each later stage; workers' everyday interactions with customers can also influence algorithms in ways platforms cannot always observe.

    Grade

    A comparative ethnography of two platform companies

    Design

    Comparative ethnography of workers' experiences.

    Year

    2022

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    Workers at two of the largest platform companies.

    Limits

    Two platforms; workers' side only; qualitative.

    Later work

    Builds on Rahman (2021) and Curchod and colleagues (2020) on evaluations; Kellogg, Valentine, and Christin (2020) had named such worker tactics algoactivism.

83. Cameron 2022. "Making out" while driving: relational and efficiency games in the gig economy, Organization Science 33(1), 231 to 252

    Without managers, coworkers, or routines, drivers made the work meaningful by turning it into games played through two touchpoints, the customer and the app: a relational game pursuing high ratings and an efficiency game pursuing money per hour. Both games produced engagement but two divergent stances toward the work, with contrasting implications for retention.

    Grade

    A four-year qualitative study of workers in one sector

    Design

    Four-year qualitative study.

    Year

    2022

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    Workers in ride-hailing, the largest sector of the on-demand economy.

    Limits

    One sector; qualitative; the abstract gives no sample size.

    Later work

    Cameron (2024) extended the account to how algorithmic management manufactures consent through constant, confined choices.

84. Cameron 2024. The making of the "good bad" job: how algorithmic management manufactures consent through constant and confined choices, Administrative Science Quarterly 69(2), 458 to 514

    Contrary to the expectation that algorithmic standardization and surveillance yield the quintessential bad job, many workers reported liking the work and finding choice. Algorithms segment the work into many human-algorithm interactions that allow frequent, narrow choices; workers use engagement tactics (following the nudges) or deviance tactics (manipulating their inputs), and both elicit consent. This choice-based consent can mask structurally problematic features, which the author calls the good bad job.

    Grade

    A seven-year qualitative study of one industry's workers

    Design

    Seven-year qualitative study of how workers navigate being managed by an algorithm.

    Year

    2024

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    Workers in the ride-hailing industry.

    Limits

    One industry; qualitative; the abstract gives no sample size.

    Later work

    Disagrees in emphasis with the bad-job expectation it cites (Kalleberg and colleagues) and with readings that stress algorithmic control alone; agrees with Wood and colleagues (2019) that autonomy and strain coexist.

85. Campa and Kedia 2002. Explaining the diversification discount, The Journal of Finance 57(4), 1731 to 1762

    Firms self-select into diversification: the choice to diversify is strongly negatively correlated with firm value, and once that endogeneity is controlled the diversification discount always drops and sometimes turns into a premium. Refocusing firms also show self-selection.

    Grade

    A multi-firm statistical study

    Design

    Econometric analysis using three alternative techniques to control for the endogeneity of the decision to diversify.

    Year

    2002

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    Diversified firms, including firms that diversify and firms that refocus; the abstract does not give the sample's country, period, or size.

    Limits

    Measures diversification, not structure; only the abstract was read.

    Later work

    A disagreement with Berger and Ofek (1995).

86. Campagnolo and Camuffo 2009. 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

    The regression results differ significantly from the U.S. findings: in Italy, organizational modularity is driven by labor intensity, industry specificities, and nation-specific factors.

    Grade

    An industry-level study of 68 Italian manufacturing industries

    Design

    Replication of Schilling and Steensma's general systems modularity model with regression analysis of Italian industry-level data, adding an institutional perspective.

    Year

    2009

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    68 Italian manufacturing industries.

    Limits

    Industry-level data from one country; the abstract does not report effect sizes.

    Later work

    A replication across countries that did not reproduce the U.S. pattern, which suggests the drivers of modular forms are partly institutional.

87. Campbell and colleagues 2022. Examining multiteam systems across context and type: a historiometric analysis of failed MTS performance, Frontiers in Psychology 13, article 813624

    In the failing systems the component teams concentrated on within-team alignment rather than between-team coordination (about two thirds of coded behaviors were within-team), relied most on acting and least on recalibrating, and so often did not complete the action cycle; systems that crossed organizational boundaries and systems with physical goals showed these patterns more strongly. The authors propose entrainment, the synchronizing of teams' behavioral cycles, as the mechanism of success and failure.

    Grade

    A coded comparison of 40 field cases from archives

    Design

    Historiometric analysis: archival accounts of failed multiteam systems coded with a 29-item taxonomy of within-team and between-team acting, monitoring, and recalibrating behaviors (four trained coders, average agreement 87 percent), with descriptive statistics and themes synthesized by two expert panels.

    Year

    2022

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    40 cases of failed multiteam system performance from business, government, emergency response, science, military, and transportation settings, 3,203 coded behaviors, drawn mostly from government and industry investigative reports, with news articles, legal documents, and other archives.

    Limits

    Failed cases only, since successful ones are rarely documented; archival accounts depend on the reports' detail and perspective; no internal intellectual cases were available, so boundary status and goal type are partly confounded. It studies multiteam systems in general, not organizations built on the team of teams model.

88. Camuffo and Wilhelm 2016. Complementarities and organizational (mis)fit: a retrospective analysis of the Toyota recall crisis, Journal of Organization Design 5, article 4

    Managerial decisions aimed at extensive growth and globalization distorted the complementarities among the central elements of the Toyota Way and caused organizational misfit; external misfit can be the unintended result of deliberate changes in the firm's system of interdependent choices, not only of environmental change.

    Grade

    One case study

    Design

    Retrospective case study of how Toyota departed from its lean organizational configuration (the Toyota Way) from 2000 to 2010, drawn from secondary material on Toyota, press coverage in industry journals and the business press, annual reports, media reports on the 2009 to 2010 recall crisis, and the authors' field visits to Toyota plants.

    Year

    2016

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    Toyota Motor Company, 2000 to 2010 (recall crisis media through 2012).

    Limits

    One firm, analyzed retrospectively, mostly from secondary and press sources.

    Later work

    Applies the literature on complementarities and organizational fit to the best-known example of the J-form; it does not cite Aoki.

89. Cappelli and Keller 2013. Classifying work in the new economy, Academy of Management Review 38(4), 575 to 596

    An inclusive classification separates employment from its alternatives and groups the alternatives by the sources and extent of control over the work process, the contractual nature of the relationship, and the parties involved, following legal distinctions.

    Grade

    A conceptual classification

    Design

    Conceptual classification of work arrangements.

    Year

    2013

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    No sample; the authors note that over a fifth of U.S. workers work under arrangements other than full-time regular employment.

    Limits

    Conceptual; no test.

    Later work

    Gives later work a vocabulary finer than the shamrock's three leaves.

90. Carney and colleagues 2011. Business group affiliation, performance, context, and strategy: a meta-analysis, Academy of Management Journal 54(3), 437 to 460

    Group affiliation lowers firm performance in general, but affiliates do comparatively better where financial and labor market institutions are underdeveloped; the lower performance traces to specific strategic actions at the firm and group levels.

    Grade

    A meta-analysis of 141 studies in 28 countries

    Design

    Meta-analysis

    Year

    2011

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    141 studies covering 28 countries

    Limits

    Depends on the studies pooled and their measures of affiliation and performance.

91. Carraher and Chait 1999. Level of work and felt fair pay: an examination of two of Jaques' constructs of equitable payments, Psychological Reports 84(2), 654 to 656

    The amount of work (level of work) predicted actual pay, as Jaques proposed, and felt-fair pay was stable over three months.

    Grade

    A quantitative study of two samples of public employees

    Design

    Quantitative test of two constructs of Jaques's theory of equitable payment in two samples of employees.

    Year

    1999

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    Two samples of public-sector employees, 152 in all.

    Limits

    Small samples; tests pay constructs rather than the layering of the structure.

    Later work

    One of the few independent tests of Jaques's constructs located; the structural claim (that layers should match time-span strata) has no large-sample test in the major journals searched.

92. Chabane and colleagues 2006. The changing face and strategies of big business in South Africa: more than a decade of political democracy, Industrial and Corporate Change 15(3), 549 to 577

    Business under apartheid was highly concentrated in ownership and activities. Since 1994 the main changes were the unbundling of the traditional conglomerates, the move of primary listings to overseas exchanges, and the slow emergence of black-owned economic groups; a few conglomerates kept a very large, though reduced, weight, and the structure moved closer to OECD norms. The authors argue that the focus on ownership transfers, with weak enforcement of competition, limited job creation and the aims of black economic empowerment.

    Grade

    A descriptive study of a country's largest firms and groups

    Design

    Analysis of the ownership, structure, and strategies of South Africa's largest businesses after the end of apartheid, set against government policy on liberalization, black economic empowerment, and competition.

    Year

    2006

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    Big business in South Africa from 1994 to the mid-2000s.

    Limits

    Descriptive and policy-oriented; it does not test the performance of group affiliation; the abstract was read, not the full text.

93. Chakraborti and colleagues 2024. Do we run how we say we run? Formalization and practice of governance in OSS communities, Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2024), Association for Computing Machinery, 1 to 26

    A greater amount of formal policy on a governed topic did not bring more governance activity on that topic in the projects' mailing lists, but it did predict greater internalization of the policy by community members. Alignment of the communities' operations with the foundation's governance, whether in dedicating their governance focus or in adopting policy along the topics that saw more policy-making, had only a limited association with project outcomes.

    Grade

    A quantitative study of 208 projects in one foundation

    Design

    Quantitative study of governance talk in project mailing lists, coded with a semantic pipeline, compared with the foundation's formal policies.

    Year

    2024

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    208 projects in the Apache Software Foundation Incubator program.

    Limits

    One foundation's incubator; projects there are young and under a common set of rules. Only the published abstract was read, so the measures, the outcomes, and the effect sizes are not given here. The arXiv preprint of September 2023 states the findings differently (communities observing formal requirements as extensively as they are defined, and a limited association with project sustenance); the finding here follows the published abstract.

    Later work

    Adds a multi-project test of formal rules to O'Mahony and Ferraro's (2007) single-community account of how governance emerges.

94. Chakravarty and colleagues 2017. Multinational enterprise regional management centres: characteristics and performance, Journal of World Business 52(2), 296 to 311

    There are critical differences in characteristics and performance between dedicated regional headquarters and regional management mandates held by operating subsidiaries; the paper also investigates parent-level differences between firms with distinct configurations and offers a structural complement to regional extensions of the integration-responsiveness framework.

    Grade

    A large-sample statistical study

    Design

    Longitudinal comparison of two kinds of regional management center.

    Year

    2017

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    855 Japanese regional management centers in 41 countries.

    Limits

    Japanese firms only; the abstract does not say which kind performs better.

    Later work

    Schotter, Stallkamp, and Pinkham (2017), with a shared author, studied what leads firms to form regional management centers.

95. Chandler 1962. Strategy and Structure: Chapters in the History of the Industrial Enterprise, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA (xiv and 463 pages)

    Growth by volume, geographic dispersion, vertical integration, and product diversification each brought new administrative needs; centralized, functionally departmentalized structures came under strain when firms diversified into several product lines or regions, and the four firms turned to the multidivisional structure. Chandler concluded that structure follows strategy and that unless it does, inefficiency results.

    Grade

    Several independent case histories by a historian

    Design

    Comparative business history.

    Year

    1962

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    Four large American firms (du Pont, General Motors, Standard Oil of New Jersey, and Sears, Roebuck), compared with the administrative histories of close to a hundred of the largest American industrial enterprises (the fifty largest by assets in 1909 and seventy of the largest in 1948).

    Limits

    Historical case comparison of a few pioneers; it does not measure performance.

    Later work

    Quantitative tests of the multidivisional hypothesis followed (Rumelt 1974; Armour and Teece 1978). Hall and Saias (1980) argued the reverse, that structure can shape strategy.

96. Chandra and Tirupati 2002. Managing complex networks in emerging markets: the story of AMUL, Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, Working Paper No. 2002-05-06 (6 May 2002)

    The network is three tiers of independent legal entities, village societies, district unions, and a state marketing federation, which the authors call loosely tied together; farmers sit on the boards at every level; GCMMF represents customers, the unions processing, and the societies the farmers; the structure was replicated across India with two national bodies, the National Dairy Development Board and the National Co-operative Dairy Federation of India; and thin intermediary margins kept operations lean.

    Grade

    One case study

    Design

    A case history of the Kaira District Cooperative Milk Producers' Union (AMUL) and the Gujarat dairy cooperative network, from field visits and published sources.

    Year

    2002

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    One cooperative network: by 2000, 2.12 million milk producers in 10,411 village societies supplying thirteen district unions, whose products the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF) markets.

    Limits

    One case written by business-school scholars, descriptive, without a comparison group.

97. Chang and Choi 1988. Strategy, structure and performance of Korean business groups: a transactions cost approach, Journal of Industrial Economics 37(2), 141 to 158

    Groups with a multidivisional structure are argued to perform better because the structure lowers transaction costs from organizational failure; the major groups show a relational structure with both vertical integration and conglomerate traits; and the empirical result is that group-affiliated firms show superior economic performance.

    Grade

    A multi-firm quantitative study in one country

    Design

    A transaction cost analysis of the diversification strategy and resulting structure of Korean business groups, with an empirical model modified from Caves and Uekusa's (1976) model for Japan.

    Year

    1988

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    Korean business groups and their affiliated firms; the years and counts were not read.

    Limits

    Only the abstract was read; the abstract does not say whether the M-form claim itself was tested or with what comparison group.

    Later work

    Chang and Hong (2000) and Chang (2003) followed Korean group affiliates through the 1990s and the 1997 crisis.

98. Chang 2003. Financial Crisis and Transformation of Korean Business Groups: The Rise and Fall of Chaebols, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Chang argues that the 1997 Korean financial crisis was due to the inertia of both the chaebols and the Korean government, which prevented adaptation to changing external environments. When the government stopped central planning and liberalized in the 1980s, neither the government nor markets could monitor the chaebols' investments; their web of cross-shareholding, debt guarantees, and vertical integration brought extensive cross-subsidization and kept them from shedding unprofitable businesses; and the government's interventions in bank lending created moral hazards for chaebols and banks alike. The chaebols' structure inhibited other adaptations and became nearly dysfunctional. He argues that restructuring should focus on corporate governance and predicts the chaebols will re-emerge as stronger, more focused global players.

    Grade

    A book-length study of Korea's business groups, with analyses of affiliated and independent firms

    Design

    Book-length study of Korea's business groups, with appendix analyses comparing the profitability of group-affiliated and independent companies and examining vertical integration, the determinants of the groups' capital structure, affiliates' profitability and stock ownership, and the intragroup transactions and ownership of the top five chaebols.

    Year

    2003

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    Korea's chaebols (the pages read give neither the years covered nor the number of groups and firms).

    Limits

    One country's groups around one crisis; only the book's description and table of contents were read, so the data, methods, and results of its analyses were not checked, and the account of the crisis is the author's argument.

    Later work

    Lee, Peng, and Lee (2008), with Korean groups from 1984 to 1996, found the diversification premium of affiliation dissipating into a discount as institutional transitions unfolded.

99. Chang and colleagues 2024. Inter-unit executive redeployment in multiunit firms: evidence from Korean business groups, Organization Science 35(3), 815 to 834

    Executives with unit-specific human capital (turnaround, competitive, and international expansion experience) are redeployed to units facing the matching challenge, and executives with unit-generic human capital (corporate management practices and interunit coordination experience) to younger units setting up corporate-level policies; the effect depends on the executive's functional orientation and seniority.

    Grade

    A multi-firm quantitative study

    Design

    Quantitative study of executive moves between affiliates of business groups.

    Year

    2024

    Sample, limits, and later work

    Sample

    Executives of Korean business groups (the abstract does not give the count of groups or years).

    Limits

    Korean groups only; the abstract does not report performance effects.

    Later work

    Adds executive redeployment to the mechanisms by which a group's center coordinates its affiliates, beside Chang and Hong (2000) on resource sharing.

100. Chasserio and Botte 2020. Transforming corporate headquarters: a case study of a collaborative journey, Journal of Organization Design 9, article 9

     The firm set out to decentralize authority and shrink its headquarters with its own participative method, relying on internal change agents and an intensive pace of change. The approach helped the headquarters and the organization develop new skills and ways of working, but its tradeoffs, the pace of change and the exclusion of managers from the consultation, may have affected implementation.

     Grade

     One case study

     Design

     Qualitative case study of one corporate headquarters transformation.

     Year

     2020

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     The headquarters of an industrial multinational, which asked to remain anonymous and is called the Group.

     Limits

     One firm, an account of the change process more than of the resulting structure.

101. Child 1972b. Organization structure and strategies of control: a replication of the Aston study, Administrative Science Quarterly 17(2), 163 to 177

     Not verified against its source: the abstract and text could not be read, so the finding is secondhand. A citing study reports that this replication, like Pugh and colleagues (1968), found negative relationships between hierarchical measures of centralization and aspects of bureaucratization. The title frames the result in terms of strategies of control.

     Grade

     A multi-firm replication (as reported secondhand)

     Design

     Replication of the Aston measures in a second sample.

     Year

     1972

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     British business organizations in the National study; a textbook account (Jackson and Morgan 1982) gives 82 firms of 150 to 6,350 employees, not confirmed from the article.

     Limits

     The article's text was not read; finding and sample rest on secondary accounts.

     Later work

     Donaldson, Child, and Aldrich (1975) later debated the Aston findings on centralization in ASQ (title read only).

102. Child and Mansfield 1972. Technology, size, and organization structure, Sociology 6(3), 369 to 393

     Technological variables were associated with structure in certain definable respects, but size had a much higher relationship with the elements of structure. Measures of technology used in earlier studies were problematic because they can obscure the different elements of technology and may stand in for differences between industries, including managerial ideologies and environments.

     Grade

     A multi-firm comparative study

     Design

     Comparative study of 82 business organizations, with partial correlation analysis.

     Year

     1972

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     82 business organizations.

     Limits

     Cross-sectional; the abstract does not name the country of the sample.

     Later work

     Sides with the Aston group against Woodward's technology thesis on the question of what drives bureaucratic structuring.

103. Chittoor and colleagues 2013. Creating a corporate advantage: the case of the Tata group, Indian School of Business case ISB005, distributed by Darden Business Publishing, 19 pages

     The case describes how the group's corporate center tries to create a parenting advantage through the Tata brand, quality management, common procurement, centralized human resources, legal, finance, public affairs, training, and consulting, and reports that group companies valued affiliation for lower transaction costs, better contract enforcement, access to political power, and financial backing.

     Grade

     One business-school case

     Design

     Teaching case

     Year

     2013

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     The Tata group, India

     Limits

     A teaching case; it ends with questions rather than conclusions.

104. Choudhury and colleagues 2020. GitLab: work where you want, when you want, Journal of Organization Design 9(1), article 23

     GitLab works without offices and relies on asynchronous coordination through shared repositories, a public handbook edited like code, transparent location-based pay, and directly responsible individuals, with a yearly companywide gathering. The commentators questioned how far the model generalizes, citing work that needs co-presence, confidential information, the limited supply of workers suited to remote work, and the need for occasional colocation.

     Grade

     One case study with scholarly commentary

     Design

     Descriptive case with four scholars' commentaries.

     Year

     2020

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     GitLab, an all-remote software company of more than 1,000 employees in more than 60 countries.

     Limits

     One firm; descriptive, and it reports no measures of productivity, performance, or retention; drawn from the company's public handbook and pages and from conversations with employees.

     Later work

     The commentators tied its asynchronous coordination to stigmergic coordination in free software projects (Crowston) and to geographic flexibility (Choudhury, Foroughi, and Larson 2021).

105. Choudhury and colleagues 2021. Work-from-anywhere: the productivity effects of geographic flexibility, Strategic Management Journal 42(4), 655 to 683

     The move from work-from-home to work-from-anywhere raised output 4.4 percent without more rework, with evidence of more observable effort; the authors also report real estate savings.

     Grade

     A natural experiment in one agency

     Design

     Natural experiment exploiting union-negotiated timing of examiners' moves from work-from-home to work-from-anywhere, with field interviews, location data, and machine learning analysis.

     Year

     2021

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Patent examiners at the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

     Limits

     One public agency; individually measured, relatively independent work.

     Later work

     Choudhury (2022) set a research agenda on work-from-anywhere; whether the gains hold for interdependent work is open, given Yang and colleagues' (2022) siloing findings at Microsoft.

106. Chu 2024. How beneficiaries become sources of normative control, Administrative Science Quarterly 69(2), 324 to 369

     Beneficiaries (parents) became a source of normative control through a multistage ritual of integration: hearing parents narrate their needs, collective storytelling about beneficiaries, episodic shaming tied to whether daily performance met those needs, and validation from beneficiaries. Many teachers who arrived with mixed values internalized the value of self-sacrifice; those unmoved, or who came to see parents as exploitative, tended to leave.

     Grade

     One ethnographic case study

     Design

     Ethnography of how normative control arises in a not-for-profit school.

     Year

     2024

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Teachers at one not-for-profit school and the parents it serves.

     Limits

     One school.

     Later work

     Extends normative control beyond peers and managers to the people a mission serves.

107. Ciborra 1996. The platform organization: recombining strategies, structures, and surprises, Organization Science 7(2), 103 to 118

     High-technology firms such as Olivetti undergo transformations that tend to destroy their best core competencies and affect their business identity, and task uncertainty is so pronounced that the usual ways of looking at structure need a more dynamic perspective. In it the firm is a platform, a formative context out of which structures such as the hierarchy, the matrix, and the network are extracted, tried out, and discarded on a highly volatile basis; its members improvise and tinker, and its value lies in its readiness to take whatever form the circumstances require.

     Grade

     One case study

     Design

     Longitudinal case analysis of one firm's technology strategy and structure.

     Year

     1996

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Olivetti, a European computer firm, over the preceding decade, drawing on similar studies in Silicon Valley.

     Limits

     One firm; interpretive.

     Later work

     Ciborra's platform organization is distinct from platform orchestration of outside complementors.

108. Clark 1998. Creating Entrepreneurial Universities: Organizational Pathways of Transformation, Elsevier Science, Issues in Higher Education series (ISBN 0-08-043354-5)

     Clark names five elements common to the transformations: a strengthened steering core, an expanded developmental periphery, a diversified funding base, a stimulated academic heartland, and an integrated entrepreneurial culture. He argues that a deepening gap between what the environment demands of universities and their capacity to respond calls for a capacity to respond flexibly and selectively.

     Grade

     Five case studies by one scholar

     Design

     Comparative case studies; each university was visited twice, for one to two weeks, in late 1994, 1995, and 1996.

     Year

     1998

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Five European universities that had worked for eight or more years to become more enterprising: Warwick, Twente, Strathclyde, Chalmers University of Technology, and Joensuu.

     Limits

     Five self-selected cases of change, all studied by one scholar; no comparison with universities that did not change.

109. Cohen and Ledford 1994. The effectiveness of self-managing teams: a quasi-experiment, Human Relations 47(1), 13 to 43

     The balance of evidence indicated that self-managing teams were more effective than comparable traditionally managed groups that performed the same type of work.

     Grade

     A quasi-experiment in one company

     Design

     Quasi-experiment comparing self-managing teams with comparable traditionally managed groups doing the same work.

     Year

     1994

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Teams performing customer service, technical support, administrative support, and managerial functions in a variety of locations of one telecommunications company.

     Limits

     One company; a quasi-experiment, not randomized; the abstract does not give the number of teams.

110. Colfer and Baldwin 2016. The mirroring hypothesis: theory, evidence, and exceptions, Industrial and Corporate Change 25(5), 709 to 738

     Industry and firm studies show mirroring is a prevalent pattern but not universal. In technologically dynamic industries partial mirroring, with knowledge boundaries drawn more broadly than operational boundaries, is likely superior. Firms can break the mirror with modular partitions inside their boundaries or relational contracts across them. Studies of open collaborative projects, mostly software, did not support the hypothesis.

     Grade

     A review of 142 empirical studies

     Design

     Review of empirical studies of the mirroring hypothesis, grouped by organizational form into industry studies, firm studies, and studies of open collaborative projects.

     Year

     2016

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     142 empirical studies.

     Limits

     A review of studies rather than a meta-analysis.

     Later work

     The most complete evidence base for the modular variant of the network form; it sets the conditions under which interfaces can coordinate work across firm lines.

111. Colli and Vasta 2018. Italy, In Asli M. Colpan and Takashi Hikino (eds), Business Groups in the West, Oxford University Press, Oxford

     Large and entangled business groups persisted in the Italian economy, and groups are present not only among large firms but in almost all the size classes and legal forms of Italian firms; the authors conclude that groups are neither limited to less developed countries nor simply a second-best functional substitute for the M-form.

     Grade

     A quantitative historical study of many firms in one country

     Design

     Qualitative history combined with network analysis of a large dataset, with a taxonomy of groups.

     Year

     2018

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Italian business groups in the twentieth century.

     Limits

     Read in the chapter abstract only.

112. Collis and colleagues 2007. The size, structure, and performance of corporate headquarters, Strategic Management Journal 28(4), 383 to 405

     Size, corporate strategy, and governance system each shape the size and structure of headquarters; performance data suggest headquarters should be designed to fit corporate strategy, and the analysis gives no support for the view that lean and mean headquarters lead to better performance.

     Grade

     A survey of more than 600 headquarters in Europe, the United States, Japan, and Chile

     Design

     Survey of headquarters structure and staffing, related to size, strategy, governance, and performance.

     Year

     2007

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     More than 600 headquarters in Europe, the United States, Japan, and Chile.

     Limits

     Cross-sectional; the authors note the results allow other interpretations.

     Later work

     Menz, Kunisch, and Collis (2015) placed it in the wider headquarters literature.

113. Colpan and Hikino 2018b. The evolutionary dynamics of diversified business groups in the West, In Asli M. Colpan and Takashi Hikino (eds), Business Groups in the West, Oxford University Press, Oxford

     Diversified business groups in developed economies are not simply transitional and second-best organizations that worked only in the early phase of modern growth, nor necessarily an obstacle to industrial development as economies mature; co-evolving with markets and institutions, they can stay a viable model of business organization in developed markets.

     Grade

     A comparative synthesis of national historical studies by scholars

     Design

     Comparative historical synthesis of the origins, evolutionary paths, and resilience of diversified business groups.

     Year

     2018

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     The economies of Western Europe, North America, and Oceania, from the nineteenth century to the present.

     Limits

     Read in the chapter abstract only; a synthesis of the volume's national chapters.

114. Cooper and colleagues 1996. Sedimentation and transformation in organizational change: the case of Canadian law firms, Organization Studies 17(4), 623 to 647

     Ideas of professionalism and partnership are changing, partly because of shifts in discourse in the wider institutional context. An emerging archetype (later work calls it the managed professional business) appears not to be secure: in the two firms it is layered on the partnership archetype rather than sweeping it away, producing sedimented structures with competing commitments.

     Grade

     Two case studies by scholars

     Design

     Case studies of two law firms, read against two archetypes of the large professional firm.

     Year

     1996

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Two large Canadian law firms.

     Limits

     Two firms in one country and one profession.

     Later work

     Pinnington and Morris (2003) surveyed 197 large British law firms and contested both the transformational and the sedimented accounts; Kirkpatrick and Ackroyd (2003) criticized archetype theory itself.

115. Cordery and colleagues 1991. Attitudinal and behavioral effects of autonomous group working: a longitudinal field study, Academy of Management Journal 34(2), 464 to 476

     Employees in autonomous work groups held more favorable work attitudes than employees in traditionally designed jobs, but absenteeism and turnover were higher among them.

     Grade

     A longitudinal study at two plants

     Design

     Longitudinal field study comparing autonomous work groups with traditionally designed jobs.

     Year

     1991

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Employees at a new and an established minerals processing plant.

     Limits

     Two plants in one industry; the abstract was read only in a search rendering, and the measures and sizes were not read.

116. Cornforth 1995. Patterns of cooperative management: beyond the degeneration thesis, Economic and Industrial Democracy 16(4), 487 to 523

     As the four cooperatives grew and faced pressure for greater efficiency, they developed new management structures and a more specialized division of labor; the paper examines how these changes affected democratic control and accountability, presents further evidence that degeneration is not inevitable as cooperatives age and grow, and details how regeneration may occur. It concludes that growing cooperatives need to review and change their management structures regularly, both to stay efficient and to give renewed expression to democracy.

     Grade

     Four case studies

     Design

     Comparative case studies.

     Year

     1995

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Four long-standing and successful worker cooperatives in the United Kingdom.

     Limits

     Four surviving, successful cooperatives, so the cases that did degenerate or fail are not in the sample.

     Later work

     Further evidence against the degeneration thesis, the claim that producer cooperatives lose their democratic character as they age and grow.

117. Covin and Slevin 1989. Strategic management of small firms in hostile and benign environments, Strategic Management Journal 10(1), 75 to 87

     In hostile environments performance was positively related to an organic structure, an entrepreneurial strategic posture, and a competitive profile of long-term orientation, high product prices, and concern for predicting industry trends; in benign environments it was positively related to a mechanistic structure, a conservative strategic posture, and a profile of conservative financial management and short-term financial orientation, emphasis on product refinement, and willingness to rely heavily on single customers.

     Grade

     A survey of 161 small manufacturers

     Design

     Survey study relating environmental hostility, organization structure, strategic posture, competitive tactics, and financial performance.

     Year

     1989

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     161 small manufacturing firms.

     Limits

     Small manufacturers only; read from the abstract, not the text, so the measures and the size of the effects are not given here.

118. Cramton 2001. The mutual knowledge problem and its consequences for dispersed collaboration, Organization Science 12(3), 346 to 371

     Maintaining mutual knowledge is a central problem of dispersed collaboration. Five kinds of failure were identified: failure to communicate and retain contextual information, unevenly distributed information, difficulty communicating and understanding the salience of information, differences in speed of access to information, and difficulty interpreting silence. The author suggests that unrecognized differences in collaborators' situations make partners more likely to attribute problems to each other's dispositions than to their situations, with consequences for cohesion and learning.

     Grade

     A study of thirteen dispersed teams

     Design

     A model of mutual knowledge failures grounded in a study of thirteen geographically dispersed teams, with the frequency and severity of each kind of failure analyzed.

     Year

     2001

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Thirteen geographically dispersed teams.

     Limits

     Thirteen teams; the abstract does not describe who the teams were or how they were chosen.

     Later work

     Hinds and Mortensen (2005) found that shared context and spontaneous communication reduce the extra conflict of distributed teams; Fayard and Metiu (2014) showed how writing can supply context at a distance.

119. Crowston and colleagues 2012. Free/libre open-source software development: what we know and what we do not know, ACM Computing Surveys 44(2), article 7, 1 to 35

     The review summarizes findings on inputs, processes, emergent states, and outputs and identifies methodological and theoretical issues, including sampling and the need for more longitudinal studies.

     Grade

     A review of the empirical research

     Design

     Review of the empirical research, organized by an input-mediator-output-input model, with a quantitative summary of the articles.

     Year

     2012

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Empirical articles on free/libre and open source software development (the count is not in the abstract).

     Limits

     A narrative review, not a meta-analysis; findings up to about 2008, when the review first appeared online.

     Later work

     Later studies in the major journals (Foss, Frederiksen, and Rullani 2016; He and colleagues 2020) used large multi-project data of the kind the review called for.

120. Crozier 1964. The Bureaucratic Phenomenon, University of Chicago Press, Chicago; Tavistock, London

     From the publisher's description and the chapter titles: routine behavior and dysfunctional vicious circles are not explained by professional training alone; the role of bureaucratic systems depends on the pattern of power relationships between groups and individuals, organized around uncertainty; and bureaucratic structures protect members against the risks of collective action. Crozier sets out a French bureaucratic model of centralization and strata isolation and is quoted as holding that a bureaucratic organization cannot correct its behavior by learning from its errors.

     Grade

     Two case studies by a scholar

     Design

     Field studies of two French public organizations.

     Year

     1964

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     A clerical agency and an industrial monopoly, both French public services (Parts One and Two of the book, by their chapter titles).

     Limits

     Two organizations in one country; the author generalizes to French culture.

     Later work

     Founded the French strategic analysis school (Crozier and Friedberg 1977).

121. Csaszar 2012. Organizational structure as a determinant of performance: evidence from mutual funds, Strategic Management Journal 33(6), 611 to 632

     Organizational structure has relevant and predictable effects: raising the consensus threshold a committee needs to select projects leads to more omission errors, fewer commission errors, and fewer approved projects. The author calls it the first large-sample empirical test of Sah and Stiglitz's model.

     Grade

     A large-sample quantitative study of 609 mutual funds

     Design

     Model of how decision-making structure affects the number of initiatives an organization pursues and its omission and commission errors, tested with structure coded from Morningstar's descriptions of fund management and errors estimated by a bootstrapping technique.

     Year

     2012

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     More than 150,000 stock-picking decisions made by 609 mutual funds.

     Limits

     One industry; structure coded from published descriptions; only the abstract was read.

122. Curchod and colleagues 2020. Working for an algorithm: power asymmetries and agency in online work settings, Administrative Science Quarterly 65(3), 644 to 676

     Sellers were highly sensitive to negative customer reviews, which were infrequent but caused anxiety and vulnerability. Power asymmetries ran at two levels, between sellers and customers and between sellers and eBay. Customer evaluations created a new form of monitoring through visibility gaps and an implicit coalition of buyers and the platform owner; algorithms reproduced the asymmetries; and sellers used their practical knowledge of the algorithm to regain some agency.

     Grade

     An interview study of 77 sellers on one platform

     Design

     Interview study.

     Year

     2020

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     77 high-performing eBay business sellers in France and Belgium.

     Limits

     One platform, high performers only, two countries; self-report.

     Later work

     Rahman (2021) found the same reactivity when the evaluation criteria were opaque; Cameron and Rahman (2022) described algorithmically mediated customer control in gig work at two platforms.

123. Currie and colleagues 2012. Institutional work to maintain professional power: recreating the model of medical professionalism, Organization Studies 33(7), 937 to 962

     Specialist doctors responded to the threat of substitution by turning it into a chance to delegate routine tasks while keeping existing resource and control arrangements, in a way that enhanced their status. They co-opted powerful members of other professional groups to help maintain those arrangements, and their theorizing of risk associated with any change in service delivery was particularly significant in maintaining the model of medical professionalism.

     Grade

     Several case studies by scholars (11 sites)

     Design

     Multi-site qualitative study of the institutional work elite professionals do when new roles threaten them.

     Year

     2012

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     11 case sites in the English National Health Service where new nursing or medical roles had been introduced.

     Limits

     One national health system; qualitative.

     Later work

     Kellogg (2018) shows a route by which managers did change professional practice: empowering semi-professionals to use their structural position toward the doctors, then giving them tools to ease the doctors' concerns about change.

124. Dahlander and O'Mahony 2011. Progressing to the center: coordinating project work, Organization Science 22(4), 961 to 979

     People progressed without hierarchy by assuming lateral authority over project tasks without managing people; technical contributions mattered first, coordination work mattered more at the later stage, and after gaining authority individuals spent significantly more time coordinating.

     Grade

     A longitudinal study of one project

     Design

     Longitudinal quantitative study predicting progression to authority roles.

     Year

     2011

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     One mature, collectively managed open source software project.

     Limits

     One project.

     Later work

     Complements O'Mahony and Ferraro (2007) on formal authority; Smirnova, Reitzig, and Sorenson (2022) found, on Stack Overflow, that what earns status changes as people rise.

125. Dalton 1950. Conflicts between staff and line managerial officers, American Sociological Review 15(3), from page 342

     Dalton treated staff and line friction as one part of a general conflict system among managers and traced it to three conditions: the conspicuous ambition and individualistic behavior of staff officers, the staff's efforts to justify its existence and win acceptance, and the dependence of incumbency in the higher staff offices on line approval. Staff turnover in 1944 to 1950 was two to four times that of line personnel, and staff officers were younger than line officers.

     Grade

     A study of three plants by one scholar

     Design

     Field study of relations among managers in three industrial plants in which the author had been present (one line of the method sentence is lost in the scanned copy); the methods of an intensive study of one of the plants are given in his 1949 University of Chicago doctoral thesis.

     Year

     1950

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Three industrial plants in related industries, of 4,500 to 20,000 employees, with managerial groups of 200 to nearly 1,000; plants and locations confidential.

     Limits

     Plants disguised; observation by one researcher; read here in an OCR copy of the journal page.

     Later work

     Belasco and Alutto (1969) reported data suggesting line and staff conflict may be less severe and different in nature than earlier work assumed.

126. Damanpour 1991. Organizational innovation: a meta-analysis of effects of determinants and moderators, Academy of Management Journal 34(3), 555 to 590

     Not verified against its source: only a truncated abstract could be read. A meta-analysis of the relationships between organizational innovation and 13 of its potential determinants found statistically significant associations for specialization and functional differentiation; the text that could be read stops there, so the other determinants' results, their directions, and the moderator results are not known here.

     Grade

     A meta-analysis of studies of organizational innovation

     Design

     Meta-analysis of the relationships between organizational innovation and its potential determinants, with moderators.

     Year

     1991

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Published studies of organizational innovation (the count of studies is in the text, which was not read).

     Limits

     Correlational studies pooled; the direction and size of each effect, and the moderator results, need the text.

     Later work

     Camisón-Zornoza and colleagues (2004, Organization Studies) replicated the meta-analysis on size; not read here.

127. Daniels and colleagues 1984. Strategy and structure of U.S. multinationals: an exploratory study, Academy of Management Journal 27(2), 292 to 307

     Not verified against its source: only the opening of the abstract was read. Not recorded from the text.

     Grade

     A multi-firm study of multinationals

     Design

     Comparison of multinationals grouped by the structure through which foreign operations report to headquarters, on product diversity, dependence on foreign operations, strategic emphasis, and ownership and control characteristics.

     Year

     1984

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Large U.S. multinationals.

     Limits

     Finding not yet read.

     Later work

     Read alongside Stopford and Wells (1972) and Egelhoff (1988).

128. Daskalaki and Kokkinidis 2017. Organizing solidarity initiatives: a socio-spatial conceptualization of resistance, Organization Studies 38(9), 1303 to 1325

     The authors identify three local practices of organizing (general assembly meetings, resistance laboratories, and the rearticulation of socio-spatial relations in local sites) and translocal flows and mobilizations. In the manuscript, Vio.Me, with twenty-five members, is described as run on an anti-hierarchical logic with rotation-based job allocation, egalitarian pay, and direct democratic participation, and more than 1,000 solidarity supporters who commit to receiving a set number of its products (equivalent to a fee of three euros a month) may take part in the workers' assembly with an advisory vote.

     Grade

     Two qualitative case studies by the same authors

     Design

     Qualitative study of two solidarity initiatives: participant observation, interviews, and documents.

     Year

     2017

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     The Worker Cooperatives Network of Athens (founded 2012; three cooperative coffee shops, two alternative and solidarity trade cooperatives, and a cooperative bookshop, with two more coffee shops as observers) and the solidarity initiative around Vio.Me, a Thessaloniki factory of a metallurgy group that went bankrupt in 2011, which restarted production under workers' control in February 2013. Data: 12 semi-structured interviews (14.5 hours), 2 group discussions, 4 general assembly meetings, site visits, and 155 pages of field notes.

     Limits

     Two cases; the authors were members of Vio.Me.SI, the solidarity initiative around the factory, which is one of the two initiatives they studied; the paper's subject is resistance, not the structure of the firm, which it describes only in passing.

129. Dattée and colleagues 2022. The dynamics of organizational autonomy: oscillations at Automobili Lamborghini, Administrative Science Quarterly 67(3), 721 to 768

     A unit's autonomy is renegotiated continually: parent managers' efforts to reduce autonomy and unit managers' efforts to extend it produce oscillations in the unit's discretion over resource decisions, driven by the parent's appraisal respect for the unit, its search for strategic integration, and the unit's identity and concern for distinctiveness; the oscillations can persist in a stable range without amalgamation or separation.

     Grade

     One longitudinal case study

     Design

     21-year longitudinal process study of one unit's relationship with its parent.

     Year

     2022

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Automobili Lamborghini and its parent, Audi AG.

     Limits

     One unit and one parent; the source does not use the term federal.

     Later work

     Shows that the balance between a center and an autonomous unit, the federal form's defining tension, is dynamic rather than set once.

130. Davies and colleagues 2006. Charting a path toward integrated solutions, MIT Sloan Management Review 47(3) (Spring 2006), 39 to 48

     Not verified against its source: only the article's opening and endnotes could be read. Firms providing integrated solutions built reconfigurable customer-facing units at the front end, which own the customer relationship and assemble teams around each customer's problem, backed by internal or external capability providers at the back end that supply modular products and services, with a strategic center balancing front-end pressure for customization against back-end pressure for standardization. The authors describe a three-stage path and name repeatability as the key measure of progress, and they call the transition difficult with no guaranteed outcome.

     Grade

     Case studies of five companies

     Design

     Qualitative case studies of firms moving into integrated solutions.

     Year

     2006

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Five companies: Alstom Transport, Ericsson, Thales Training & Simulation, Cable & Wireless Global, and WS Atkins.

     Limits

     Five firms in capital goods and services; a managerial article summarizing the research.

     Later work

     The same team's journal article (Davies and colleagues 2007) found mixed organizational forms rather than a clean shift; Raja and colleagues (2018) found several front-end and back-end configurations inside one firm.

131. Davies and colleagues 2007. Organizing for solutions: systems seller vs. systems integrator, Industrial Marketing Management 36(2), 183 to 193

     There was no evidence for the continuing dominance of the systems seller or for a simple transition from systems selling to systems integration. A more mixed set of organizational forms was emerging that combined vertical integration into services with systems integration.

     Grade

     Case studies of five firms

     Design

     Comparison of five case firms against the systems seller and systems integrator ideal types.

     Year

     2007

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Five international suppliers of capital goods that had recently moved into integrated solutions: Alstom Transport, Ericsson Mobile Systems, Thales Training and Simulation, Atkins, and Cable and Wireless Global Markets, studied in a collaborative research project from 2000 to 2003.

     Limits

     Five firms; short case studies covering changes from 1995 to 2003.

     Later work

     Complements the front-end and back-end account in Davies and colleagues (2006).

132. Davis and colleagues 1994. The decline and fall of the conglomerate firm in the 1980s: the deinstitutionalization of an organizational form, American Sociological Review 59(4), 547 to 570

     Not verified against its source: no abstract or text could be read. The conglomerate, perhaps the dominant corporate form in the United States in 1980, was in effect deinstitutionalized by 1990 through two processes: diversified firms were taken over at a high rate and their unwanted parts sold off, and the less diversified survivors shunned conglomerate growth; business rhetoric shifted from the firm as a portfolio to a network model.

     Grade

     A population study of large firms

     Design

     Time-series analysis of the population of the largest U.S. industrial firms.

     Year

     1994

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     The largest U.S. industrial firms through the 1980s.

     Limits

     U.S. firms; explains the form's decline, not its performance.

     Later work

     Kay (2002) argued from European data that the conglomerate is more persistent than generally believed.

133. Davis and colleagues 2009. Optimal Structure, Market Dynamism, and the Strategy of Simple Rules, Administrative Science Quarterly 54(3), 413 to 452

     The structure and performance relationship is asymmetric: it is better to err on the side of too much structure. Increasing unpredictability lowers optimal structure and narrows the range of effective strategies; a strategy of simple rules is viable in many environments and essential in some. Entrepreneurial organizations should quickly add structure in all environments, while established organizations are better off seeking predictable environments unless they can manage an edge of chaos equilibrium of structure in unpredictable ones.

     Grade

     A computer simulation, with no field data

     Design

     Computational and mathematical modeling of the tension between too little and too much structure, shaped by the tradeoff between efficiency and flexibility in dynamic environments.

     Year

     2009

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     None; simulated organizations in environments varied on velocity, complexity, ambiguity, and unpredictability.

     Limits

     A simulation, not a field test; read from the abstract.

134. Davis-Blake and Uzzi 1993. Determinants of employment externalization: a study of temporary workers and independent contractors, Administrative Science Quarterly 38(2), 195 to 223

     The four factors affected temporary workers and independent contractors differently, and skill and training were tested for temporary workers only. Firm-specific training, government oversight, bureaucratized employment practices, establishment size, and high informational or technical skill requirements reduced the use of temporary workers, while variation in employment needs increased it. Variation in employment needs, bureaucratized practices, establishment size, and being part of a multiple-site firm increased the use of independent contractors.

     Grade

     A survey of a large sample of U.S. employers

     Design

     Test of four hypothesized determinants of the use of externalized workers (employment costs, the external environment, size and bureaucratization, and skill requirements).

     Year

     1993

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Establishments in the U.S. Department of Labor's Employment Opportunity Pilot Project employer surveys, a random sample in 28 metropolitan areas; mainly the 1982 wave, to which 2,752 establishments responded.

     Limits

     Cross-sectional employer data, mainly from 1982. Training and skill requirements were measured at the job level and tested for temporary workers only; contractor use was modeled at the establishment level without them. Government oversight and unionization had no effect on contractor use, and multiple sites none on temporary workers.

     Later work

     Shows that the shamrock's two outer leaves (the contractual fringe and the flexible workforce) have different drivers.

135. Davis-Blake and colleagues 2003. Happy together? How using nonstandard workers affects exit, voice, and loyalty among standard employees, Academy of Management Journal 46(4), 475 to 485

     Workforce blending worsened relations between managers and employees, decreased standard employees' loyalty, and increased their interest both in leaving their organizations and in exercising voice through unionization. These effects depended on whether the nonstandard workers were temporary or contract and on the salary and responsibilities of the standard employees.

     Grade

     A study of standard employees (sample not confirmed)

     Design

     Study of how a blended workforce, one with standard and nonstandard workers in the same jobs, affects exit, voice, and loyalty among standard employees.

     Year

     2003

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Not confirmed (the abstract does not give the sample).

     Limits

     Only the abstract was read, and it gives no sample; none was found in two web searches either. The grade assumes a multi-firm sample, which has not been confirmed.

     Later work

     Broschak and Davis-Blake (2006) extended it to the proportions of nonstandard workers in work groups.

136. Davison and colleagues 2012. Coordinated action in multiteam systems, Journal of Applied Psychology 97(4), 808 to 824

     Coordination across team boundaries at the component-team level can be detrimental to performance, and coordinated actions by component-team boundary spanners and system leadership help only when centered on the component team most critical to the task environment; conventional wisdom about coordination in teams and large organizations does not always transfer to multiteam systems.

     Grade

     A laboratory-like exercise with 233 multiteam systems

     Design

     Exercise designed to be both laboratory-like and field-like, studying coordinated action in multiteam systems.

     Year

     2012

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     233 systems, each of three highly specialized six-person teams.

     Limits

     A laboratory-like exercise with human participants; one task type.

     Later work

     Cuts against the claim in practitioner accounts that more connection everywhere is better; de Vries and colleagues (2016) add that vertical coordination is what makes generalist members pay off.

137. Day 2006. Aligning the organization with the market, MIT Sloan Management Review 48(1), 41 to 49

     The article lays out a continuum of market alignment: product or functional silos, informal coordination through product and key account managers and customer data, integrating functions such as key account managers and customer segment task forces, and structural alignment through segment managers or customer-based front-end units that reinforce the customer dimension of the matrix. It treats deciding how far and fast to move along it as the central choice.

     Grade

     A practitioner article by a scholar, built on named company examples

     Design

     Practitioner article by a marketing scholar, drawing on companies that reorganized around customers.

     Year

     2006

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Named examples: Intel, which in 2005 announced plans to create five new market units, with IBM, Cummins India, Fidelity Investments, and Imation; the article's visible text reports no count of firms or survey.

     Limits

     Practitioner venue; only part of the text was readable. The fifteen cases, the survey of 347 firms, and a performance result reported by Knowledge at Wharton come from Day's companion working paper, not from this article.

     Later work

     Lee and colleagues (2015) is a separate study, not a test of this article: in Fortune 500 firms from 1998 to 2010 it found that customer-centric structure raised customer satisfaction but added coordinating costs, with the benefit smaller where competitors already used it, in fragmented markets, and in less profitable industries.

138. de Vries and colleagues 2016. Managing coordination in multiteam systems: integrating micro and macro perspectives, Academy of Management Journal 59(5), 1823 to 1844

     Generalist members aided horizontal coordination but could distract from high-impact specialized activities; coordination across the system's hierarchical layers, between a team tasked with system-wide integration and the specialized component teams, was critical for reaping the benefits of generalists while avoiding the costs.

     Grade

     A laboratory simulation with 236 multiteam systems

     Design

     Decision-making simulation testing how intrapersonal functional diversity (generalist members) and vertical coordinated action between an integrating team and component teams affect multiteam performance.

     Year

     2016

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     236 fourteen-person multiteam systems.

     Limits

     A laboratory simulation with human participants.

     Later work

     The vertical link between an integrating team and component teams is close in function to Likert's linking pin, though the study does not test Likert's form.

139. DeChurch and Marks 2006. Leadership in multiteam systems, Journal of Applied Psychology 91(2), 311 to 329

     Both leader trainings improved functional leadership and interteam coordination; functional leadership mediated the training effects on coordination, and interteam coordination fully mediated the effect of leadership on multiteam performance.

     Grade

     A laboratory experiment with 64 multiteam systems

     Design

     Laboratory experiment manipulating leader strategizing and coordinating through training.

     Year

     2006

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     384 undergraduate students in 64 three-team multiteam systems performing an F-22 battle simulation.

     Limits

     Student sample; simulation.

     Later work

     Shows a role for system-level leadership; Shultz (2016) reports that Task Force 714's leaders recast theirs as eyes-on, hands-off enablers.

140. Deery and Jago 2002. The core and the periphery: an examination of the flexible workforce model in the hotel industry, International Journal of Hospitality Management 21(4), 339 to 351

     The findings question earlier research proposing clearly defined workforce groups in the hotel sector.

     Grade

     A survey of 287 employees in seven hotels

     Design

     Survey of employees, clustered into peripheral and nonperipheral groups by standard labor force segmentation criteria, with discriminant analysis of access to the internal labor market.

     Year

     2002

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     287 nonsupervisory employees in seven central business district hotels in Melbourne.

     Limits

     One industry in one city; perceptions rather than records.

     Later work

     Adds to the evidence that the boundary between core and periphery is less clean than the model draws it.

141. DeFillippi and Arthur 1998. Paradox in project-based enterprise: the case of film making, California Management Review 40(2), 125 to 139

     Project-based enterprises show paradoxical attributes, each of which challenges strategic management's assumption of a relatively permanent firm as the locus of learning, knowledge transfer, and competitive advantage. Findings from the case suggest the importance of human and social capital embodied in individual free-agent careers and mobilized within communities of professional and industry practice.

     Grade

     One case study

     Design

     Intensive case study of one project.

     Year

     1998

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     A big-budget motion picture project.

     Limits

     One project in one industry.

     Later work

     Bechky (2006), also studying film projects, describes how the work within them is organized: structured role systems negotiated on each set, with careers that progress across organizations and projects as part of the context for coordination.

142. Delarue and colleagues 2008. Teamworking and organizational performance: a review of survey-based research, International Journal of Management Reviews 10(2), 127 to 148

     Teamworking had a positive impact on all four dimensions of performance the authors distinguish (attitudinal, behavioral, operational, and financial), and when teamwork was combined with structural change, performance could be further enhanced.

     Grade

     A review of several independent quantitative survey studies

     Design

     Review of survey-based research in which both teamwork and performance are measured quantitatively.

     Year

     2008

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Recent quantitative survey studies (the count is not in the abstract).

     Limits

     A narrative review, not a meta-analysis; survey designs are mostly cross-sectional, so the direction of causation is open.

     Later work

     Batt (2004) shows that who benefits differs by level: workers gained and supervisors lost.

143. Delbridge 1995. Surviving JIT: control and resistance in a Japanese transplant, Journal of Management Studies 32(6), 803 to 817

     Incorporating just-in-time production and total quality management into clearly defined management objectives allowed a more complete combination of the control of labor with management's economic goals than piece-rate systems had; worker resistance and misbehavior persisted, but in ways increasingly fragmentary and marginal.

     Grade

     A participant-observation study of one plant

     Design

     Participant observation of management control, worker behavior, and workplace relations.

     Year

     1995

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     One Japanese-owned consumer electronics plant in England.

     Limits

     One transplant plant outside Japan; it studies the Japanese production system abroad, not the Japanese firm's horizontal coordination at home.

     Later work

     Read beside Sewell and Wilkinson (1992), who argue the same control thesis from theory and observation, and against Aoki's account of horizontal coordination and Adler and Cole's (1993) case for NUMMI's standardized work.

144. Denis and colleagues 1996. Leadership and strategic change under ambiguity, Organization Studies 17(4), 673 to 699

     The authors suggest that strategic change where goals are unclear and authority is fluid requires collaborative leadership by a constellation of actors in distinct but tightly knit roles, that such leadership is fragile and can disintegrate through internal conflict or the discrediting that follows more unpopular, though potentially effective, tactics, and that radical change under ambiguity may therefore tend to come in cycles, with periods of substantive change alternating with periods of political realignment.

     Grade

     One case study

     Design

     Longitudinal case study of leadership and strategic change in one organization.

     Year

     1996

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     A large public hospital that acquired a university affiliation while moving toward more integrated management.

     Limits

     One hospital; the paper ends with five propositions, not tests of them.

     Later work

     Denis, Lamothe, and Langley (2001) extended the work to collective leadership in several pluralistic organizations; that paper's abstract could not be read.

145. DeSantola and Gulati 2017. Scaling: organizing and growth in entrepreneurial ventures, Academy of Management Annals 11(2), 640 to 668

     The literature holds two narratives: one stresses the surprising endurance of organizational features during growth, the other their dramatic change. Setting them side by side shows gaps in how growth changes organizational design, team composition, and culture.

     Grade

     A review of earlier research, with no new data

     Design

     Review of research on growth and internal organization in entrepreneurial ventures.

     Year

     2017

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Published management research on scaling.

     Limits

     A review; no new data.

     Later work

     DeSantola, Gulati, and Zhelyazkov (2023) take up one of its themes, how ventures add functional roles as they scale.

146. DeSantola and colleagues 2023. External interfaces or internal processes? Market positioning and divergent professionalization paths in young ventures, Organization Science 34(1), 1 to 23

     Ventures do not march uniformly toward professionalization. Those positioned in an unconventional market space develop external interface functions (marketing and sales, customer development) and are less apt to elaborate internal process functions (accounting, human resources, finance) than conventional peers.

     Grade

     A longitudinal quantitative study of thousands of young ventures

     Design

     Longitudinal quantitative study of how ventures develop functional roles.

     Year

     2023

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     3,748 entrepreneurial ventures based in the United States.

     Limits

     United States ventures only; functional roles are measured as they appear in the data set, not by observing how work is coordinated.

     Later work

     Qualifies stage models in which every venture adds the same functions in the same order (Greiner 1972 is the classic stage account).

147. Dessein and colleagues 2010. Organizing for synergies, American Economic Journal: Microeconomics 2(4), 77 to 114

     Hybrid organizations endogenously create an incentive conflict between functional managers, who want excessive standardization, and business-unit managers, who want excessive local adaptation; the paper studies how allocating authority and tasks between them interacts with that conflict, with testable implications for mergers and for the structure and incentives inside multidivisional firms.

     Grade

     A formal model with no new data

     Design

     Formal economic model of hybrid organizations that keep business units but centralize some activities in company-wide functional units.

     Year

     2010

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     No new data.

     Limits

     A model; the company examples in its introduction are illustrations, not data.

     Later work

     Argyres, Rios, and Silverman (2020) give evidence on one such choice, the centralization of R&D.

148. De Stefano and colleagues 2019. Does losing temporary workers matter? The effects of planned turnover on replacements and unit performance, Academy of Management Journal 62(4), 979 to 1002

     Planned turnover of temporary workers has an inverted U-shaped relationship with unit performance, combining flexibility benefits with disruption costs; the costs are moderated by the proportion and firm-specific experience of replacements.

     Grade

     Monthly data from the units of one company

     Design

     Longitudinal analysis of the performance effects of planned turnover of temporary workers whose contracts expire.

     Year

     2019

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Monthly data from the units of one leading multinational company in the food and beverage industry.

     Limits

     One company; the abstract does not give the number of units or months.

     Later work

     Challenges the assumption that the flexible leaf is a disposable resource: losing it has costs.

149. Devanna and Tichy 1990. Creating the competitive organization of the 21st century: the boundaryless corporation, Human Resource Management 29(4), 455 to 471

     After the downsizing and financial restructuring of the 1980s, large organizations seek advantage by being faster than competitors at satisfying customers; the authors speculate on how such self-renewing organizations are organized, the managerial processes that let them capitalize on speed, and the leaders who run them.

     Grade

     A conceptual argument

     Design

     Conceptual speculation.

     Year

     1990

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     None.

     Limits

     No empirical test.

     Later work

     An early use of the boundaryless label, five years before Ashkenas, Ulrich, Jick, and Kerr (1995).

150. Devine and colleagues 1999. Teams in organizations, Small Group Research 30(6), 678 to 711

     Nearly half (48 percent) of the random sample used some type of team, ongoing project teams most often. Teams were more prevalent in organizations with multiple departments, multiple divisions, higher sales, and more employees. Interpersonal conflict was the best predictor of perceived team effectiveness. Organizations using teams generally did not support them with team-level performance feedback or pay.

     Grade

     A survey of many organizations

     Design

     Two surveys sent to United States organizations on the prevalence, duties, composition, and structure of groups and teams, with a typology of team types.

     Year

     1999

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     One random sample of United States organizations and one sample of organizations known or believed to use teams; sample sizes are not in the abstract.

     Limits

     Self-reported by organizational respondents; effectiveness is perceived, not measured.

     Later work

     The finding that firms adopt teams without team-level feedback or pay is the gap Mohrman, Cohen, and Mohrman (1995) address as a design problem: teams without the surrounding organization redesigned.

151. Devinney and colleagues 2000. The optimal performance of the global firm: formalizing and extending the integration-responsiveness framework, Organization Science 11(6), 674 to 695

     The integration-responsiveness-completeness model argues that global firms can respond to competing pressures by configuring themselves in a variety of ways, rather than normatively prescribing that the transnational form is optimal. Because the model is about best rather than average performance, it suggests that average-based empirical methods may explain the paradoxical lack of empirical support for a link between organizational form and performance.

     Grade

     A formal model with no new data

     Design

     Formal model reformulating the integration-responsiveness framework.

     Year

     2000

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     No new data.

     Limits

     Conceptual and formal; no test reported.

     Later work

     A direct dissent from the normative reading of the transnational.

152. DiBenigno 2019. Rapid relationality: how peripheral experts build a foundation for influence with line managers, Administrative Science Quarterly 65(1), 20 to 60 (online 2019, in print March 2020)

     Mental health professionals, lacking formal authority over commanders, built influential relationships through a three-phase process the author calls rapid relationality, using short early windows before minor or major conflicts threatened their influence; when and how fast experts acted mattered as well as what they did, and some experts, depending on personal characteristics such as gender, had fewer tactics or needed more time-consuming ones to reach the same influence.

     Grade

     An ethnographic study inside one organization

     Design

     Grounded theory from an ethnography of experts in lower-power peripheral roles and the line managers in core functions they depend on, analyzing each pair's relational history.

     Year

     2019

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     56 dyads of U.S. Army mental health professionals and the soldiers' direct commanders.

     Limits

     One organization and one kind of expert; the study does not use the line and staff label; only the abstract was read.

153. Diefenbach and Sillince 2011. Formal and informal hierarchy in different types of organization, Organization Studies 32(11), 1515 to 1537

     Hierarchy is far more widespread than thought: postmodern, representative democratic, and network organizations are much less alternative and hierarchy-free than their labels suggest, and the persistence of hierarchy is explained by the dynamic relations between formal and informal hierarchy.

     Grade

     A conceptual analysis

     Design

     Conceptual analysis applying a framework of formal and informal hierarchy to several types of organization.

     Year

     2011

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     No sample; the framework is applied to several types of organization, among them postmodern, representative democratic, and network organizations.

     Limits

     Conceptual; no organizations are measured.

154. Dieleman and Boddewyn 2012. Using organization structure to buffer political ties in emerging markets: a case study, Organization Studies 33(1), 71 to 95 (online December 2011)

     The authors identify four buffering mechanisms by which a loosely coupled business group protects itself against the adverse effects of its political ties, and argue that loosely coupled structures facilitate the management of those ties.

     Grade

     One longitudinal case study

     Design

     Longitudinal case study, extending resource-dependence theory.

     Year

     2012

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     The Salim Group, a very large and politically well-connected Indonesian business group under the Suharto regime.

     Limits

     One group in one regime; the abstract does not name the four mechanisms, and the text was not read.

155. Dikert and colleagues 2016. Challenges and success factors for large-scale agile transformations: a systematic literature review, Journal of Systems and Software 119, 87 to 108

     Almost 90 percent of the included papers (46) were experience reports and six were academic studies, indicating a lack of sound academic research. The review identified 35 challenges in nine categories (for example, difficulty of implementation, integrating other functions, and resistance to change) and 29 success factors in eleven categories, the most salient being management support, choosing and customizing the agile model, training and coaching, and mindset and alignment.

     Grade

     A systematic review of 52 publications on 42 industrial cases, almost all of them practitioners' experience reports

     Design

     Systematic literature review.

     Year

     2016

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     A keyword search found 1,875 papers; 52 publications describing 42 industrial cases of large-scale agile transformations were included.

     Limits

     The evidence base is mostly practitioners' experience reports; success factors are reported, not tested.

     Later work

     Uludağ and colleagues (2022) mapped 136 studies, showing that primary research grew after this review; Edison, Wang, and Conboy (2022) compared the scaling methods and found an emphasis on framework practices at the expense of principles.

156. Dingsøyr and colleagues 2018. Coordinating knowledge work in multiteam programs: findings from a large-scale agile development program, Project Management Journal 49(6), 64 to 77

     The findings highlight coordination modes based on feedback, the use of a number of coordination mechanisms, and how coordination practices change over time, so that practices can be tailored to needs as a program proceeds.

     Grade

     One case study

     Design

     Case study.

     Year

     2018

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     A large-scale agile development program with 12 teams.

     Limits

     One program.

     Later work

     Berntzen and colleagues (2023) built a taxonomy of 27 inter-team coordination mechanisms from another single firm.

157. Donaldson 1987. Strategy and structural adjustment to regain fit and performance: in defence of contingency theory, Journal of Management Studies 24(1), 1 to 24

     Several propositions relating diversification, reorganization, and performance were supported. Changing the contingency to match the structure was not borne out as a frequent alternative to adjusting the structure to the contingency. Neither contingency determinism nor strategic choice is completely adequate; the author advances structural adjustment to regain fit, in which performance plays an important role.

     Grade

     A quantitative study of firms over time

     Design

     A diachronic quantitative enquiry into strategy (diversification), structural reorganization, and performance, framed as a defense of contingency theory against the charge that it is static.

     Year

     1987

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Firms observed over time; the abstract read does not give the number or the country.

     Limits

     Only the abstract was read, so the sample and measures were not checked; the author tests his own model.

     Later work

     Donaldson (2001) makes this the structural adaptation to regain fit (SARFIT) model at the core of his account of contingency theory.

158. Doty and colleagues 1993. Fit, equifinality, and organizational effectiveness: a test of two configurational theories, Academy of Management Journal 36(6), 1196 to 1250

     Contrary to the authors' expectations, the results did not support Mintzberg's theory that organizations are more effective to the extent that they resemble his five ideal types. Configurational fit based on Miles and Snow's theory predicted 24 percent of the variance in overall organizational effectiveness.

     Grade

     A quantitative test across a sample of organizations

     Design

     Formal test of two configurational theories using fit models built on alternative assumptions of equifinality.

     Year

     1993

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Organizations (the abstract does not describe the sample).

     Limits

     One sample; the measure of resemblance to ideal types is the authors' own operationalization.

     Later work

     A null result for the claim that pure configurations outperform mixtures, which bears directly on whether a hybrid is a lapse or a choice. Ketchen and colleagues' meta-analysis (1997) found that configurations do partly explain performance. For the professional bureaucracy and the adhocracy it is the main direct test of the effectiveness claim Mintzberg (1980) made for his ideal types, and it did not support it. Krabberød (2015) found that none of the 218 articles citing the test discussed what it meant for Mintzberg's theory, and argues that the test has not been shown to be exhaustive.

159. Doucouliagos 1995. Worker participation and productivity in labor-managed and participatory capitalist firms: a meta-analysis, Industrial and Labor Relations Review 49(1), 58 to 77

     Mandated codetermination is associated with lower productivity, while worker participation in decision making, profit sharing, and worker ownership are associated with higher productivity; the positive associations are stronger in labor-managed firms than in participatory capitalist firms.

     Grade

     A meta-analysis of 43 published studies

     Design

     Meta-analysis of the correlation between forms of worker participation and productivity.

     Year

     1995

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     43 published studies covering participation in decision making, mandated codetermination, profit sharing, worker ownership, and collective ownership of assets, in labor-managed firms and in participatory capitalist firms.

     Limits

     Correlations pooled from published studies up to the early 1990s; publication bias and the endogeneity of participation are not ruled out.

     Later work

     Jirjahn (2011) reviews the later econometric work on German codetermination. It reports positive profitability and employment effects of works councils, very heterogeneous results on their wage effects, and, unlike older studies, newer board-level results suggesting that company codetermination can raise productivity and, under certain conditions, profitability, with some heterogeneity of results. Those board-level results run against the negative association of mandated codetermination with productivity here.

160. Douillé and colleagues 2015. La sociocratie : des principes à la réalité de terrain dans un centre de recherche, Management & Sciences Sociales 18(1), 24 to 36 (in French)

     Sociocracy was only partly implemented, though several signs pointed to a cultural shift toward more of it. The benefits workers perceived concerned mainly the breaking down of barriers between parts of the organization (décloisonnement), with some individual benefits, and the workers reported several difficulties, among them a conflict over elitism.

     Grade

     One case study

     Design

     Case study, based mainly on semi-structured interviews, of one research center's implementation of sociocracy (organization in circles, consent, election without candidates, and double linking), from the workers' point of view.

     Year

     2015

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     14 workers of one research center (not named in the abstract).

     Limits

     One organization and 14 interviews; it studies sociocracy as a whole, not double linking alone. The abstract was read in French and the record paraphrases it; no published translation exists.

     Later work

     King and Griffin (2024) found a similar mix of benefits and implementation challenges in a nonprofit co-housing community.

161. Drazin and Van de Ven 1985. Alternative forms of fit in contingency theory, Administrative Science Quarterly 30(4), from p. 514

     The data supported the selection and systems approaches to fit but not the interaction approach. The authors discuss how far the findings generalize as ways of explaining context, structure, and performance relationships.

     Grade

     A quantitative study of 629 work units in two states' employment security agencies

     Design

     Empirical test of three approaches to fit in structural contingency theory (selection, interaction, and systems) against a task contingency theory of work-unit design.

     Year

     1985

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     629 employment security units in California and Wisconsin.

     Limits

     Work units in public employment security agencies in two states; only the abstract was read, so the measures, the effect sizes, and the definitions of each form of fit beyond their names were not checked.

     Later work

     Gresov (1989), using data Van de Ven made available from employment-security offices, studied misfit under multiple contingencies. Donaldson (2001) notes that the units studied lie within a public-sector organization.

162. Drees and Heugens 2013. Synthesizing and extending resource dependence theory: a meta-analysis, Journal of Management 39(6), 1666 to 1698

     The theory's main predictions are corroborated: organizations respond to resource dependencies by forming interorganizational arrangements such as interlocks, alliances, joint ventures, in-sourcing arrangements, and mergers and acquisitions, and these arrangements make them more autonomous and more legitimate. The mechanisms linking an arrangement to autonomy and legitimacy differ across arrangements. Autonomy positively mediates the relationship between forming arrangements and performance; legitimacy does not.

     Grade

     A meta-analysis of 157 tests

     Design

     Meta-analysis of tests of resource dependence theory.

     Year

     2013

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     157 tests of the theory.

     Limits

     The outcome is the organization's ties across its boundary, which this series names inside the network entry and does not cover. The study's test of U.S. merger guidelines and merger profitability is deals content, out of scope on this site, and is not used here.

     Later work

     Hillman, Withers, and Collins (2009) review the same theory in narrative form.

163. Dubbs and colleagues 2004. Reexamining organizational configurations: an update, validation, and expansion of the taxonomy of health networks and systems, Health Services Research 39(1), 207 to 220

     The 1998 clusters resembled the original taxonomy but showed new configurations; among health systems, participation grew in, and dispersed across, a more diverse set of decentralized organizational forms, and for both networks and systems the definition of centralization changed over time.

     Grade

     A cluster analysis of a national survey of health systems, repeated over time

     Design

     A replication and update of the 1999 taxonomy, with factor, cluster, and discriminant analyses of 1998 data compared with the 1994 solution.

     Year

     2004

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Hospital-led health networks and systems in the 1994 and 1998 American Hospital Association Annual Surveys.

     Limits

     The same survey measures Luke (2006) later questioned for company-level classification.

     Later work

     Shortell and colleagues (2021) found 82 percent of systems still relatively decentralized.

164. Dyer and Nobeoka 2000. Creating and managing a high-performance knowledge-sharing network: the Toyota case, Strategic Management Journal 21(3), 345 to 367

     Toyota's ability to create and manage network-level knowledge-sharing processes at least partly explains the productivity advantages of Toyota and its suppliers, and suppliers learn more quickly after joining the network. The network solved three dilemmas (motivating members to share, preventing free riders, and lowering the cost of finding knowledge) by creating a strong network identity with rules for participation and entry and by treating production knowledge as the property of the network.

     Grade

     One case study of a supplier network

     Design

     Case study of the knowledge-sharing processes inside one automaker's supplier network.

     Year

     2000

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Toyota and its suppliers.

     Limits

     A single network chosen because it performed well; the comparison with other automakers' networks rests on prior research.

     Later work

     The authors argue that a network with a strong identity and coordinating rules can beat a single firm at creating and recombining knowledge, a claim later work on network orchestration builds on.

165. Edison and colleagues 2022. Comparing methods for large-scale agile software development: a systematic literature review, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering 48(8), 2709 to 2731

     No prior cross-method comparison based on empirical evidence existed; the literature emphasizes the practices of commercial frameworks at the expense of their underlying principles and of custom methods. The review identifies challenges and success factors in using large-scale agile methods and research gaps across methods.

     Grade

     A systematic review of published studies of five methods

     Design

     Systematic literature review comparing methods.

     Year

     2022

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Published studies of five large-scale agile methods, among them SAFe, LeSS, Scrum-at-Scale, and Disciplined Agile Delivery, plus custom methods built in organizations such as Nokia and Ericsson.

     Limits

     The abstract does not state how many studies were included or how strong they were.

     Later work

     Updates Dikert, Paasivaara, and Lassenius (2016), whose review found the evidence mostly practitioner reports.

166. Egelhoff 1982. Strategy and structure in multinational corporations: an information-processing approach, Administrative Science Quarterly 27(3), 435 to 458

     Hypotheses from the model were generally confirmed, supporting both the importance of fit between strategy and structure and the value of the information-processing model.

     Grade

     A multi-firm study of multinationals

     Design

     Information-processing model of strategy and structure fit, tested statistically.

     Year

     1982

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     34 U.S. and European multinationals.

     Limits

     34 firms; cross-sectional.

     Later work

     Egelhoff (1988) used data on 34 large U.S. and European multinationals to revise the Stopford and Wells model.

167. Egelhoff 1988. Strategy and structure in multinational corporations: a revision of the Stopford and Wells model, Strategic Management Journal 9(1), 1 to 14

     Some of the model's relationships were supported and others were not; the relative size of foreign manufacturing proved an important predictor of structure, and a revised model is proposed.

     Grade

     A multi-firm study of multinationals

     Design

     Re-test of the Stopford and Wells model.

     Year

     1988

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     34 large U.S. and European multinationals.

     Limits

     34 firms.

     Later work

     Wolf and Egelhoff (2002) extended the revised model to matrix structures.

168. Egelhoff and colleagues 2013. Designing matrix structures to fit MNC strategy, Global Strategy Journal 3(3), 205 to 226

     Hypotheses from the information-processing model were supported. The analysis also showed that one element of strategy, the technological similarity of an MNC's products, is missing from the literature and from the model.

     Grade

     A survey of 57 German multinationals that use a matrix

     Design

     Information-processing model of strategy-structure fit for the different types of MNC matrix, with hypotheses tested by multivariate discriminant analysis.

     Year

     2013

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     57 German MNCs with matrix structures.

     Limits

     German MNCs only; the sample is matrix firms, so the study compares matrix types rather than matrix against non-matrix firms.

     Later work

     Part of the Wolf and Egelhoff program (Wolf and Egelhoff 2002; Wolf and Egelhoff 2013; Egelhoff and Wolf 2017).

169. Elrod and Fortenberry 2017. The hub-and-spoke organization design: an avenue for serving patients well, BMC Health Services Research 17 (Suppl 1), article 457

     The design arranges a system's sites as a full-service hub and limited-service spokes that route patients needing more intensive care to the hub, with authority extending from the hub outward: policy is set system-wide at the hub and carried out by spoke administrators who report to the hub-based chief executive. The authors argue that the design, properly assembled, serves patients efficiently and effectively; they cite studies finding lower costs in hub-and-spoke networks but report no outcome measures for the system profiled.

     Grade

     A single descriptive case written with the system's own chief executive

     Design

     A descriptive profile of one health system's hub-and-spoke service delivery network, defining the design, stating its benefits, and discussing its applications, citing studies on cost and quality.

     Year

     2017

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     One system, Willis-Knighton Health System, which has used the design for over three decades.

     Limits

     A single case with no outcome data, written in part by the system's chief executive; the cost claims rest on cited studies the article does not analyze. On this site the hub-and-spoke design is not a variant: it is out of scope here, pointed to Workflow Topologies and named on the page for the divisional form by region, so the study is cited there and not as evidence for the divisional form.

     Later work

     The same authors' "The hub-and-spoke organization design revisited: a lifeline for rural hospitals" (BMC Health Services Research, 2017) was found only as a catalog title and not read.

170. Emanuel and Harrington 2024. Working Remotely? Selection, Treatment, and the Market for Remote Work, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 16(4), 528-559

     Before COVID-19, remote workers answered 12 percent fewer calls per hour than on-site workers. After offices closed, the productivity gap narrowed by 4 percent, and formerly on-site workers' call quality and promotion rates declined. Even with everyone remote, an 8 percent gap persisted, indicating negative selection into remote jobs. Savings in reduced turnover and office rents could outweigh remote work's negative productivity impact, but not the costs of attracting less productive workers.

     Grade

     A quantitative study of workers in one Fortune 500 firm

     Design

     Decomposition of remote work's productivity effects into selection and treatment in one firm, comparing remote and on-site workers before COVID-19 and after offices closed, with a cost-benefit analysis.

     Year

     2024

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Workers answering calls at one Fortune 500 firm (the abstract gives no count).

     Limits

     One firm and one kind of work; individual remote work inside one employer, not a test of the dispersed form as a whole; only the abstract was read.

171. Emery and Thorsrud 1976. Democracy at Work: The Report of the Norwegian Industrial Democracy Program, Martinus Nijhoff Social Sciences Division, Leiden (179 pages; in cooperation with Per H. Engelstad, Jon Gulowsen, and Thoralf Qvale)

     Semi-autonomous work groups were set up in the experiments, and the report records higher productivity in experimental phases it describes. On diffusion it holds that diffusion must be firmly based on an existing power structure, reports that applications within Norway spread slowly but very steadily, and notes a partial sealing off of the experiments at some sites.

     Grade

     Four field experiments in Norwegian firms, reported by the program's researchers

     Design

     Four field experiments that set up semi-autonomous work groups, run with the program's site research officers, followed by an analysis of how the results diffused.

     Year

     1976

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Four Norwegian firms: the Christiania Spigerverk wire drawing mill, the Hunsfos pulp and paper mill, Norsk Hydro, and Nobø (metal fabrication).

     Limits

     Reported by the program's own researchers; read through Internet Archive full-text search snippets of the scan, not in full, so site-by-site results are not given here.

     Later work

     Gustavsen (1992) turned to broad participation through democratic dialogue after the single-site experiments met problems of diffusion.

172. Empson and Alvehus 2019. Collective leadership dynamics among professional peers: co-constructing an unstable equilibrium, Organization Studies 41(9), 1234 to 1256 (online 2019, in print 2020)

     Professional peers co-construct collective leadership through three relational processes, legitimizing, negotiating, and maneuvering, which together form an unstable equilibrium in the moment and over time. Colleagues may grant peers leadership identities without granting them leadership authority, and without claiming follower identities themselves.

     Grade

     An interview study across three professional sectors

     Design

     Qualitative interview study of collective leadership.

     Year

     2019

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     102 interviews across consulting, accounting, and law firms.

     Limits

     Interview data from three sectors; the abstract does not say how many firms.

     Later work

     Empson (2019, Leadership) traces the same dynamics in one firm under crisis; Empson (2017) sets out the broader account.

173. Empson 2019. Ambiguous authority and hidden hierarchy: collective leadership in an elite professional service firm, Leadership 16(1), 62 to 86 (online 2019, in print 2020)

     Peers deliberately built and amplified ambiguity about who belonged to their leadership group and what authority it had, and that ambiguity served a purpose for them. Intuitive mutual adjustment was the usual pattern, but under crisis it gave way to a more managed mutual adjustment as a hidden hierarchy came into view, letting the group act decisively without the formal authority to do so.

     Grade

     One case study

     Design

     Detailed single-case analysis of a collective leadership group acting in a crisis.

     Year

     2019

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     One elite professional service firm facing an acute organizational crisis.

     Limits

     One firm.

     Later work

     Pairs with Empson and Alvehus (2019).

174. Fakhfakh and colleagues 2012. Productivity, capital, and labor in labor-managed and conventional firms: an investigation on French data, ILR Review 65(4), 847 to 879

     Labor-managed firms are not smaller than conventional firms and grow as fast or faster; they organize production differently and are as productive or more productive in every industry studied, and in several industries conventional firms would produce more with their current inputs if they organized production as the labor-managed firms do.

     Grade

     A study of large representative samples of French firms

     Design

     Econometric comparison of production functions in labor-managed and conventional firms.

     Year

     2012

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Two new French data sets with large representative samples of firms in a range of industries, services included.

     Limits

     One country's worker cooperatives (SCOPs) under French cooperative law; observational data, and the comparison does not randomize which firms are labor-managed (the authors note that French law keeps cooperatives from converting, which removes one source of bias).

     Later work

     Tests the classic hypothesis, which the authors attribute to Furubotn and Pejovich (1970) and Vanek (1977), that labor-managed firms relying on collectively owned self-finance underinvest, and the received wisdom that they are small; it finds them not smaller and not producing at inefficiently low scales.

175. Farrell and colleagues 2012. Charter management organizations: an emerging approach to scaling up what works, Educational Policy 26(4), 499 to 532

     As networks of schools with a common mission or instructional design and shared central office support, charter management organizations showed promising signs of having more leverage than individual charter schools and more nimbleness than traditional school districts to replicate what works; federal, state, and local policies and internal organizational capacities either restricted or facilitated their expansion.

     Grade

     A qualitative study of 25 organizations

     Design

     A national qualitative study of charter management organizations engaged in scale-up, describing their theory of action and the influences on their growth.

     Year

     2012

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     25 charter management organizations in the United States.

     Limits

     Read in its abstract only; the abstract reports promising signs rather than measured outcomes, and it does not compare student results.

     Later work

     Wohlstetter, Smith, Farrell, Hentschke, and Hirman (Journal of Education Finance 37(2), 150 to 174, 2011, interviews with more than 50 leaders from 25 charter management organizations) found growth typically depending on significant outside funding; not recorded.

176. Fayard and Metiu 2014. The role of writing in distributed collaboration, Organization Science 25(5), 1391 to 1413

     Four mechanisms of writing (objectifying, contextualizing, specifying, and reflecting) supported dialogue and so addressed the dialogical challenges of distributed collaboration, contrary to the view that written communication is too lean for rich collaboration.

     Grade

     A qualitative study of two historical collaborations

     Design

     Qualitative study of historical correspondence.

     Year

     2014

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Two distributed collaborations: an organization coordinating work across two continents, and a pair of scientists developing a new theory.

     Limits

     Two historical cases; letters rather than present-day tools.

     Later work

     Speaks to Cramton's (2001) mutual knowledge problem and supports the written standardization the all-remote companies describe (Choudhury and colleagues 2020).

177. Feldman 2020. The corporate parenting advantage, revisited, Strategic Management Journal 42(1), 114 to 143 (online 2020, in print 2021)

     Utilities owned by exempt holding companies, which faced no limits on parenting, outperformed observationally similar utilities owned by regulated holding companies, and the gap shrank once the legal limits were lifted; the paper offers this as the first large-scale evidence of a corporate parenting advantage.

     Grade

     A large-sample comparison of utilities under two legal regimes

     Design

     Comparison of the performance of utilities legally classified under one of two types of holding company, regulated holding companies, which faced limits on their ability to parent, and exempt holding companies, which did not, before and after the legal limits were lifted.

     Year

     2020

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     U.S. utilities owned by regulated and exempt holding companies.

     Limits

     One regulated industry.

     Later work

     A quantitative test of the parenting idea in Goold, Campbell, and Alexander (1994).

178. Felsini 2014. Entre el Estado y el Mercado. El estilo italiano de capitalismo gerencial: IRI, 1933-1970, Revista de Historia Industrial (Industrial History Review) 23(54), 81 to 105

     IRI's founder, Alberto Beneduce, devised the 'IRI formula', which combined state ownership with private shareholdings, even in a minority position, and ran the group's companies in a private managerial and entrepreneurial style; the later generation of managers tried to combine profit with social goals, and the author reads that as the beginning of IRI's end.

     Grade

     One archival case history

     Design

     Archival business history of IRI through the profiles of the managers of the super-holding, its holdings, and its most important companies.

     Year

     2014

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     IRI (Istituto per la Ricostruzione Industriale), Italy's state super-holding, 1933 to 1970.

     Limits

     One organization; biographical and archival; the abstract does not describe the layers between the super-holding and its companies.

179. Fiedler and Welpe 2010. How do organizations remember? The influence of organizational structure on organizational memory, Organization Studies 31(4), 381 to 407

     Specialization and standardization, together with codification and personalization of information and electronic communication, influenced organizational memory; codification fully mediated the link between standardization and memory, and electronic communication partly mediated the link between specialization and memory.

     Grade

     A survey of respondents in many organizations

     Design

     Survey testing the effects of two structural dimensions, specialization and standardization, on organizational memory, with codification, personalization, and electronic communication as mediators.

     Year

     2010

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     122 respondents from multi-unit organizations, mainly in consulting, finance, automotive, and electrical industries.

     Limits

     Measures dimensions, not forms, through individual respondents; filed under the machine bureaucracy and the functional structure because standardization is the first's prime mechanism and specialization the second's basis.

180. Finn and colleagues 2010. Team work in context: institutional mediation in the public-service professional bureaucracy, Organization Studies 31(8), 1069 to 1097

     The same initiative produced contrasting outcomes: the professional institution was reproduced in one case and transformed in the other. Specific local conditions, above all organizational ones and human and social ones, mediated the professional-institutional effects toward inertia or change.

     Grade

     Two comparative case studies by scholars

     Design

     Two qualitative, comparative case studies of a government initiative to reconfigure professional relationships by introducing team work.

     Year

     2010

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     National Health Service genetic care in the United Kingdom.

     Limits

     Two cases in one service of one national system.

     Later work

     Currie and colleagues (2012) and Martin and colleagues (2016) extended the program to more sites and to institutional complexity.

181. Firth and colleagues 2015. Same page, different books: extending representational gaps theory to enhance performance in multiteam systems, Academy of Management Journal 58(3), 813 to 835

     Frame-of-reference training raised multiteam system performance by improving between-team coordination. Within-team coordination strengthened the link between the training and between-team coordination, and the pattern by which it did so depended on the teams' specific functions.

     Grade

     An intervention study of 249 multiteam systems

     Design

     Intervention study testing whether frame-of-reference training, which is theorized to reduce representational gaps (inconsistencies between teams in how they define a shared problem), improves coordination and performance in multiteam systems.

     Year

     2015

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     249 multiteam systems made up of specialized teams (the abstract does not describe the setting or the participants).

     Limits

     Only the abstract was read, and it does not say whether the systems were in a laboratory or the field. It tests a training intervention on shared problem definitions, not a structure.

     Later work

     Like Ziegert and colleagues (2022), it finds coordination within teams and between teams interdependent rather than a simple trade-off.

182. Fiss 2011. Building better causal theories: a fuzzy set approach to typologies in organization research, Academy of Management Journal 54(2), 393 to 420

     The analysis distinguishes causal core and periphery in configurations and shows how this allows a detailed analysis of core, periphery, and asymmetry in the paths to outcomes, shifting attention to midrange theories of causal processes.

     Grade

     A set-theoretic analysis of 205 high-technology manufacturers

     Design

     Fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis of configurations based on the Miles and Snow typology.

     Year

     2011

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     205 high-technology manufacturing firms in the United Kingdom, surveyed in 1999 (chief executives and managing directors).

     Limits

     Configurations combine Miles and Snow strategy types with four structural attributes (formalization, centralization, administrative complexity, and size) and the environment; one sector in one country; a cross-sectional survey; performance is self-reported return on assets.

     Later work

     On our reading, a methodological basis for reading several different configurations as equally effective (equifinality).

183. Fjeldstad and colleagues 2012. The architecture of collaboration, Strategic Management Journal 33(6), 734 to 750

     New designs rest on an actor-oriented architecture of three elements: actors with the capabilities and values to self-organize; commons where actors accumulate and share resources; and protocols, processes, and infrastructures that enable collaboration among many actors.

     Grade

     A conceptual framework applied to organizations from four sectors

     Design

     Conceptual scheme for new organization designs, applied to organizations from four sectors.

     Year

     2012

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Organizations drawn from four sectors: global professional services, open source software development, computer equipment, and national defense (the sectors are named in the abstract; the organizations and their number are not).

     Limits

     Illustrative applications, not a test.

     Later work

     The cellular form's authors' current statement of their line of work; Snow, Fjeldstad, and Langer (2017) extend it to digital organizations.

184. Fligstein 1985. The spread of the multidivisional form among large firms, 1919 to 1979, American Sociological Review 50(3), 377 to 391

     The best-supported model holds that key actors change structure when the firm pursues a product-related or unrelated strategy (Chandler's thesis), when the president comes from sales or finance, and when other firms in the industry have changed their structures.

     Grade

     A multi-firm historical statistical study

     Design

     Test of five theories of adoption against historical data on large firms.

     Year

     1985

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Large U.S. firms, 1919 to 1979.

     Limits

     Explains adoption, not performance.

     Later work

     Palmer, Jennings, and Zhou (1993) extended the institutional and imitation account to late adopters of the 1960s; Galan and Sanchez-Bueno (2009) found that strategy and divisionalization affect each other.

185. Ford and Randolph 1992. Cross-functional structures: a review and integration of matrix organization and project management, Journal of Management 18(2), 267 to 294

     The review sets out the advantages and disadvantages of cross-functional forms, stresses the great need for empirical research to resolve numerous questions and paradoxes, and reviews a model of effective cross-functional organization built from environmental influences and organizational, project, team, and leader characteristics.

     Grade

     A narrative review of published research, with no new data

     Design

     Narrative review of the literature on cross-functional forms since 1976, joining the matrix and project management literatures.

     Year

     1992

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Literature on cross-functional forms published since 1976; no new data.

     Limits

     A review, not a meta-analysis; it offers no pooled estimate of effects.

     Later work

     Later quantitative work on matrix types and fit (Wolf and Egelhoff 2002, 2013; Egelhoff, Wolf, and Adzic 2013) took up the call for testing.

186. Forsgren and colleagues 1995. Division headquarters go abroad: a step in the internationalization of the multinational corporation, Journal of Management Studies 32(4), 475 to 491

     Power relations affect where division headquarters are located: foreign subsidiaries that dominate a division exert a force that attracts its headquarters abroad, and the interests of corporate headquarters exert a force that resists the move, so the two are countervailing.

     Grade

     A quantitative study of divisions in many firms

     Design

     A model of where division headquarters are located, explained by the power relations that come with internationalization, tested on a sample of divisions.

     Year

     1995

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Divisions of Swedish multinational corporations.

     Limits

     Swedish multinationals only; the abstract gives no sample size.

187. Foss 2003. Selective intervention and internal hybrids: interpreting and learning from the rise and decline of the Oticon spaghetti organization, Organization Science 14(3), 331 to 349

     The spaghetti organization, a radical internal hybrid infusing the hierarchy with market control, gave way about a decade later to a more traditional matrix. A strong liability was the incentive problem of making credible managerial commitments not to intervene in delegated decisions: frequent managerial meddling with delegated rights caused a severe loss of motivation and arguably the move to a more structured organization.

     Grade

     One case study

     Design

     Case study interpreted through organizational economics.

     Year

     2003

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     One company, Oticon, the hearing aids producer, from the early 1990s to the early 2000s.

     Limits

     One firm; an interpretation of a published history, with refutable implications offered rather than tested.

     Later work

     Puranam, Alexy, and Reitzig (2014) use Oticon as one of their test cases for what is new about new forms; Foss and Klein (2022) generalize the argument against bossless designs.

188. Foss and Dobrajska 2015. Valve's way: wayward, visionary, or voguish?, Journal of Organization Design 4(2), 12 to 15

     Valve does not represent a challenge to fundamental organization design theory and is questionable as a new blueprint; managerial authority may be of increasing rather than decreasing importance.

     Grade

     A conceptual argument

     Design

     Commentary on the Valve case.

     Year

     2015

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     None (commentary).

     Limits

     Commentary.

     Later work

     Foss and Klein (2022) extend the argument to a book.

189. Foss and colleagues 2016. Problem-formulation and problem-solving in self-organized communities: how modes of communication shape project behaviors in the free open-source software community, Strategic Management Journal 37(13), 2589 to 2610

     Communication with little prior structure was associated with launching new projects (formulating problems), while communication structured around an artifact was associated with joining existing projects (working on subproblems).

     Grade

     A quantitative study of the open source community

     Design

     Quantitative test of hypotheses from the problem-solving perspective.

     Year

     2016

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Data from the free open-source software community (projects and individuals; the abstract does not give the source or counts).

     Limits

     The abstract gives neither the data source nor sample sizes; associations, not causal estimates.

     Later work

     Speaks to the coordination-by-artifact that Crowston called stigmergic in the GitLab commentary (Choudhury and colleagues 2020).

190. Fourné and colleagues 2019. Structural and contextual approaches to ambidexterity: a meta-analysis of organizational and environmental contingencies, European Management Journal 37(5), 564 to 576

     Structural separation helps firms of all sizes balance exploration and exploitation, and it helps more in high technology environments. Service firms benefit from avoiding a structural separation approach.

     Grade

     A meta-analysis of 114 studies

     Design

     Meta-analysis using moderated meta-analytic regression to test a contingency model of when structural and contextual approaches help balance exploration and exploitation.

     Year

     2019

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     33,492 organizations sampled in 114 primary studies published from 1991 to 2017.

     Limits

     Only the abstract was read; it does not say how structural separation was coded across the primary studies or give effect sizes. The outcome is the balance of exploration and exploitation, not firm performance.

     Later work

     It is the only meta-analysis in the ledger that tests structural separation as such; Junni and colleagues (2013) pooled measures of ambidexterity of every kind and tied the performance link to context and method.

191. Franke and Kaul 1978. The Hawthorne experiments: first statistical interpretation, American Sociological Review 43(5), from page 623

     Experimental variables account for some 90 percent of the variance in the quantity and quality of output, for the group and for individual workers. Imposition of managerial discipline, economic adversity, and the quality of raw materials provide most of the explanation, without need for less clearly definable human relations mechanisms; the authors conclude that humanitarian procedures must provide their own justification.

     Grade

     A statistical reanalysis of one experiment's data

     Design

     Time-series multiple regression on nearly five years of data from the main Hawthorne experiment, a quasi experiment.

     Year

     1978

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     The first relay assembly test room at Western Electric: the group and its individual workers.

     Limits

     One work group in one plant; read from the abstract, not the text.

     Later work

     Levitt and List (2011) analyzed the original illumination experiments, a different Hawthorne study.

192. Franklin 1975. Down the organization: influence processes across levels of hierarchy, Administrative Science Quarterly 20(2), 153 to 164

     Downward influence had primacy over upward influence: the major influence flowed from group process reported by superior-level groups to the organizational climate reported by subordinate-level groups, and time was a crucial element in the linkages across levels.

     Grade

     A two-wave survey across 10 sites in four industries

     Design

     Two-wave survey analysis of influence processes between groups at adjacent levels of hierarchy.

     Year

     1975

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     1,770 individuals in 246 groups at 10 sites in four major industries.

     Limits

     Survey measures; two waves.

     Later work

     Bears on the linking-pin premise that overlapping groups carry influence both up and down; this study found the downward path dominant and slow.

193. Fred 2015. Projectification in Swedish municipalities: a case of porous organizations, Scandinavian Journal of Public Administration 19(2), 49 to 68

     Projectification is more than a large number of projects: it brings organizational changes and changes how employees talk about and understand their ordinary work. Projects have become a routine in municipal organizations, and their routine activities are exposed to projectifying processes. The author argues that public organizations are best described as porous, to cover both their flexible, temporary side and their permanent, rigid structures.

     Grade

     An interpretive study of three processes in Swedish municipalities

     Design

     Illustrative case study, drawing on critical management studies and the notion of sensemaking, of three processes of projectification in Swedish municipalities.

     Year

     2015

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Three processes: municipalities' involvement in projects funded by the European Union, social investment funds (a new and growing kind of project funding system in Swedish municipalities), and project models that standardize how projects should be organized.

     Limits

     Interpretive and illustrative; one author, Swedish local government only, and no measure of outcomes.

     Later work

     Fred (2020) argues that projectification in local government revives bureaucratic practices rather than breaking with them.

194. Fred 2020. Local government projectification in practice: a multiple institutional logic perspective, Local Government Studies 46(3), 351 to 370 (online May 2019)

     Public sector projectification can be understood as the enactment of several coexisting institutional logics, among which a project logic is growing in importance. Although the project form is often seen as more flexible than bureaucracy, in practice it seldom breaks with traditional bureaucratic management; it appears instead to help rediscover and reuse central bureaucratic practices and procedures such as reporting, documentation, and standardization.

     Grade

     A study of local government, read in its abstract

     Design

     Study of how public sector projectification unfolds in practice in local government, read through an institutional logics perspective.

     Year

     2020

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Local government (the abstract names no country or cases; the author's related dissertation is an ethnography of a Swedish municipality, but the article's own sample was not read).

     Limits

     Abstract only; the argument is interpretive and the sample was not read.

195. Freeland 1996. The myth of the M-form? Governance, consent, and organizational change, American Journal of Sociology 102(2), 483 to 526

     Efficiency accounts hold that the M-form arose and succeeded by creating a clear distinction between strategic and tactical planning; examining General Motors, the paradigm case, Freeland finds such accounts poorly equipped to explain changes in the M-form. For most of its history the firm intentionally violated the axioms of efficient organization to create managerial consent, and the textbook M-form may undermine order within the firm and lead to decline.

     Grade

     One historical case study

     Design

     Historical case study using new evidence on one firm.

     Year

     1996

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     General Motors.

     Limits

     One firm, though the one on which the efficiency account was built.

     Later work

     A dissent from the efficiency accounts of the M-form on their own paradigm case; the abstract does not name those accounts, which on our reading are Chandler (1962) and Williamson (1975).

196. Freeman and colleagues 1983. The liability of newness: age dependence in organizational death rates, American Sociological Review 48(5), 692 to 710

     There is a liability of newness in each population, but it differs depending on whether death comes through dissolution or through absorption by merger. Liabilities of smallness and of bigness are also found, and controlling for them does not remove the age dependence.

     Grade

     A quantitative study of three populations of organizations

     Design

     Analysis of age dependence in organizational death rates, separating death by dissolution from death by absorption through merger.

     Year

     1983

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Three populations: national labor unions, semiconductor electronics manufacturers, and newspaper publishing companies.

     Limits

     Tests the liability of newness for whole organizations; it does not measure structure, so it bears on the simple structure only through the age and size factors that go with it.

     Later work

     Bruderl and Schussler (1990) argued, in a later test on West German business organizations, that mortality is better described by a liability of adolescence, peaking between one and fifteen years after founding, than by a death rate that falls from founding.

197. Fruin 1994. The Japanese Enterprise System: Competitive Strategies and Cooperative Structures, Clarendon Press, Oxford; first published 1992 (ISBN 0198283180, LCCN 91033285); the DOI is the 1994 edition (ISBN 0198288980), in Oxford Scholarship Online from 2003

     Focal factories, unitary specialized firms, and interfirm networks together define the Japanese enterprise system; the three appeared in the inter-war years, so the business organizations of the postwar era mirrored those of the prewar period; the book offers a model of industrial organization under late development and private initiative that falls between the capitalist developmental state and the free-market models.

     Grade

     A historical study of Japan's 200 leading industrial firms by one scholar

     Design

     Historical study of the evolution of Japan's leading industrial firms across the twentieth century.

     Year

     1994

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Japan's 200 leading industrial firms; the inter-war chapter covers large corporations from 1918 to 1954, typed as zaibatsu, independent urban, and independent rural firms.

     Limits

     One scholar's historical synthesis; the abstracts do not state how firms were coded or what measures were used.

     Later work

     Sets the factory, the firm, and the interfirm network as three levels of one system, where Aoki (1986) models the firm and Gerlach (1992) the group.

198. Frynas and colleagues 2018. Management innovation made in China: Haier's Rendanheyi, California Management Review 61(1), 71 to 93

     Haier developed a platform of management practices called Rendanheyi to transform itself from a conventional hierarchical manufacturer into a highly responsive online-based entrepreneurial company; organizational, competitive, institutional, and technological contexts mattered for its development.

     Grade

     One case study

     Design

     Case study of management innovation.

     Year

     2018

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     One firm, Haier.

     Limits

     One firm; published in California Management Review, outside the eight major journals searched.

     Later work

     Hamel and Zanini (2018) is a practitioner article on the same firm; it was not read here.

199. Fuhrich 2019. Rationalisierung von unten: Arbeiter als Gestalter betrieblicher Rationalisierung bei VW, Arbeit-Bewegung-Geschichte: Zeitschrift für historische Studien 18(1), 111 to 126

     The groups' members acted as rationalizers themselves: they calculated the output their group needed to cover its costs, demanded to see the project's spending and criticized wasteful purchases, debated dropping the foreman (Meister) to cut wage costs, and pressed to remove weaker members whose output threatened the project; they also pushed their own equipment designs at a cost the project leader called excessive. Competitive pressure among the groups led one group to work through its breaks and split into factions, with the weaker members, including the only remaining woman, bullied, until its foreman intervened. The author concludes that the workers shared management's aim of cost efficiency, feared that the group work would be ended as too expensive, and partly undid the freedoms the new work structure was meant to bring.

     Grade

     One case study

     Design

     Archival history built on the tape-recorded group meetings and project meetings that researchers made during a federally funded group work project, set beside a robot-introduction project at another plant.

     Year

     2019

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Four work groups in engine assembly at Volkswagen's Salzgitter plant, 1975 to 1977, a design project of the West German federal program Humanisierung des Arbeitslebens (1974 to 1989), set beside workers interviewed by sociologists of the Soziologisches Forschungsinstitut Göttingen about the introduction of industrial robots at Volkswagen's Wolfsburg plant, 1977 to 1979.

     Limits

     One project in one plant over two years; a historian's reading of recordings; no performance comparison with the line.

200. Fujimoto 1999. The Evolution of a Manufacturing System at Toyota, Oxford University Press, New York

     Toyota's lasting advantage in manufacturing comes from an evolutionary learning capability put to use in daily work, through which its system emerged partly unplanned.

     Grade

     One company studied in depth

     Design

     Field studies, historical research, and statistical analyses of one company

     Year

     1999

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Toyota Motor Corporation's production, product development, and supplier management

     Limits

     One company; the author's interpretation of its history.

201. Furlan and colleagues 2014. When the mirror gets misted up: modularity and technological change, Strategic Management Journal 35(6), 789 to 807

     The across-firm mirroring hypothesis does not hold for technologically dynamic components: buyers and suppliers share information even when components are highly modular.

     Grade

     A study of supply relationships in one industry

     Design

     Study of how component technological change affects the link between product modularity and organizational modularity across firms.

     Year

     2014

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Supply relationships in the air conditioning industry (the abstract does not give the number).

     Limits

     One industry; the abstract does not state the sample size or measures.

     Later work

     A boundary condition on the modular network form: modular interfaces do not replace close coordination when technology is changing.

202. Gaba and Joseph 2013. Corporate structure and performance feedback: aspirations and adaptation in M-form firms, Organization Science 24(4), 1102 to 1119

     Poor performance at the business unit level led to more new product introductions, while corporate-level responses to performance problems had a negative cross-level effect on them; the negative effect was weaker for strategically significant business units, which have more input into corporate responses. The authors argue that the M-form vertically differentiates performance goals and problemistic search, so solutions to performance problems differ by level.

     Grade

     A multi-firm quantitative study in one industry

     Design

     Quantitative study linking performance feedback theory with theories of attention and of the M-form, testing how performance below aspirations at the corporate and business unit levels affects business unit adaptation.

     Year

     2013

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Business units of multidivisional firms in the global mobile device industry, with adaptation measured by new product introductions.

     Limits

     One industry; adaptation is measured by product introductions only; the abstract does not give the number of firms or years.

203. Gajendran and Harrison 2007. The good, the bad, and the unknown about telecommuting: meta-analysis of psychological mediators and individual consequences, Journal of Applied Psychology 92(6), 1524 to 1541

     Telecommuting had small but mainly beneficial effects on perceived autonomy and work-family conflict, no generally detrimental effect on workplace relationships, and beneficial effects on job satisfaction, performance, turnover intent, and role stress, partly mediated by autonomy. High-intensity telecommuting (more than 2.5 days a week) increased the benefit on work-family conflict but harmed relationships with coworkers.

     Grade

     A meta-analysis of 46 studies of 12,883 employees

     Design

     Meta-analysis with a theoretical framework of mediators.

     Year

     2007

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     46 studies in natural settings involving 12,883 employees.

     Limits

     Individual telecommuters inside collocated organizations, not organizations that are distributed as a whole; studies before 2007.

     Later work

     Bloom and colleagues (2015, 2024) found performance and retention gains in randomized trials; Yang and colleagues (2022) found that firm-wide remote work made networks more siloed, consistent with the coworker-relationship cost the meta-analysis found at high intensity.

204. Galan and Sanchez-Bueno 2009. The continuing validity of the strategy-structure nexus: new findings, 1993 to 2003, Strategic Management Journal 30(11), 1234 to 1243

     Diversification affects later divisionalization, and divisionalization in turn affects diversification, so structure follows strategy and strategy also follows structure; Chandler's thesis still works.

     Grade

     A multi-firm statistical study

     Design

     Test of the direction of causation between diversification and divisionalization.

     Year

     2009

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Firms observed 1993 to 2003 (the abstract does not name the country).

     Limits

     One decade; country not stated in the abstract.

     Later work

     Answers the long dispute over the direction of Chandler's thesis with a two-way result.

205. Galbraith 2002b. Organizing to deliver solutions, Organizational Dynamics 31(2), 194 to 207

     A company moving from stand-alone products to solutions must create customer-centric units and integrate them with its product-centric business units; for reasonably complex solutions the recommended structure is the front-back hybrid adopted by IBM and Nokia, linked by five processes (customer strategy, product portfolio planning, solutions development, solutions ordering and pricing, and the assembly and disassembly of teams), with rewards, talent, and conflict management redesigned to match.

     Grade

     A design essay with illustrative company examples and no systematic data

     Design

     Design essay by a consultant-scholar, illustrated with company examples.

     Year

     2002

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     No systematic sample; examples include IBM, Nokia, and Sun.

     Limits

     Illustrative examples, not a test; the author's own design prescription.

     Later work

     The empirical studies since (Davies and colleagues 2006; Jimmy and colleagues 2011; Raja and colleagues 2018) support the existence of front-end and back-end designs but find more variety than one recommended model.

206. Galunic and Eisenhardt 1996. The evolution of intracorporate domains: divisional charter losses in high-technology, multidivisional corporations, Organization Science 7(3), 255 to 282

     Divisions lost all or part of their charters in three patterns tied to the phase of their core business: divisions starting new core businesses lost them through failure and competition with other divisions, which revealed a competitive internal market for charters; rapidly growing divisions shed peripheral areas to focus on the core; and mature divisions shed core areas when their skills and culture came to misfit the industry's competition. The authors name the result a recombinant multidivisional form, in which timely charter changes let a large corporation keep pace in turbulent markets.

     Grade

     An inductive field study of ten divisions in one corporation

     Design

     Inductive field study of divisional charter changes over 18 months: formal and group interviews, questionnaires, company documents, media publications, and observation of strategy formation sessions.

     Year

     1996

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Ten divisions, domestic and foreign, of one large multinational high-technology corporation; over 80 informants across several managerial levels.

     Limits

     One corporation in high-technology industries; inductive, so the patterns are propositions, not tested effects; the corporation is not named in the abstract.

     Later work

     Galunic and Eisenhardt (2001) carried the study to architectural innovation in modular corporate forms; Karim and Kaul (2015) and Girod and Whittington (2016), already in the ledger, test the performance of recombining business units across many firms.

207. Gamble and Huang 2009. One store, two employment systems: core, periphery and flexibility in China's retail sector, British Journal of Industrial Relations 47(1), 1 to 26

     The core and periphery model, built mainly on manufacturing in Western settings, is insufficient for this case: two employment systems coexist in one store, in a four-sided relationship in which the workers' interests sometimes overlap but often compete, and China's institutions shape which strategies are open to the firm.

     Grade

     One case study

     Design

     Ethnography.

     Year

     2009

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Vendor representatives and regular store employees at one store of a multinational retail firm in China (unnamed in the source).

     Limits

     One store in one country.

208. Gebauer and Kowalkowski 2012. Customer-focused and service-focused orientation in organizational structures, Journal of Business and Industrial Marketing 27(7), 527 to 537

     Four patterns describe how companies move from product-focused to service-focused and from geographically focused to customer-focused structures: emphasizing service orientation, a service-focused organizational structure, emphasizing customer orientation, and a customer-focused organizational structure.

     Grade

     Case studies of 36 manufacturers

     Design

     Qualitative multi-case research design.

     Year

     2012

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     36 European capital goods manufacturers.

     Limits

     The authors note that external validity could not be assessed accurately.

209. Geleilate and colleagues 2020. Subsidiary autonomy and subsidiary performance: a meta-analysis, Journal of World Business 55(4), article 101049

     Research shows that subsidiary decision-making autonomy may improve subsidiary performance in some contexts, and the meta-analysis identifies moderators of the performance outcomes of autonomy related to institutional and industry contexts and to the headquarters-subsidiary relationship.

     Grade

     A meta-analysis of 94 studies of foreign subsidiaries

     Design

     Literature review that builds a framework of possible contingencies, followed by a meta-analysis of the relationship between subsidiary decision-making autonomy and subsidiary performance and its moderators.

     Year

     2020

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     94 studies encompassing 23,337 foreign subsidiaries.

     Limits

     The abstract does not report the pooled effect size or which way each moderator works, so it supports only the claim that the effect of autonomy depends on context. Subsidiary performance in the pooled studies is measured in different ways. The full text was not read.

210. George and colleagues 2021. Red tape, organizational performance, and employee outcomes: meta-analysis, meta-regression, and research agenda, Public Administration Review 81(4), 638 to 651

     Red tape has a significant, negative, and small-to-medium impact on organizational performance and on employee outcomes. Red tape imposed by the organization itself is more harmful than red tape imposed by external parties, and the negative impact is quite stable across sectors, administrative traditions, and research methods.

     Grade

     A meta-analysis and meta-regression of public administration studies

     Design

     Meta-analysis and meta-regression of public administration studies of red tape.

     Year

     2021

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     25 empirical public administration studies with 83 effect sizes, found through the Public Administration category of SSCI to March 2019 and a check with 47 scholars: 20 studies in public-sector settings, 2 in private-sector settings, and 3 in both; 7 on performance outcomes, 16 on employee outcomes, and 2 on both; none published before 2004.

     Limits

     Red tape is the burden of rules and procedures, not formalization as such, so the finding speaks to a pathology of rule-bound structure and not to whether formal rules help or hurt in general (Adler and Borys's enabling formalization is the other side). Mostly public-sector settings, and 25 studies in all.

211. Getz 2009. Liberating leadership: how the initiative-freeing radical organizational form has been successfully adopted, California Management Review 51(4), 32 to 58

     The leadership style that supported adoption used employees' needs for intrinsic equality, growth, and self-direction as design criteria, shared a world-class vision, and kept the culture; the leaders valued freedom and responsibility, creativity, and wisdom.

     Grade

     A field study of eighteen companies by one researcher

     Design

     Field study of companies with the radical initiative-freeing form (the F-form, in which employees have complete freedom and responsibility to take the actions they decide are best) and of the leaders who built them.

     Year

     2009

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Eighteen companies in the United States and Europe and their leaders; the journal's page describes fifteen that adopted the form and three that experimented with it without implementing it.

     Limits

     Fifteen of the eighteen companies were chosen because they had already adopted the form and the other three had tried it without implementing it, so it says what successful adopters' leaders did, not how often adoption succeeds; the companies are not named in the abstract.

     Later work

     The source of the French and Belgian entreprise libérée literature; Poli and Gabriel (2024) follow its leader-centered account into how leadership roles are later shared.

212. Ghoshal and Nohria 1989. Internal differentiation within multinational corporations, Strategic Management Journal 10(4), 323 to 337

     Subsidiary contexts fell into four generic situations, and for each the exchange relation was characterized by a fitting combination of centralization, formalization, and normative integration, labeled hierarchical, federative, clan, and integrative. The MNC is described as an internally differentiated organization rather than a uniform structure.

     Grade

     A survey of 618 headquarters-subsidiary relations in 66 multinationals

     Design

     Survey of headquarters-subsidiary relations, classifying subsidiary contexts and the governance structures that fit them.

     Year

     1989

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     66 of the largest European and North American MNCs, yielding data on 618 headquarters-subsidiary relations.

     Limits

     Cross-sectional; fit is shown as association.

     Later work

     Nohria and Ghoshal (1994) linked differentiated fit to performance.

213. Gibbs and colleagues 2023. Work from Home and Productivity: Evidence from Personnel and Analytics Data on Information Technology Professionals, Journal of Political Economy Microeconomics 1(1), 7-41

     Hours worked increased, output declined slightly, and productivity fell 8 to 19 percent. Higher communication costs were an important source: time spent on coordination and meetings rose, uninterrupted work hours shrank considerably, and employees networked with fewer individuals and business units inside and outside the firm and had fewer one-to-one meetings with supervisors.

     Grade

     A quantitative study of over 10,000 professionals at one Indian technology company

     Design

     Comparison of employee productivity before and during the working-from-home period of the COVID-19 pandemic, with personnel and analytics data, and an analysis of the determinants of the change.

     Year

     2023

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Over 10,000 skilled professionals at one Indian technology company.

     Limits

     One firm; a before-and-during comparison in a pandemic that sent everyone home, not a chosen design; only the abstract was read.

214. Gibert and BenMahmoud-Jouini 2025. 'I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous': exploration unit managers facing competing demands for differentiation and integration, M@n@gement 28(2), 49 to 71 (online October 15, 2024)

     Exploration unit managers faced two paradoxical tensions earlier work had not documented, one over how the unit's mandated charter changed and one over how the performance management system was applied. They answered with four balancing patterns (decoupling, conforming, promoting, and synchronizing), each a mix of differentiating and integrating practices, and each pattern helped or hindered the unit's intended exploration strategy.

     Grade

     A longitudinal study of four units in established firms

     Design

     Longitudinal qualitative study of internal exploration units (innovation labs), read through paradox theory.

     Year

     2025

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Four exploration units set up by established firms, two in services and two in industry (all pseudonymous; parent firms of 3,000 to 50,000 employees), each followed for 8 to 20 months through 86 interviews, meetings, and on-site observation.

     Limits

     Four units in four firms, named only by pseudonyms. It studies the separated unit's managers, not the firm's results.

     Later work

     Bears on the ambidextrous organization's separated exploring unit: it shows the separation itself being negotiated over time, as Zimmermann and colleagues (2015) showed for the unit's charter.

215. Gibson and Birkinshaw 2004. The antecedents, consequences, and mediating role of organizational ambidexterity, Academy of Management Journal 47(2), 209 to 226

     A context combining stretch, discipline, support, and trust facilitates contextual ambidexterity, the capacity to achieve alignment and adaptability at once within a business unit, and ambidexterity mediates the relationship between those features and performance.

     Grade

     A survey of 4,195 people in 41 business units

     Design

     Multi-level survey test of contextual ambidexterity.

     Year

     2004

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     4,195 individuals in 41 business units.

     Limits

     Business-unit level; it tests the contextual alternative rather than structural separation.

     Later work

     Offers individuals dividing their own time as an alternative to separate structures; Ossenbrink, Hoppmann, and Hoffmann (2019) treat the structural and contextual approaches as ends of a continuum.

216. Gibson and Gibbs 2006. Unpacking the concept of virtuality: the effects of geographic dispersion, electronic dependence, dynamic structure, and national diversity on team innovation, Administrative Science Quarterly 51(3), 451 to 495

     Four characteristics often lumped together as virtuality (geographic dispersion, electronic dependence, structural dynamism, and national diversity) are not highly intercorrelated and each has an independent, differential effect on innovation; a psychologically safe communication climate helps mitigate their challenges.

     Grade

     Interviews in 14 teams and a survey of 56 teams

     Design

     Two studies: qualitative analysis of interviews, then a survey test of hypotheses.

     Year

     2006

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     177 members of 14 teams in a variety of industries; then 266 members of 56 aerospace design teams.

     Limits

     Survey data in the second study, from one industry (aerospace design).

     Later work

     Supports O'Leary and Cummings (2007) in treating dispersion as several dimensions rather than one.

217. Giorgi and Palmisano 2017. Sober intoxication: institutional contradictions and identity work in the everyday life of four religious communities in Italy, Organization Studies 38(6), 795 to 819

     When members face contradictions between two logics with conflicting identity prescriptions to which they are emotionally attached, they do identity work (distancing from illegitimate others and embedding their identity in an established tradition) that reaches a temporary identity truce, easing but not removing the tensions.

     Grade

     Case studies of four religious communities

     Design

     Interviews, observations, and archival data on how members manage institutional contradictions in everyday life.

     Year

     2017

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Four religious communities in Italy.

     Limits

     Four communities in one country and one tradition.

     Later work

     Recent evidence from religious orders, the setting the missionary form is drawn from, on how ideology holds members through contradiction.

218. Girod and Whittington 2016. Reconfiguration, restructuring and firm performance: dynamic capabilities and environmental dynamism, Strategic Management Journal 38(5), 1121 to 1133 (online 2016, in print 2017)

     In general, pervasive restructuring was associated with better performance and limited reconfiguration with worse; in dynamic environments the result reversed, with reconfiguration positive and restructuring negative.

     Grade

     A multi-firm panel study

     Design

     Dynamic panel analysis of reorganization and performance.

     Year

     2016

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Large U.S. corporations, 1985 to 2004.

     Limits

     Large U.S. firms only; reorganizations coded from public sources.

     Later work

     Qualifies Hoskisson and Galbraith (1985), who found quantum reorganization to the M-form better than incremental.

219. Gittell 2002. Coordinating mechanisms in care provider groups: relational coordination as a mediator and input uncertainty as a moderator of performance effects, Management Science 48(11), 1408 to 1426

     The performance effects of boundary spanners and team meetings were mediated by relational coordination, as organization design theory expects; contrary to that theory, the effects of routines were also mediated by relational coordination, so routines work by enhancing interactions rather than replacing them. All three mechanisms were increasingly effective under uncertainty.

     Grade

     A quantitative field study of care provider groups

     Design

     Model of how coordinating mechanisms work, tested in patient care: whether relational coordination mediates the performance effects of boundary spanners, team meetings, and routines, and whether input uncertainty moderates them.

     Year

     2002

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Care provider groups in patient care; the abstract read does not give the number of sites or patients.

     Limits

     Health care only; only the abstract was read, so the sample and measures were not checked.

220. Glisson 1978. Dependence of Technological Routinization on Structural Variables in Human Service Organizations, Administrative Science Quarterly 23(3), from p. 383

     The data support treating technological routinization as dependent on four structural variables, with worker discretion as the linking mechanism, so in these organizations structure shapes how routine the work becomes.

     Grade

     A path analysis of 30 human service organizations

     Design

     Path analysis testing a model of the implementation phase of technology, in which worker discretion links organization structure to how routine the technology becomes.

     Year

     1978

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     30 human service organizations.

     Limits

     Read from the abstract only, which names neither the four structural variables nor the measures; 30 organizations in one sector.

221. Godenhjelm and colleagues 2015. Projectification in the public sector: the case of the European Union, International Journal of Managing Projects in Business 8(2), 324 to 348

     Without contextually sensitive mechanisms linking temporary and permanent structures, projects risk losing their flexible and innovative qualities and may fragment the ability of permanent organizations to maintain coordination and continuity; the proximity of permanent organizations, the discretion for entrepreneurship, the political priority of the task, the inclusion of competencies and interests, and the quality of transfer mechanisms are put forward as the variables that explain how temporary organizations turn out in a political and administrative setting.

     Grade

     A conceptual review with document analysis

     Design

     A literature review and an analysis of key European Union policy documents on regional development and projects (the authors call it a meta-analysis of the documents).

     Year

     2015

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     EU policy documents on regional development projects; their number is not given in the abstract read.

     Limits

     Descriptive and conceptual, by the authors' own account, with no measured outcomes; it studies projects inside public administration rather than a firm built on projects.

222. Gökşen and Üsdiken 2001. Uniformity and diversity in Turkish business groups: effects of scale and time of founding, British Journal of Management 12(4), 325 to 340

     Governance structures did not vary with size or time of founding; central administrative structures varied with size, though features of vertical control did not; hypotheses on diversification and internationalization received only partial and, for internationalization, weak support; the variety found reflects differences in size and in institutional conditions at founding.

     Grade

     A multi-firm study of one country's business groups

     Design

     Hypothesis tests drawing on macro-institutional and contingency theories, relating size and time of founding to strategy, administrative structure, and governance.

     Year

     2001

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Turkish business groups, the historically dominant form of large business organization in Turkey (the abstract does not give the count).

     Limits

     One country; the abstract does not give the sample size.

     Later work

     Adds a Middle Eastern case to the national variants of the business-group entry and questions the claim that a country's dominant form is uniform.

223. Goodman 1967. An empirical examination of Elliott Jaques' concept of time span, Human Relations 20(2), 155 to 170

     Not verified against its source: no abstract or text could be read, so the finding is secondhand. Not read in the article. Elizur's Job Evaluation: A Systematic Approach (Gower, 1980), read in Internet Archive full-text snippets, reports that Goodman (1967) found time span not highly correlated with ability or job level.

     Grade

     Not graded

     Design

     Empirical examination of the time-span concept.

     Year

     1967

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Not read.

     Limits

     The design, sample, and results were not read; the one finding known comes from a secondary account.

     Later work

     Goodman also reviewed Richardson's Fair Pay and Work in Administrative Science Quarterly (1973; title read only).

224. Goold and colleagues 1994b. How corporate parents add value to the stand-alone performance of their businesses, Business Strategy Review 5(4), 33 to 56

     Corporate parents can add value to the stand-alone performance of their businesses but more often destroy it (the 10 percent versus 100 percent paradox); the four companies succeed when there is a genuine opportunity to improve a business, the parent has skills and processes suited to it, and the parent has enough feel for the business's critical success factors to avoid harmful influence.

     Grade

     Several case studies by the same scholars

     Design

     Comparative case studies.

     Year

     1994

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Four companies: Dover, BTR, Emerson, and RTZ.

     Limits

     Four firms chosen as successes.

     Later work

     Feldman (2020) gave the first large-sample estimate of a parenting advantage.

225. Gorbachev and Semerikova 2023. Practices of formation of managerial personnel in collective farms of the Middle Urals in 1965 to 1982: on the issue of preserving collective farm democracy (article in Russian; English title and abstract as the journal publishes them), Ekonomicheskaya istoriya (Russian Journal of Economic History, published in Crossref as Economic History) 19(4), 364 to 375

     Questioning the widespread thesis that collective farms came to resemble state farms, with managers appointed from above and ordinary members unable to influence the choice, the authors find at least three ways chairmen were chosen: a candidate independent of the district or city party committee, often someone who had long worked on that farm, elected by the members at a meeting, a route they found infrequent throughout the period; a candidate agreed with the district or city party committee and only confirmed by the meeting, in most farms unanimously but in some against objections and sometimes against severe resistance from ordinary members; and a combination, in which the authorities did not put forward their own candidate and agreed with members who wanted to keep a chairman, or put forward a respected local member whom the members did not oppose. They conclude that collective farm democracy existed in the Middle Urals in this period, but within limited bounds.

     Grade

     An archival study of one region

     Design

     Archival study of how collective farm chairmen were chosen, from the minutes of party meetings of collective and state farms in Sverdlovsk oblast, which the authors say enter scholarly use for the first time.

     Year

     2023

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Collective farms of the Middle Urals (Sverdlovsk oblast), 1965 to 1982, discussed farm by farm (among them the Ural farm in Irbit district and the Iskra farm in Bogdanovich district); the article gives no count of farms.

     Limits

     One region and period, from party meeting minutes, some of them fragmentary (the authors note minutes that break off and a general meeting record they did not find); the article is in Russian and was read in the original.

226. Gorlin 1976. Industrial reorganization: the associations, In Joint Economic Committee, Congress of the United States, Soviet Economy in a New Perspective: A Compendium of Papers (Joint Committee Print, 94th Congress, 2d Session, October 14, 1976), U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, 162 to 188

     Member enterprises lose their independent status and become internal divisions of the association, which draws up their plans, allocates resources among them, and sets their internal contracts, while the ministries are to be freed for long-term planning and technical policy; the move puts decisions at an intermediate level, limited to resource allocation at the micro level, since investment, supply, and prices stayed centralized. Associations' output grew faster than all industry's in each of the four years, which Gorlin can reject as chance only at the 90 percent level, and labor productivity grew faster in three of them; administrative and managerial staff were a smaller share in associations, through centralized managerial functions. Many associations represented integration in a formal, not real sense.

     Grade

     A scholar's analysis of aggregate data on all Soviet associations and of several industries' plans

     Design

     A scholar's analysis of the Soviet industrial reorganization into associations, from Soviet published statistics, decrees, and the economic press, with industry studies of the coal, gas, oil, and consumer goods reorganization plans.

     Year

     1976

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     The Soviet production associations: 1,425 on January 1, 1974, compared as a whole with all Soviet industry for 1969 to 1972; four industries' reorganization plans.

     Limits

     Soviet official data, which Gorlin says were not systematically published; the earliest associations may have been formed from relatively successful enterprises; intra-association sales are not counted in sales data; written while the reorganization was under way.

227. Gorton and Schmid 2004. Capital, labor, and the firm: a study of German codetermination, Journal of the European Economic Association 2(5), 863 to 905

     Companies with equal employee and shareholder representation on the supervisory board did worse for their shareholders than companies with one-third employee representation, gave management board incentives not conducive to shareholders' interests, and had longer payrolls; shareholders responded by linking supervisory board pay to performance and by leveraging up the firm.

     Grade

     A statistical study of many German firms

     Design

     Comparison of firms by the share of supervisory board seats held by employees

     Year

     2004

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     German companies under parity and one-third employee representation

     Limits

     Representation is set by law by firm size, so other size effects must be separated from it.

     Later work

     Jäger, Schoefer, and Heining (2021) found no wage effect of one-third board representation in a reform-based design.

228. Gouldner 1954. Patterns of Industrial Bureaucracy, Free Press, Glencoe, IL (282 pages); London edition, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1955

     Different rules in the same plant followed three patterns: mock bureaucracy, rules imposed by an outside agency and neither enforced by management nor obeyed by workers (the no-smoking rule); representative bureaucracy, rules both sides supported (the safety rules); and punishment-centered bureaucracy, rules one side enforced on the other and the other evaded, with relatively great tension and conflict (the no-absenteeism and bidding rules). The pattern depended on who usually initiated a rule and whose values legitimated it.

     Grade

     One case study

     Design

     Ethnographic field study.

     Year

     1954

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     One gypsum plant in the United States (of the company Gouldner calls the General Gypsum Company).

     Limits

     One plant.

     Later work

     Adler and Borys (1996) restate the point as enabling against coercive formalization.

229. Grabher 2004. Temporary architectures of learning: knowledge governance in project ecologies, Organization Studies 25(9), 1491 to 1514

     Knowledge is created and sedimented at the interface between projects and the organizations, communities, and networks through which they operate. The Munich software ecology followed a cumulative learning logic and the London advertising ecology a disruptive one.

     Grade

     Two comparative case studies by a scholar

     Design

     Comparative analysis of two project ecologies, using a framework of their layers: the core team, the firm, the epistemic community, and personal networks.

     Year

     2004

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     The software ecology in Munich and the advertising ecology in London.

     Limits

     Two ecologies; qualitative.

     Later work

     Part of the 2004 Organization Studies special issue introduced by Sydow, Lindkvist, and DeFillippi.

230. Graen and colleagues 1977. Effects of linking-pin quality on the quality of working life of lower participants, Administrative Science Quarterly 22(3), from page 491

     Not verified against its source: no abstract or text could be read. Not recorded: the abstract could not be read.

     Grade

     Not graded

     Design

     Field study of how the quality of the linking-pin relationship (between a supervisor and the supervisor's own superior) affects the quality of working life of lower participants.

     Year

     1977

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Not confirmed (the abstract could not be read).

     Limits

     The abstract and text could not be read.

231. Graicunas 1933. Relationship in organization, Bulletin of the International Management Institute, Geneva, March 1933; reprinted in Luther Gulick and L. Urwick (eds.), Papers on the Science of Administration (Institute of Public Administration, Columbia University, New York, 1937), from page 181

     Counted on the most inclusive basis, the possible relationships between a supervisor and n subordinates come to n(2^(n-1) + n - 1), so going from four subordinates to five raises them from 44 to 100. Graicunas concluded that, except in routine work, the number of direct subordinates at each level should be at most five and most probably four.

     Grade

     A conceptual argument with no test

     Design

     Arithmetic analysis of the relationships a supervisor must keep in mind: direct single, direct group, and cross relationships.

     Year

     1933

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     None.

     Limits

     Conceptual; counts possible relationships, not those that occur, and Graicunas himself exempts routine work and notes that the relationships cannot be given comparable weights.

     Later work

     Urwick (1974) wrote on Graicunas and the span of control (title read only); Meier and Bohte (2003) test Gulick's determinants of span instead of a fixed limit.

232. Greenwood and colleagues 1990. "P2-form" strategic management: corporate practices in professional partnerships, Academy of Management Journal 33(4), 725 to 755

     The authors proposed the P2-form. Like the M-form it separates strategic from operating responsibilities, but its strategic direction is weak and set by negotiation, consensus building, and iteration rather than from the top. Operating control is decentralized to the local offices, with control of the firm's critical function, professional standards and quality, centralized; even there, quality inspection was done by partners from other local offices, and the authors sum up the national offices' role as to "reticulate rather than to control." Targets are financial and set for one year at a time, and behavior is much less tightly tied to appraisal and reward. Collegial vehicles (committees, task forces, temporary appointments) stand in for hierarchical authority.

     Grade

     An interview and survey study of four accounting firms

     Design

     A study of four large accounting firms that combined a grounded theory phase (252 semistructured interviews of up to two hours, with documents) with structured measures of where operating decisions were made, read against three dimensions of corporate control taken from Hill (1988): strategic, market-financial, and operating.

     Year

     1990

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Four of the Big Eight accounting firms in Canada, chosen because their approaches to management differed and each had a major change in the previous five years; all partners and at least half the managers in each local office studied, and the senior partners at each national office, were interviewed; representatives of three other firms were consulted afterward.

     Limits

     Exploratory; firms chosen for recent change, a risk of biased data the authors accept; one industry in one country; the form's effect on performance was not studied (the authors surmise it favors professional commitment and standards over growth and financial results).

     Later work

     Smets, Morris, von Nordenflycht, and Brock (2017) review 25 years of the research stream it began; Greenwood, Hinings, and Prakash (2017) argue the original paper missed the partnership's social purpose; Cooper and colleagues (1996) describe a managed professional business layered on it; Pinnington and Morris (2003) found continuity in its governance core.

233. Greenwood and colleagues 1994. Merging professional service firms, Organization Science 5(2), 239 to 257

     The firms gave careful attention to both strategic and organizational fit before the merger, contrary to the general theory of mergers, but behavioral problems still followed the formal merger. The specific difficulties reported in earlier merger studies were less salient; the problems were of a kind peculiar to the type of organization, which the authors take to mean that theories of mergers should be sensitive to the context and setting of merger activity.

     Grade

     One case study

     Design

     Four-year case study of a merger.

     Year

     1994

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Two large accounting firms (unnamed in the abstract).

     Limits

     One merger.

234. Greenwood and colleagues 2007. Ownership and performance of professional service firms, Organization Studies 28(2), 219 to 238

     Private corporations and partnerships outperform public corporations; the authors attribute the difference to closer monitoring by owners and greater motivation among professionals seeking ownership stakes. Contrary to Durand and Vargas (2003), organizational complexity had neither a direct nor a moderating effect.

     Grade

     A quantitative study of many consulting firms

     Design

     Hypothesis test comparing public corporations, private corporations, and partnerships on performance.

     Year

     2007

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     A sample of large management consultancies.

     Limits

     One profession; sample size and period not in the abstract.

     Later work

     Von Nordenflycht (2007) found public ownership hurt small advertising agencies but not large ones, so the ownership effect may depend on firm size.

235. Greer and colleagues 2018. Why and when hierarchy impacts team effectiveness: a meta-analytic integration, Journal of Applied Psychology 103(6), 591 to 613

     On net, hierarchy lowered team effectiveness (performance, rho of minus .08; viability, rho of minus .11), through more conflict-enabling states. The negative effect on performance was worse with unstable membership, skill differentiation, and a mutable hierarchy. The predicted positive path through coordination, and moderation by task interdependence, complexity, and the form of hierarchy, were not supported, except that task ambiguity strengthened the positive effects of hierarchy.

     Grade

     A meta-analysis of 54 studies

     Design

     Meta-analysis of why and when hierarchy within teams helps or hurts team effectiveness, testing conflict and coordination as mediators and several moderators.

     Year

     2018

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     54 prior studies covering 13,914 teams.

     Limits

     Hierarchy within teams, not the presence or absence of managers across an organization; the abstract does not define hierarchy, and the effects are small.

     Later work

     Quantitative evidence after 2010 on the question the less-hierarchical forms raise; its authors say their findings largely support dysfunctional views on hierarchy. The evidence concerns hierarchy within teams (see limits), while Foss and Klein (2022) argue the case for managers at the level of the firm; setting the two side by side is this site's reading, not the authors'.

236. Greiner 1972. Evolution and revolution as organizations grow, Harvard Business Review, July to August 1972; reprinted in Family Business Review 10(4), 397 to 409, 1997

     Recorded as a conceptual model of organizational growth in which each phase of evolution ends in a revolutionary crisis; its first phase, creativity, is led by founders and ends in a crisis of leadership.

     Grade

     A conceptual model with no systematic test

     Design

     Conceptual model of growth phases separated by crises.

     Year

     1972

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     No systematic sample; the article draws on the author's reading of company histories.

     Limits

     Not an empirical test. The author draws on numerous case histories, calls the five phases approximations, and in his 1998 commentary says he wrote mainly about industrial and consumer goods companies.

     Later work

     DeSantola and Gulati (2017) review research on how young ventures change as they grow and find two narratives, one stressing the endurance of founding features and one stressing dramatic change; DeSantola, Gulati, and Zhelyazkov (2023) report that ventures follow divergent paths of professionalization rather than a uniform march through developmental milestones.

237. Gresov 1989. Exploring Fit and Misfit with Multiple Contingencies, Administrative Science Quarterly 34(3), 431-453

     Units facing conflicting contingencies are more prone to design misfit and lower performance.

     Grade

     A quantitative study of 529 work units in 60 public employment offices

     Design

     A multiple-contingencies theory of work-unit design that examines the effects of task and dependence together on unit design and efficiency, focused on misfit, conflicting contingencies, and equifinality, tested on field data.

     Year

     1989

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     529 work units in 60 employment-security offices.

     Limits

     One kind of public agency; only the abstract was read, so the measures of task, dependence, and efficiency were not checked.

     Later work

     Gresov and Drazin (1997) later set out types of equifinality from the degree of conflict in functional demands and the latitude of structural options.

238. Grint 1994. Reengineering history: social resonances and business process reengineering, Organization 1(1), 179 to 201

     The essay disputes some of reengineering's claims to novelty and internal coherence and argues that its popularity might best be explained not by the uniqueness or inherent rationality of its ideas but by the resonances its purveyors construct between those ideas and popular opinion (the zeitgeist) and between their novelty and cultural antecedents.

     Grade

     A critical essay with no new data

     Design

     Critical essay on the popularity of reengineering.

     Year

     1994

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     No new data.

     Limits

     Conceptual.

     Later work

     Part of a critical literature on reengineering that includes Willmott (1994).

239. Grossman and Rangan 2001. Managing multisite nonprofits, Nonprofit Management and Leadership 11(3), 321 to 337

     Tensions between headquarters and local organizations arise whatever the structure. System behavior can be mapped on two dimensions, forces toward unit autonomy and the degree of organizational affiliation, both shaped by management functions, so a multisite nonprofit can pursue the benefits of affiliation and autonomy at once.

     Grade

     Field studies of five multisite nonprofits

     Design

     Intensive field research at multisite nonprofit systems organized from central control to local control.

     Year

     2001

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Five systems: Outward Bound USA, Planned Parenthood, Habitat for Humanity, SOS Kinderdorf, and The Nature Conservancy.

     Limits

     Five cases chosen by the authors; prescriptive in aim.

     Later work

     One of the few multi-case studies of the federal tension between a center and autonomous units.

240. Guadalupe and colleagues 2014. Who lives in the C-suite? Organizational structure and the division of labor in top management, Management Science 60(4), 824 to 844

     The executive team (managers reporting directly to the CEO) doubled in size, driven mainly by functional managers rather than general managers, which the authors call functional centralization. Changes in the team are tightly linked to changes in diversification and information technology investment, and the links differ between functions close to the product (marketing, research and development) and administrative functions (finance, law, human resources), a difference the authors attribute to the information-processing activities each function performs.

     Grade

     A panel study of many large firms

     Design

     Panel data analysis of senior management positions in large firms.

     Year

     2014

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Large firms in the United States, from the mid-1980s.

     Limits

     Measures titles reporting to the CEO, not how work is coordinated below the top team; large firms only.

     Later work

     It extends Rajan and Wulf's (2006) panel evidence on the flattening of corporate hierarchies by showing which kinds of executives were added at the top.

241. Gubbi and colleagues 2015. International search behavior of business group affiliated firms: scope of institutional changes and intragroup heterogeneity, Organization Science 26(5), 1485 to 1501

     Business group affiliation constrained affiliates' international search only when institutional changes were specific to the affiliate's industry, not when broad changes affected the whole group. Misalignment between group and affiliate outlook was greater for affiliates of older groups and for affiliates distant in age and industry from the group's founding; affiliates prominent within their group or industry received the group's attention and support for international search.

     Grade

     A multi-firm panel study in one industry

     Design

     Analysis of panel data on international search by group-affiliated and unaffiliated firms during institutional transition.

     Year

     2015

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     298 firms in the Indian pharmaceutical industry, 1992 to 2007.

     Limits

     One industry in one country; search is the outcome, not performance.

242. Gulati and Puranam 2009. Renewal through reorganization: the value of inconsistencies between formal and informal organization, Organization Science 20(2), 422 to 440

     Inconsistencies between formal and informal organization after a reorganization can create ambidexterity: the informal organization can motivate a valuable behavior the formal one no longer emphasizes (compensatory fit); this works only when a powerful informal organization already exists and the gains from ambidexterity are large, and its breakdown can bring performance declines and further reorganizations.

     Grade

     One case study with a formal model

     Design

     Qualitative case data with a game-theoretic model.

     Year

     2009

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Cisco Systems' reorganization.

     Limits

     One firm for the qualitative data.

     Later work

     The Harvard Business School case on the same reorganization (Gulati 2009) gives the facts of the move away from customer divisions.

243. Guzzo and colleagues 1985. The effects of psychologically based intervention programs on worker productivity: a meta-analysis, Personnel Psychology 38(2), 275 to 291

     Such programs on average raised worker productivity by nearly one-half standard deviation, with effects varying by type of intervention, criterion of productivity, organizational context, and research design.

     Grade

     A meta-analysis of experiments on 11 types of psychologically based intervention

     Design

     Meta-analysis of the productivity effects of 11 types of psychologically based organizational interventions.

     Year

     1985

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Studies of 11 types of psychologically based intervention (the count of studies is not in the abstract; a 1987 Praeger volume, Organizations, Personnel, and Decision Making, says the meta-analysis took 98 of the 207 experiments described in Katzell and Guzzo's 1983 review).

     Limits

     The abstract does not list the 11 types. Two secondary accounts tie them to sociotechnical work: the 1987 Praeger volume gives Katzell and Guzzo's 11-category system, which includes sociotechnical systems redesign, and French and Bell's Organization Development (1999) names sociotechnical systems redesign among the interventions the meta-analysis covered. The effect for sociotechnical interventions alone was not read; the pooled half standard deviation is across all 11 types.

     Later work

     Beekun (1989) narrowed the question to sociotechnical interventions alone.

244. Habib and Victor 1991. Strategy, structure, and performance of U.S. manufacturing and service MNCs: a comparative analysis, Strategic Management Journal 12(8), 589 to 606

     Multinationals chose structures consistent with the fit prescription for their strategies, but fit had no effect on the performance of service multinationals and mixed effects for manufacturing multinationals.

     Grade

     A multi-firm study of multinationals

     Design

     Test of strategy-structure fit and its effect on performance.

     Year

     1991

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     144 U.S. manufacturing and service multinationals.

     Limits

     Cross-sectional.

     Later work

     A null result on fit and performance beside the adoption findings of Stopford and Wells.

245. Haipeter 2002. Chancen und Risiken der Mitbestimmung: das Beispiel Volkswagen, Industrielle Beziehungen 9(3), 319 to 342 (German, with an English abstract; no English translation)

     Codetermination decisively shaped management's response to market changes: in the negotiated management system decisions were politicized, extending codetermination on the basis of a stable countervailing power, though codetermination could not stop the logic of market-driven control.

     Grade

     One company case study

     Design

     Case study (German)

     Year

     2002

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Volkswagen in the 1990s

     Limits

     One company; the abstracts read do not say how typical its works council is, only that codetermination there rested on a stable countervailing power of the employee representation.

246. Håkansson and Isidorsson 2012. Work organizational outcomes of the use of temporary agency workers, Organization Studies 33(4), 487 to 505

     Use of agency workers had three outcomes: Core and Periphery (agency workers on simple tasks, as the flexible firm predicts); All Core (agency workers on the same advanced tasks as employees, contributing to functional flexibility, contrary to the flexible firm); and All Periphery (work organized around low-skilled, easily replaced agency workers), which deskilled and degraded work for all workers in the workplace.

     Grade

     Ten case studies

     Design

     Comparative case study of work organization in workplaces that use temporary agency workers.

     Year

     2012

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Ten Swedish workplaces.

     Limits

     Ten cases in one country.

     Later work

     A recent major-journal test showing the core and periphery split is one outcome among three, not a rule.

247. Hakim 1990. Core and periphery in employers' workforce strategies: evidence from the 1987 E.L.U.S. survey, Work, Employment and Society 4(2), 157 to 188

     The balance between core and periphery in the workforce is changing, but mainly through traditional and opportunistic use of peripheral workers. Employers with a conscious core and periphery strategy are a small minority and do not employ disproportionate numbers of peripheral workers; they are distinguished by a more thoroughgoing reorganization of work, with more use of subcontractors, the self-employed, and agency workers.

     Grade

     Two national surveys of workers and employers

     Design

     Analysis of two national surveys, one of workers and one of employers.

     Year

     1990

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     The spring 1987 Employers' Labour Use Survey and a companion survey of workers in Britain.

     Limits

     One country at one point in time.

     Later work

     Weighs Atkinson's flexible firm model, which the abstract says structures the debate: the balance between core and periphery "is indeed changing", but mainly through traditional and opportunistic use of peripheral workers, while employers with a conscious core and periphery strategy are a small minority.

248. Hall 1968. Professionalization and bureaucratization, American Sociological Review 33(1), 92 to 104

     There is generally an inverse relationship between professionalization and bureaucratization, though with considerable variation within the relationship. The structural and attitudinal aspects of professionalization do not necessarily vary together. The presence of professionals affects an organization's structure, and the structure in turn can affect the professionalization process.

     Grade

     A study of professionals across several occupations and their organizations

     Design

     Measures of the structural and attitudinal aspects of professionalization across several professional occupations, and of the bureaucratization of the organizations in which they work.

     Year

     1968

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Professionals in several occupational groups and their employing organizations; the abstract does not give the numbers.

     Limits

     Cross-sectional; the direction of influence is argued rather than tested. Sample size and occupations could not be confirmed.

     Later work

     Mintzberg (1979, 1980) built the professional bureaucracy on the opposite case, an organization that is bureaucratic and decentralized at once because it standardizes skills rather than work; Hall's inverse relationship is the tension that configuration claims to resolve.

249. Hall and colleagues 1993. How to make reengineering really work, Harvard Business Review (November to December 1993)

     In all too many companies, reengineering produced dramatic improvements in individual processes while overall results declined; the opening examples include a computer company whose finance department cut process costs by 34 percent while operating income stalled and an insurer that cut claims-process time by 44 percent while profits dropped.

     Grade

     A consultants' report

     Design

     Consultants' article opening with examples of reengineering outcomes.

     Year

     1993

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Not stated on the page read.

     Limits

     A practitioner report; sample and method not read.

     Later work

     Often cited as early evidence that process gains do not add up to business results.

250. Hamilton and Biggart 1988. Market, culture, and authority: a comparative analysis of management and organization in the Far East, American Journal of Sociology 94 (supplement), S52 to S94

     Market and cultural factors best explain organizational growth, but authority patterns and legitimation strategies best explain organizational structure.

     Grade

     A comparison of three economies by scholars

     Design

     Comparative historical analysis testing market, cultural, and authority explanations

     Year

     1988

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     The organizational structures of Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan

     Limits

     Qualitative comparison of three economies; no firm-level data.

251. Hamilton and colleagues 2003. Team incentives and worker heterogeneity: an empirical analysis of the impact of teams on productivity and participation, Journal of Political Economy 111(3), 465 to 497

     Adopting teams raised worker productivity by 14 percent on average, after controlling for the selection of high-ability workers onto teams. The gain was greatest for the earliest teams and diminished as more workers joined teams. High-ability workers tended to join first, often despite a loss in earnings, and were no more likely to leave afterward; more heterogeneous teams were more productive at the same average ability.

     Grade

     A quantitative study of workers in one plant

     Design

     Panel analysis of worker productivity and participation as one plant moved from individual piece rates to group piece rates.

     Year

     2003

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Workers in one garment plant over three years.

     Limits

     One plant and one industry; the team change came bundled with a change in pay system, so the effects of teams and of group incentives are not fully separable.

     Later work

     Economic models had stressed free-riding in teams; this study found net gains despite it. Batt (2004) found that benefits fall unevenly across levels.

252. Harrison 1959. Authority and Power in the Free Church Tradition: A Social Case Study of the American Baptist Convention, Princeton University Press, Princeton (248 pages)

     Formally, authority flows up from the local churches through the associations, and no higher body holds authority over a lower one. In practice the denomination's professional executives held much of the power, on what Harrison calls rational-pragmatic rather than rational-legal authority; and, noting that autocratic associations exist, he concludes that congregational polity does not automatically prevent an inordinate concentration of power even at the local level.

     Grade

     One case study by a scholar

     Design

     A social case study of one religious denomination, the American Baptist Convention, comparing its formal system of authority, built on the autonomy of the local church, with where power actually lay.

     Year

     1959

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     One national denomination, its associations, state conventions, and professional executives.

     Limits

     One denomination in the 1950s; a sociologist's single case, read here only in passages of the text.

     Later work

     Chaves (1993) generalizes the gap between a denomination's religious authority structure and its agency structure.

253. Harzing 2000. An empirical analysis and extension of the Bartlett and Ghoshal typology of multinational companies, Journal of International Business Studies 31(1), 101 to 120

     Three clusters matching the global, multidomestic, and transnational types emerged, and subsidiaries of the three types differed significantly in interdependence and local responsiveness. The author concluded that the typology, built on case studies, could be confirmed in a large-scale empirical setting.

     Grade

     A survey of 166 subsidiaries of 37 multinationals

     Design

     Cluster analysis of strategy items, then comparison of the clusters on organizational design, subsidiary roles, local responsiveness, and interdependence.

     Year

     2000

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     166 subsidiaries of 37 MNCs headquartered in nine countries.

     Limits

     Cross-sectional; the typology tested has three types (global, multidomestic, and transnational), so Bartlett and Ghoshal's international type is not tested as a separate type.

     Later work

     Stronger support than Leong and Tan (1993); Venaik, Midgley, and Devinney (2005) and Devinney and colleagues (2000) questioned whether such forms differ in performance.

254. He and Wong 2004. Exploration vs. exploitation: an empirical test of the ambidexterity hypothesis, Organization Science 15(4), 481 to 494

     The interaction between explorative and exploitative innovation strategies is positively related to sales growth, and the relative imbalance between them is negatively related to sales growth.

     Grade

     A statistical study of 206 firms

     Design

     Test of how explorative and exploitative innovation strategies jointly relate to firm performance (sales growth rate).

     Year

     2004

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     206 manufacturing firms.

     Limits

     Associations, not causal tests; strategies, not structures, are measured; the abstract does not say how or where the data were collected.

     Later work

     Junni and colleagues' meta-analysis (2013) found that the ambidexterity and performance link is moderated by industry, level of analysis, and method.

255. He and colleagues 2020. Resolving governance disputes in communities: a study of software license decisions, Strategic Management Journal 41(10), 1837 to 1868

     Resolution of governance disputes was more likely in larger discussion groups and in projects without a license; resolution required both a group process (reflective agency that switches a dispute from bargaining to problem solving) and a group property (preference alignment over attributes).

     Grade

     A study of many GitHub communities

     Design

     Hybrid inductive methods: machine learning to find patterns, then textual analysis to explain them.

     Year

     2020

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Discussions about initiating and changing software licenses in GitHub communities.

     Limits

     License disputes only; GitHub only.

     Later work

     Extends the community governance line from O'Mahony and Ferraro (2007) to disputes across many projects.

256. Hedlund 1994. A model of knowledge management and the N-form corporation, Strategic Management Journal 15(S2), 73 to 90

     Effective knowledge management requires departing from hierarchy and the M-form toward an N-form that combines knowledge rather than dividing it.

     Grade

     A conceptual model with no empirical test

     Design

     Conceptual model of knowledge management applied to Western and Japanese patterns

     Year

     1994

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     None (conceptual)

     Limits

     No empirical test.

257. Herbert and Seal 2012. Shared services as a new organisational form: some implications for management accounting, The British Accounting Review 44(2), 83 to 97

     The shared service organization keeps support services in house but relocates them to specialized sites and borrows features of business divisions, head office, and outsourcing, joining a market-style, customer-centered outlook to in-house management direction and control. The paper uses the case to critically review consultants' claims that the form cuts costs and improves service quality while keeping control and knowledge inside the firm's hierarchy, and notes implications for management accounting.

     Grade

     One longitudinal case study

     Design

     Longitudinal case study interpreted through institutional theory.

     Year

     2012

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     One shared service organization, not named in the abstract.

     Limits

     One case; the abstract does not say how far the case bore out the consultants' claims.

     Later work

     Richter and Bruhl (2017) reviewed the fragmented shared-services literature.

258. Herbsleb and Mockus 2003. An empirical study of speed and communication in globally distributed software development, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering 29(6), 481 to 494

     Distributed work items took about two and one-half times as long to complete as similar collocated items, apparently because they involved more people, and the number of people involved was strongly related to calendar time. Distributed and same-site social networks differed.

     Grade

     An analysis of change data in two organizations

     Design

     Quantitative analysis of change-management data and surveys, replicated in a second organization.

     Year

     2003

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Modification requests in a distributed software development organization, replicated in a different organization with a different product and sites.

     Limits

     Software development in large firms around 2000; cycle time only.

     Later work

     Consistent with Olson and Olson (2000); Choudhury, Foroughi, and Larson (2021) later found a productivity gain from geographic flexibility at the individual level, a different outcome and level of analysis.

259. Hernaus and colleagues 2016. How to go from strategy to results? Institutionalising BPM governance within organisations, Business Process Management Journal 22(1), 173 to 195

     Particular structural decisions fostered the operational excellence of BPM initiatives: formal process roles and specialized BPM units were important drivers of success, and the best outcomes came where a strategic approach to BPM was combined with a centralized BPM responsibility and decentralized process ownership roles.

     Grade

     A survey of many organizations in two countries, public and private

     Design

     A questionnaire survey of BPM (business process management) adoption practices, analyzed with a subsampling strategy and inferential statistics.

     Year

     2016

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     111 private- and public-sector organizations with more than 50 employees, 60 in Croatia and 51 in Slovenia.

     Limits

     The outcomes measured are those of BPM initiatives (efficiency, quality, and agility), not firm performance; two countries; a self-report survey, and only the abstract was read, so who answered for each organization is not known here.

260. Héthy 1986. New developments in collective forms of work organisation in socialist countries, International Labour Review 125(6), 659 to 674

     Brigade work shifted from value-oriented socialist brigades toward material, interest-based ones: teams assigned a whole phase of production and paid on collective results, often split among members by a coefficient of labor participation set by the brigade leader with the brigade council. In Soviet industry more than 60% of workers were in such collective forms in 1984 and 71.4% in 1985. Héthy concludes that economic rationality and managerial control, not humanization, drove the movement: leaders were still mostly appointed by management, some brigades grew to 50 to 200 members, too large to work as collectives, and one study found workers had a say in pace, methods, and task allocation but hardly any in their group's tasks, extra earnings, or leader. The reported productivity gains were small on average (1% to 2%, 10% to 15% in outstanding brigades) and hard to separate from political support and pay changes. Hungary's intra-enterprise economic work partnerships (VGMKs), formally separate undertakings doing contract work for the enterprise, are set beside the brigades as the interest-based form.

     Grade

     A comparative review of official reports and published surveys from several countries

     Design

     Comparative review of brigade and group work movements, drawing on official statistics, regulations, and published surveys from several socialist countries.

     Year

     1986

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Industrial work brigades and related groups in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, the German Democratic Republic, Hungary, Poland, and the USSR, early 1960s to 1985, including a 1983 Moscow survey of more than 200 brigades.

     Limits

     A review by a Hungarian state research director using official and secondary sources; no original data; written before 1989.

261. Hickson and colleagues 1969. Operations technology and organization structure: an empirical reappraisal, Administrative Science Quarterly 14(3), from p. 378

     The broad technological imperative hypothesis was generally not supported. Operations technology was associated only with some job-count variables, the proportions employed in specified categories, and affects only the structural variables immediately impinged on by the workflow: the smaller the organization, the more its structure is pervaded by those effects; in larger organizations technology is not related to the wider administrative and hierarchical structure.

     Grade

     A multi-organization comparative survey

     Design

     Scales of operations technology at the organizational level, tested against structure by linear and nonlinear correlation, with a detailed comparison with Woodward's South Essex findings.

     Year

     1969

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     A stratified sample of diverse organizations in the English Midlands, and a subset of its manufacturing organizations.

     Limits

     One region; cross-sectional correlations; only the abstract was read, so the sample size was not checked.

262. Hickson and colleagues 1974. The culture-free context of organization structure: a tri-national comparison, Sociology 8(1), 59 to 80

     Relations between context (size, dependence, technology) and structure (formalization, specialization, autonomy) were consistent across the seventy organizations in three countries, supporting the hypothesis that such relations are stable across societies: culture may shape some features, but contextual constraints persist. In the authors' illustration, if one country's organizations were less formalized than another's, its bigger units would still be more formalized than its smaller ones.

     Grade

     A multi-firm study in three countries

     Design

     Cross-national comparison of data collected in standard form on organization context and structure.

     Year

     1974

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     70 manufacturing organizations in three countries.

     Limits

     Three countries only; the claim concerns relations between variables, not levels.

     Later work

     The societal-effect school (Maurice, Sorge, and Warner) disputed the culture-free thesis.

263. Hill and colleagues 1992. Cooperative versus competitive structures in related and unrelated diversified firms, Organization Science 3(4), 501 to 521

     Fit between diversification strategy, structure, and control systems was associated with superior performance: related diversifiers did better when their arrangements stressed cooperation between business units, and unrelated diversifiers did better when their arrangements stressed competition between them.

     Grade

     A survey of many firms

     Design

     Survey of organizational arrangements related to strategy and performance.

     Year

     1992

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     184 Fortune 1000 firms.

     Limits

     Cross-sectional survey; fit and performance measured at the same time.

     Later work

     Gives the cooperative and competitive M-form variants; the competitive M-form is close to the holding company's internal capital market.

264. Hill and Birkinshaw 2012. Ambidexterity and survival in corporate venture units, Journal of Management 40(7), 1899 to 1931 (online 2012, in print 2014)

     Corporate venture units last longer when they become ambidextrous themselves, building new capabilities for the parent while leveraging its existing strengths, and they do so by nurturing strong relationships with parent executives, business unit managers, and the venture capital community.

     Grade

     A panel study of 95 venture units

     Design

     Three-year panel of primary data on corporate venture units.

     Year

     2012

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     95 corporate venture units.

     Limits

     Venture units only; survival rather than parent performance.

     Later work

     Shows that the separate exploring unit fails often and survives through its links, not its isolation.

265. Hinds and Mortensen 2005. Understanding conflict in geographically distributed teams: the moderating effects of shared identity, shared context, and spontaneous communication, Organization Science 16(3), 290 to 307

     Distributed teams reported more task and interpersonal conflict than collocated teams. Shared identity moderated the effect of distribution on interpersonal conflict, shared context moderated its effect on task conflict, and spontaneous communication both built identity and context and directly mitigated the effect of distribution on both kinds of conflict.

     Grade

     A field study of 43 teams in one multinational

     Design

     Field study comparing distributed and collocated teams on conflict and performance.

     Year

     2005

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     43 teams (22 collocated, 21 distributed) from one large multinational company.

     Limits

     One company; cross-sectional; team-level, not organization-level, distribution.

     Later work

     O'Leary and Mortensen (2010) added that the configuration of sites matters independently of distance; Yang and colleagues (2022) found that firm-wide remote work at Microsoft made collaboration networks more siloed and less synchronous, which bears on the spontaneous communication this study found protective.

266. Hinings and Lee 1971. Dimensions of organization structure and their context: a replication, Sociology 5(1), 83 to 93

     Specialization, formalization, and standardization formed one related group and were related to size; centralization and lack of autonomy formed another and were related to dependence on other organizations. The authors judge that their findings "closely parallel those of Pugh et al."

     Grade

     A small multi-firm replication

     Design

     Replication of the Aston measures of structure and context.

     Year

     1971

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Nine manufacturing organizations.

     Limits

     Very small sample.

     Later work

     One of the replications that made the Aston size and structuring relation a standard finding.

267. Hinings and Foster 1973. The organization structure of churches: a preliminary model, Sociology 7(1), 93 to 106

     The model gives belief systems primacy in setting a church's operational goals, which then shape its membership, size, and resources, and through these its organization structure. The authors note that a model drawn from the sociology of organizations rather than of religion would stress resources more and beliefs less.

     Grade

     A conceptual model

     Design

     A causal model for analyzing churches, developed from the Aston school's work on formal structure.

     Year

     1973

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     None; conceptual.

     Limits

     A preliminary model, not tested in the article as the abstract describes it.

268. Hinings and colleagues 1991. Change in an autonomous professional organization, Journal of Management Studies 28(4), 375 to 393

     Not verified against its source: no abstract or text could be read. Not read.

     Grade

     Not graded

     Design

     Study of change in a professional partnership (design not read).

     Year

     1991

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Not read.

     Limits

     Not read.

     Later work

     Part of the Alberta program that produced the P2 form.

269. Hiramoto 2000. Matsushita no rajio jigyō shinshutsu to jigyōbusei no keisei (松下のラジオ事業進出と事業部制の形成) [Radio manufacturing and the creation of a multidivisional structure at Matsushita Electric], Keiei Shigaku (経営史学, Japan Business History Review) 35(2), 22 to 45

     Matsushita's radio business, built on idealistic and too expensive sets, ran a considerable deficit, which forced the company in July 1933 to reorganize it by integrating its manufacturing and sales sections; after that its radio business developed models suited to the market and expanded rapidly. Learning from this, Matsushita introduced its multidivisional structure in March 1934, on the same logic as du Pont's and GM's reorganizations of 1920 to 1921 that Chandler analyzed. The author says the originality of Matsushita's divisional restructuring of 1933 is well known, and that it was the earliest in Japan.

     Grade

     One historical case study

     Design

     Business history of one firm's entry into radio manufacturing and the organizational reform that followed.

     Year

     2000

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Matsushita Electric, 1930 to 1934.

     Limits

     A single firm; read in the English abstract only, the article being in Japanese. The abstract dates the multidivisional structure to March 1934 and calls the divisional restructuring that of 1933.

270. Hirsch and Mueller 2012. The productivity effect of temporary agency work: evidence from German panel data, The Economic Journal 122(562), F216 to F235

     The extent of temporary agency work had a robust hump-shaped effect on the user firm's productivity. The authors had expected gains from numerical flexibility and from screening job candidates, and losses from temporary workers' lower firm-specific human capital and from spillovers onto the user's permanent employees.

     Grade

     A panel study of German firms

     Design

     Panel study of the effect of temporary agency work on the user firm's productivity, using the system GMM estimator to control for time-invariant and time-varying unobserved heterogeneity.

     Year

     2012

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     A large German panel data set of firms (the abstract does not name it or give its size).

     Limits

     Only the abstract was read. The outcome is productivity; German labor law and institutions shape how agency work is used. It tests the flexible labor fringe the shamrock and the flexible firm share, not Handy's three-leaf design as a whole.

     Later work

     Nielen and Schiersch (2014) and Pfeifer and Weche (2019) report a concave pattern in other German firm data, and De Stefano and colleagues (2019) an inverted U for planned turnover of temporary workers within one firm.

271. Hobday 2000. The project-based organisation: an ideal form for managing complex products and systems?, Research Policy 29(7-8), 871 to 893

     The project-based organization is an intrinsically innovative form, because it creates and recreates new organizational structures around the demands of each project and each major customer; it copes with emerging properties in production, responds flexibly to changing client needs, integrates different types of knowledge and skill, and copes with project risks and uncertainties. It is inherently weak where the matrix organization is strong: routine tasks, economies of scale, coordinating cross-project resources, company-wide technical development, and organization-wide learning, and it can also work against the wider interests of corporate strategy and business coordination. Remedies include coordinators deployed along functional lines to cut across project interests and incentives, and project tracking and guidance at the corporate level; the nature, composition, and scale of the product have an important bearing on the appropriate organizational form.

     Grade

     One case study with a conceptual model

     Design

     A simple model locating the project-based organization among matrix and functional forms, and a case study comparing the two forms.

     Year

     2000

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Producers of complex products and systems; one case study (the company is not named in the abstract).

     Limits

     One case; the model is illustrative.

     Later work

     Later work on project-based learning (Prencipe and Tell 2001; Brady and Davies 2004) addresses the weakness in cross-project learning that Hobday identified.

272. Hoetker 2006. Do modular products lead to modular organizations?, Strategic Management Journal 27(6), 501 to 518

     Only part of the assumed relationship between product and organizational modularity is supported: increased product modularity enhances the reconfigurability of organizations more quickly than it allows firms to move activities out of the hierarchy, so modularity is a more multifaceted concept than previously recognized. The author presents the paper as a contribution to the emerging research on the previously underappreciated costs of designing and maintaining a modular organization.

     Grade

     A quantitative study of many firms' sourcing decisions in one industry

     Design

     A causal model of how product modularity bears on organizational modularity, tested with a discrete choice model of which supplier notebook computer makers chose for an innovative display, comparing higher-resolution displays (a modular change) with larger displays (a systemic change) made in the same period by the same buyers and suppliers.

     Year

     2006

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Notebook computer makers' display sourcing decisions, 1992 to 1998, from the COMTRAK industry database; in the 2002 working paper version, 13 notebook manufacturers and 68 decisions (33 modular, 35 systemic), with interviews at three manufacturers in the US and Japan.

     Limits

     One industry and one component; the counts are from the 2002 working paper, not the published article, whose text was not read.

     Later work

     Reviewed among the tests of mirroring in Colfer and Baldwin (2016).

273. Homburg and colleagues 2000. Fundamental changes in marketing organization: the movement toward a customer-focused organizational structure, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science 28(4), 459 to 478

     Changes in marketing organization that had been discussed in isolation reflect a more general shift toward customer-focused organizational structures, seen in shifts in the primary marketing coordinators and the increasing dispersion of marketing activities; in a customer-focused structure, groups of customers are the primary basis for structuring the firm.

     Grade

     An interview study of 50 managers in the United States and Germany

     Design

     Qualitative interviews.

     Year

     2000

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Fifty managers in the United States and Germany.

     Limits

     Interviews; marketing organization rather than whole-firm structure.

     Later work

     Lee, Sridhar, Henderson, and Palmatier (2015) tested the performance effect of the customer-centric structure on Fortune 500 firms.

274. Hoskisson and Galbraith 1985. The effect of quantum versus incremental M-form reorganization on performance: a time-series exploration of intervention dynamics, Journal of Management 11(3), 55 to 70

     Reorganization to the M-form produced a positive effect on financial performance, and incremental reorganizations had less positive impact than quantum ones.

     Grade

     A time-series study of six firms

     Design

     Time-series intervention analysis (ARIMA) of financial performance around reorganizations to the M-form.

     Year

     1985

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Six companies.

     Limits

     Six firms; the result concerns the act of reorganizing as much as the form.

     Later work

     Hoskisson (1987) qualified the M-form effect by diversification strategy; Girod and Whittington (2016) later found that sweeping restructuring helps in stable settings but not in dynamic ones.

275. Hoskisson 1987. Multidivisional structure and performance: the contingency of diversification strategy, Academy of Management Journal 30(4), 625 to 644

     M-form implementation increased the rate of return for unrelated diversifiers, decreased it for vertically integrated firms, and had no significant effect for related diversifiers. Risk generally decreased after M-form restructuring, significantly only for the unrelated-diversified and vertically integrated firms.

     Grade

     A multi-firm statistical study

     Design

     Longitudinal before-and-after analysis of return on assets and its variance around each firm's move to the M-form, by diversification strategy.

     Year

     1987

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     62 firms in 20 industries that moved to the M-form, identified from earlier research: 24 vertically integrated, 22 related-diversified, and 16 unrelated-diversified, with up to 10 years of data before and after the reorganization.

     Limits

     Firms that made the move were identified from earlier published research and historical sources, not sampled at random. The author says transition years were documented historically but managers' intentions at each transition cannot be confirmed objectively, that the pooling approach made it impossible to test risk-adjusted returns, that replication with different data and multiple performance measures is needed, and that his speculations must be read very cautiously. In the overall analysis of covariance the before-and-after effect of the M-form on return on assets was not significant; the significant result was its interaction with diversification strategy.

     Later work

     Hill, Hitt, and Hoskisson (1992) developed the contingency into cooperative and competitive M-forms.

276. Hoskisson and colleagues 1993. The multidivisional structure: organizational fossil or source of value?, Journal of Management 19(2), 269 to 298

     The M-form has been called both the most significant organizational innovation of the century (Williamson 1985) and an organizational fossil (Bettis 1991); the review evaluates the three perspectives, examines what the evidence finds, and proposes a model linking them with directions for further work.

     Grade

     A review of theory and earlier evidence, with no new test

     Design

     Narrative review of transaction cost, strategic management, and sociological perspectives on the M-form and the evidence for each.

     Year

     1993

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Earlier theory and empirical studies.

     Limits

     A review; no new data.

     Later work

     Remains the standard review of the M-form debate in management journals.

277. Huckman and Zinner 2008. Does focus improve operational performance? Lessons from the management of clinical trials, Strategic Management Journal 29(2), 173 to 193

     Sites focused on a task, at the divisional or the firm level, had higher output and productivity on it than unfocused sites; after controlling for selection, scale, and learning effects, sites that focused on conducting clinical trials significantly outperformed those that mixed trial activity with traditional patient care. Focus at the divisional level and at the firm level were substitutes: sites with divisional focus alone, which the 2005 working paper version describes as diversified sites separating trial work from patient care through a plant-within-a-plant structure, performed statistically like sites with both divisional and firm focus.

     Grade

     A quantitative study of many sites in one industry

     Design

     A quantitative comparison of investigative sites in biopharmaceutical clinical trials, with performance measured as patient enrollment within a given trial, controlling for selection, scale, and learning effects; the sites differ in organizational structure (focused on trials, mixing trials with patient care, or separating the two inside one site).

     Year

     2008

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Investigative sites in biopharmaceutical clinical trials; the abstract does not give the number of sites or trials.

     Limits

     Read in its abstracts only (the published one and the 2005 working paper's); one industry and one task; enrollment is one measure of performance. The working paper also reported that focus only among front-line workers and focus only at the management level brought similar benefits; the published abstract does not repeat that result, so it is not given as the article's finding.

278. Huising 2015. To hive or to hold? Producing professional authority through scut work, Administrative Science Quarterly 60(2), 263 to 299

     Professionals with formal authority inside bureaucracies struggle to enact it over the clients they advise. The group that kept menial scut work with contaminated materials gained regular entry to labs, knowledge of the researchers, and relationships with them, and so produced relational authority, the capacity to elicit voluntary compliance. The group that outsourced scut work and met researchers mostly at annual inspections and training drew complaints to management and eventually lost its jurisdiction. The author reads the findings as challenging the relevance of expertise and professional identity in generating relational authority.

     Grade

     A comparative ethnography of two groups

     Design

     Comparative ethnography.

     Year

     2015

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Two professional groups overseeing compliance in university laboratories, advising the same researchers.

     Limits

     Two groups in one setting.

     Later work

     Brings the old line and staff problem (staff who advise but cannot command) into recent professional and compliance work; Sandhu and Kulik (2019) take up how structure shapes the discretion of a new staff role.

279. Ichniowski and colleagues 1997. The effects of human resource management practices on productivity: a study of steel finishing lines, American Economic Review 87(3), 291 to 313

     Lines using a set of innovative work practices (incentive pay, teams, flexible job assignments, employment security, and training) achieve substantially higher levels of productivity than lines with the traditional approach (narrow job definitions, strict work rules, and hourly pay with close supervision). The authors read the results as consistent with theoretical models that stress complementarities among work practices.

     Grade

     A quantitative study of 36 steel finishing lines in 17 companies

     Design

     Productivity regressions comparing production lines that use a set of innovative work practices with lines that use the traditional approach.

     Year

     1997

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     36 homogeneous steel finishing lines owned by 17 companies.

     Limits

     One production process in one industry; read from the RePEc abstract, not the text; the abstract compares the set of practices with the traditional approach and does not report single practices against the set.

280. Ingvaldsen and Rolfsen 2012. Autonomous work groups and the challenge of inter-group coordination, Human Relations 65(7), 861 to 881

     Inter-group coordination becomes a major challenge when groups enjoy high autonomy, which may help explain why autonomous work groups are not widely used in industry.

     Grade

     One case study

     Design

     Case study analyzed through modern sociotechnical theory, exploring rotating group spokespersons and shared leadership as structures for coordination among groups.

     Year

     2012

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     One manufacturing company.

     Limits

     One case; published in Human Relations, outside the eight major journals searched.

     Later work

     Restates at the level of the whole organization the coordination problem that Kelly (1978) and Miller (1975) saw in the classic cases.

281. Ito 1995. Japanese spinoffs: unexplored survival strategies, Strategic Management Journal 16(6), 431 to 446

     Ito analyzes spinoffs as an instrument of Japanese firms' corporate growth and argues that they may be created to balance the costs of managing diversified businesses, to grow on a firm's core competencies, and to pursue an efficient internal labor market. He calls the spinoff a widely used, flexible organizational arrangement suited to survival in a changing environment and an alternative way to diversify.

     Grade

     An analysis whose sample the abstract does not state

     Design

     Analysis of the spinoffs of Japanese firms in the frame of transaction cost theory, covering the initial separation and the governance mode of the spun-off units.

     Year

     1995

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Spinoffs of Japanese firms; the abstract gives no number of firms or units.

     Limits

     Graded as conceptual because the abstract does not say how many spinoffs were studied or how; the text was not read.

282. Jäger and colleagues 2021. Labor in the boardroom, Quarterly Journal of Economics 136(2), 669 to 725

     No effect of board-level codetermination on wages, the wage structure, rent sharing, or the labor share; if anything, shared governance increases capital formation.

     Grade

     A natural experiment across many German firms

     Design

     Natural experiment: a 1994 reform abolished the one-third board mandate for stock corporations incorporated on or after 10 August 1994, while keeping it for those founded earlier; the variation applies among firms with at most 500 employees, since from 501 employees both cohorts face the same one-third mandate. Cohorts incorporated before and after are compared, with limited liability companies as a check; the design does not condition on firm size and is intent-to-treat.

     Year

     2021

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     German stock corporations and limited liability companies incorporated from August 1992 to August 1996, from Bureau van Dijk firm panel data (working paper version).

     Limits

     Identifies the effect of one-third representation in new stock corporations with up to 500 employees, not of parity, of larger firms, or of works councils.

283. Jäger and colleagues 2022. The German model of industrial relations: balancing flexibility and collective action, Journal of Economic Perspectives 36(4), 53 to 80

     Firm-level codetermination through worker board representation and works councils creates cooperative dialogue between employers and workers. Board representation has few direct effects, owing to the worker representatives' minority vote share, while works councils, which hold a range of substantive powers, may have more effect.

     Grade

     A review of research on the German model, mainly in economics

     Design

     Review of the German model's two pillars, sectoral bargaining and firm-level codetermination.

     Year

     2022

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Research on Germany compared with the United States and other European countries.

     Limits

     A review; it emphasizes the economics literature.

284. Jansen and colleagues 2009. Structural differentiation and ambidexterity: the mediating role of integration mechanisms, Organization Science 20(4), 797 to 811

     The direct effect of structural differentiation on ambidexterity, asserted in earlier work, operates through informal senior team integration (senior team social integration) and formal organizational integration (cross-functional interfaces).

     Grade

     A two-wave survey of 230 firms

     Design

     Two-wave survey of executive directors (2005 and 2006), testing whether senior team and organizational integration mechanisms mediate the effect of structural differentiation on ambidexterity.

     Year

     2009

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     230 private firms with at least 25 employees across a broad range of industries, from a random sample of 4,000; 452 executive directors answered the first survey and 230 the second, with additional management team members in some firms.

     Limits

     Mostly single executive informants per firm; firm-level data; the authors call for longitudinal work on how differentiation and integration develop.

     Later work

     Supports the claim that separated units need integration at the top; Jansen, Simsek, and Cao (2012) later found that structural differentiation did not condition the unit ambidexterity and performance link.

285. Jansen and colleagues 2012. Ambidexterity and performance in multiunit contexts: cross-level moderating effects of structural and resource attributes, Strategic Management Journal 33(11), 1286 to 1303

     The relationship between unit ambidexterity and later unit performance is stronger when the organization is decentralized, more resource munificent, or less resource interdependent. Structural differentiation of the organization did not condition the relationship.

     Grade

     A quantitative study of 285 units

     Design

     Hierarchical linear modeling with multisource and lagged data.

     Year

     2012

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     285 organizational units in 88 autonomous branches.

     Limits

     One multiunit context; the industry is not named in the abstract.

     Later work

     A null result for structural differentiation as a moderator, which qualifies the structural reading of the form.

286. Jaques 1951. The Changing Culture of a Factory, Tavistock Publications, London (xvii and 341 pages)

     A progress report on the Tavistock team's research participation in Glacier's London factory from April 1948 to November 1950: it follows the Works Council's aspiration to become the factory's policy-making body, morale problems tied to a change from piece rates to hourly wages in the Service Department, and changes in the executive system, and interprets them as the interplay of social structure (role systems), culture, and personality, with the working-through of group tensions as the means of change. The time-span ideas came later (Jaques 1956).

     Grade

     One long-term case study of a single company

     Design

     Long-term action research (social analysis) inside one company.

     Year

     1951

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     The Glacier Metal Company, a British maker of plain bearings, from 1948.

     Limits

     One company, studied by researchers working with its management; the method is collaborative consultation, not controlled comparison.

     Later work

     Kelly (1968) published a book-length critical examination of Glacier's theory of organization (title confirmed by reviews in Crossref, text not read).

287. Jaquette and colleagues 2018. Growing the pie? The effect of responsibility center management on tuition revenue, The Journal of Higher Education 89(5), 637 to 676

     Responsibility center management devolves budget responsibility and uses funding formulas that give academic units incentives to raise revenue and cut costs. Adoption was followed by higher tuition revenue at Iowa State, Kent State, and Cincinnati, moderately large against placebo adopters, and by no change at Florida.

     Grade

     A quasi-experimental comparison of four universities with synthetic controls

     Design

     Synthetic control method: each adopting university is compared with a weighted average of non-adopting universities, estimated separately for each adopter rather than as an average treatment effect.

     Year

     2018

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Four public research universities that adopted responsibility center management between 2008 and 2010 (Iowa State, Kent State, Cincinnati, and Florida), against non-adopters.

     Limits

     Four adopters; institution-level tuition revenue only; says nothing about academic quality or the units' behavior inside the university.

288. Jensen and Mikkelsen 2024. Positive, challenging, or impossible self-managing organizations? Exploring radical decentralization at an addiction rehabilitation center, Journal of Organization Design 13(4), 147 to 162

     Work was experienced as positive, challenging, and also impossible: within teams, collective responsibility, well-being, and efficiency increased, but conflict and disidentification emerged between teams, challenging the decentralized structure and in some instances making work impossible.

     Grade

     One case study

     Design

     Narrative study of staff and managers' experiences of working in a self-managing organization.

     Year

     2024

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     One public-sector addiction rehabilitation center that had radically decentralized managerial authority to staff.

     Limits

     One public-sector organization.

     Later work

     Repeats at the organizational level the between-group coordination problem that Ingvaldsen and Rolfsen (2012) found for autonomous work groups.

289. Jeong and colleagues 2025. Comparative governance of for-profit provision of public services: investor-owned firms versus cooperatives as internet providers, Strategic Management Journal 46(5), 1217 to 1250

     Cooperatives are more likely than investor-owned firms to enter rural and low-income communities where existing firms give low-quality service, and give higher-quality service when they do, especially where the communities or needs served are less diverse.

     Grade

     A multi-firm quantitative study

     Design

     Comparative-governance study of entry and service quality.

     Year

     2025

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Internet service providers in the United States, investor-owned and cooperative.

     Limits

     One industry in one country; the summaries do not give the sample size.

     Later work

     Fits Hansmann's account (Hansmann 1996) of assigning ownership to the patrons who benefit.

290. Jimmy and colleagues 2011. Exploring the organizational structure and coordination of multi-national IT outsourcing vendors, ECIS 2011 Proceedings, paper 66 (European Conference on Information Systems)

     All five used a front-back hybrid structure, with front-end staff grouped by the types of customer served and back-end staff grouped by the functions the company offers, and drew on both through a hybrid-matrix approach and cross-business teams to meet each client's needs. The authors read this as consistent with Galbraith's theory for such firms.

     Grade

     Seven interviews in five IT outsourcing vendors, reported as mini-cases in a conference paper

     Design

     Interview study of how IT outsourcing vendors structure and coordinate their units, which the authors call mini-cases rather than true case studies.

     Year

     2011

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Five multinational IT outsourcing vendors (revenue about USD 5 to 50 billion), chosen by purposive sampling from the global vendors with offices in Australia; seven face-to-face interviews with client-facing managers in September and October 2008.

     Limits

     A conference paper; one or two interviews per vendor, all with client-facing managers of the vendors' Australian offices, which the authors call mini-cases because they are not true case studies; five firms in one industry; the authors note that representatives elsewhere might hold different opinions.

     Later work

     No later journal version was found.

291. Jing and colleagues 2016. 平台组织、机制设计与小微创业过程：基于海尔集团组织平台化转型的案例研究, 管理学季刊 (Quarterly Journal of Management) 2016(4), 38 to 71

     By building a diverse population of micro-enterprises, the platform organization increased its adaptive capacity; mechanisms of interaction with users let micro-enterprises improve the market opportunities they faced locally, but did not replace managers' vision and intuition in recognizing opportunities; developing an opportunity depended mainly on the designed mechanisms for sharing gains and co-creation in the venturing ecosystem.

     Grade

     One company studied through four of its units

     Design

     Nested (embedded) exploratory case study of the Haier Group after its platform transformation, using grounded analysis of interviews and secondary material.

     Year

     2016

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Haier and four micro-enterprises incubated on its platforms (Leishen, Mianqingxi, Che Xiaowei, and Zhisheng); 21 interviews of about 60 to 120 minutes each, from May 2014 to May 2015, with top managers, platform owners, micro-enterprise owners, and micro-enterprise members.

     Limits

     One company; the authors had access granted by the company, and its chief executive praised the analysis (the acknowledgment note says so), so the account is close to the company's own view.

     Later work

     Adds field interviews inside Haier to the English-language accounts the rendanheyi variant cites (Frynas and colleagues 2018; Hamel and Zanini 2018).

292. Jirjahn 2011. Ökonomische Wirkungen der Mitbestimmung in Deutschland: ein Update, Schmollers Jahrbuch 131(1), 3 to 57 (in German)

     Recent studies point to positive profitability and employment effects of works councils, larger when their endogeneity is taken into account, and the effects depend on collective bargaining coverage, foreign ownership, and wage inequality inside the establishment; results on works councils' wage effects are very heterogeneous. Unlike older studies, newer research on board-level codetermination suggests it can raise productivity and, under certain conditions, profitability, with some heterogeneity of results.

     Grade

     A review of many independent econometric studies

     Design

     Review of econometric studies of codetermination at establishment and company level (German)

     Year

     2011

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Studies published since Jirjahn's 2006 review, mostly on works councils

     Limits

     A narrative review, not a meta-analysis; German establishments and companies only.

293. Joseph and Ocasio 2012. Architecture, attention, and adaptation in the multibusiness firm: General Electric from 1951 to 2001, Strategic Management Journal 33(6), 633 to 660

     The M-form's architecture includes collective vertical interactions between the corporate office and business units through cross-level channels; despite an elaborate architecture, there were periods when GE's system did not coordinate corporate and business unit agendas; temporally coupled, specialized cross-level channels make an architecture both differentiated and integrated and give better conditions for joint attention and adaptive change.

     Grade

     One historical case study

     Design

     Inductive historical analysis of a governance system.

     Year

     2012

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     General Electric, 1951 to 2001.

     Limits

     One firm.

     Later work

     Extends Chandler's account of the general office to how attention moves between levels.

294. Joseph and colleagues 2023. Corporate hierarchy and organizational learning: member turnover, code change, and innovation in the multiunit firm, Organization Science 34(3), 1332 to 1352

     Departures matter more than arrivals for subunits' recombinant innovation, and corporate staff departures matter most, reflecting corporate staff's slower learning from the organizational code and their ability to update it faster.

     Grade

     One firm's longitudinal data

     Design

     Longitudinal study applying March's mutual learning model to a corporate hierarchy.

     Year

     2023

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     24 years of Motorola company directories, linked to patents.

     Limits

     One firm; innovation measured by patents.

     Later work

     Extends Joseph and Ocasio (2012) on headquarters attention in the multibusiness firm.

295. Joyce 1986. Matrix organization: a social experiment, Academy of Management Journal 29(3), 536 to 561

     Implementing the matrix increased the quantity of formal communication but decreased its quality, and it had negative effects on role perceptions, work attitudes, and coordination.

     Grade

     A quasi-experiment in one firm's engineering division, with a control group

     Design

     A social experiment: the reorganization of one firm's engineering division from functional groups to a matrix, measured with questionnaires before and six months after the change against a nonequivalent control group, with treatment-effect correlations.

     Year

     1986

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     The Engineering Division of one aircraft manufacturing firm: engineering (33 respondents before, 31 after) and drafting (21 and 16) groups that moved into the matrix, and a control group of industrial engineers and production specialists in another building (25 and 26).

     Limits

     Quasi-experimental, not randomized: a nonequivalent control group with treatment-effect correlations, in one firm's engineering division, measured four weeks before and six months after the change; the author was employed by the host organization to observe the reorganization. The effects fell almost wholly on the drafting group, which was physically relocated and regrouped around projects; the engineering groups, which had prior lateral liaison roles, showed few or no effects, and no effect on role conflict was found in either group. The author reads this as showing that structure alone, without supporting systems and culture, did not produce the intended changes.

     Later work

     Cited in later work on matrix role conflict and communication; Sy and Côté (2004) list interpersonal problems of the matrix (misaligned goals, unclear roles, slow decisions, silo behavior) without new data.

296. Junni and colleagues 2013. Organizational ambidexterity and performance: a meta-analysis, Academy of Management Perspectives 27(4), 299 to 312

     Positive and significant ambidexterity and performance relationships are to a large extent moderated by context and method: ambidexterity matters more for performance in nonmanufacturing industries and at higher levels of analysis, and the effects are stronger with combined measures of ambidexterity, perceptual performance measures, and cross-sectional or multimethod designs.

     Grade

     A meta-analysis of prior studies

     Design

     Meta-analysis of studies of organizational ambidexterity and performance.

     Year

     2013

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Prior empirical studies (the abstract does not give the count).

     Limits

     Pools heterogeneous measures of ambidexterity, structural and otherwise.

     Later work

     The method dependence it reports is the main caution on reading the evidence as support for the structural form in particular.

297. Kadolkar and colleagues 2025. Algorithmic management in the gig economy: a systematic review and research integration, Journal of Organizational Behavior 46(7), 1057 to 1080 (online 5 September 2024)

     The literature is fragmented, with scholars disagreeing on how to conceptualize and measure algorithmic management. The analysis yields 12 topics, which the authors integrate to show the differing effects of algorithmic management on gig workers' outcomes, and from which they offer a definition of algorithmic management with its key dimensions and the main pathways through which each dimension affects workers.

     Grade

     A topic-model review of the literature across disciplines

     Design

     Systematic review of the academic literature across disciplines on the algorithmic management of gig workers, using topic modeling by natural language processing, with the topics integrated in an input, process, and output framework.

     Year

     2025

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Studies from computer science, engineering, operations management, management, sociology, and law (the abstract does not give their number).

     Limits

     Limited to the gig economy and to worker outcomes; the abstract does not give the number of studies or any pooled result. The full text was not read.

298. Kalleberg 2001. Organizing flexibility: the flexible firm in a new century, British Journal of Industrial Relations 39(4), 479 to 504

     Studies of each type of flexibility generally neglect the other, and the core and periphery model of the flexible firm is incomplete in important ways; the review discusses its evidence and limits and outlines other ways organizations may combine functional and numerical flexibility.

     Grade

     A review of U.S. and British evidence

     Design

     Review of research on numerical and functional flexibility and of the core and periphery model.

     Year

     2001

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Evidence mainly from the United States and the United Kingdom, with cross-national comparisons.

     Limits

     A review; it does not add new data.

     Later work

     Kalleberg (2003) argued that U.S. employers' flexibility strategies divide insiders in standard jobs from outsiders in nonstandard arrangements.

299. Kambayashi and Kato 2017. Long-term employment and job security over the past 25 years: a comparative study of Japan and the United States, ILR Review 70(2), 359 to 394 (online 2016)

     Prime-age men with at least five years of tenure in Japan kept much higher job stability than their American counterparts, and the Lost Decade had little effect on them, while job stability for mid-career hires and young workers fell; seniority protected workers from job loss more in Japan, and the gap widened.

     Grade

     A quantitative comparison of national labor data in two countries over 25 years

     Design

     Comparison of job stability and job loss over 25 years with national labor survey data and cross-national regressions

     Year

     2017

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Workers in Japan and the United States

     Limits

     Measures employment stability, one pillar of the J-form, not its coordination structure.

     Later work

     Kambayashi and Kato (2026) extend the Japanese data to 2022 and find ten-year retention rates for core employees still high through the Great Recession and the COVID-19 pandemic.

300. Kambayashi and Kato 2026. Long-term employment in Japan: past and present, The Japanese Economic Review 77(3), 559 to 575

     Contrary to the widespread view that Japan's long-term employment system has eroded since the 1990s, estimated ten-year job retention rates have remained remarkably stable over four decades. Core employees, prime-age workers with at least five years of tenure, kept consistently high retention rates even in postwar Japan's two largest recessions. Job stability among young entry-level workers declined significantly, but cohort analysis shows this early-career instability does not persist: most workers eventually move into long-term employment as they age. The overall share of core employees has not declined, though younger male cohorts are temporarily delayed in accumulating long tenure.

     Grade

     A quantitative study of four decades of Japan's national labor survey data

     Design

     Estimates of ten-year job retention rates and a cohort analysis of long-term employment in Japan over 1982 to 2022, from the Employment Status Survey (named in the working paper's keywords).

     Year

     2026

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Workers in Japan, 1982 to 2022, a span that includes the Great Recession and the COVID-19 pandemic (the abstract gives no sample size).

     Limits

     Measures employment stability, one pillar of the J-form, not its coordination structure; the abstract read is the IZA working paper's (May 2026), not the journal article's.

     Later work

     It extends Kambayashi and Kato (2017) to 2022.

301. Kandel and colleagues 2019. The great pyramids of America: a revised history of U.S. business groups, corporate ownership, and regulation, 1926 to 1950, Strategic Management Journal 40(5), 781 to 808 (online December 2018)

     Control-magnifying (pyramidal) business groups, with multiple tiers of partially owned listed affiliates and fully owned private affiliates, were ubiquitous in the U.S. economy in the 1930s, though virtually absent in America today. Some New Deal reforms (proscriptions against public utility pyramids, intercorporate dividend taxes, and rules governing investment companies) were explicitly aimed at deterring existing groups and preventing new ones, and others, such as estate taxes and securities law reforms, may also have worked against them; no single reform dissolved them at once, and they broke up under an ongoing anti-big-business sentiment.

     Grade

     A historical study of a country's listed firms over a quarter century

     Design

     Business history built on newly assembled historical data on U.S. corporate ownership, read against the reforms of the period.

     Year

     2019

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     U.S. corporate ownership and business groups from 1926 to 1950.

     Limits

     Historical and descriptive; the causal weight of each reform is not separated, as the authors say no single reform triggered the dissolution; the summaries were read, not the full text.

302. Kanter 1968. Commitment and social organization: a study of commitment mechanisms in utopian communities, American Sociological Review 33(4), 499 to 517

     Commitment comes in three types (continuance, cohesion, and control), each supported by two processes (sacrifice and investment; renunciation and communion; mortification and surrender). Use of the commitment mechanisms that follow from them generally distinguishes enduring from short-lived communities.

     Grade

     A comparative study of nineteenth-century communes

     Design

     Comparative historical study of commitment mechanisms in communes.

     Year

     1968

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Nineteenth-century American utopian communities, successful (enduring) and unsuccessful (short-lived); the abstract does not give the count.

     Limits

     Historical records of a particular population; survival is the only outcome.

     Later work

     Sosis and Bressler (2003) tested a related claim on 83 communes. Hall (1988, American Sociological Review) takes up the Kanter thesis by type of communal group and rational choice theory, as its title says; no abstract exists and its text was not read, so its findings are not reported.

303. Karim and Kaul 2015. Structural recombination and innovation: unlocking intraorganizational knowledge synergy through structural change, Organization Science 26(2), 439 to 455

     Recombining business units raises innovation where intraorganizational knowledge synergies are substantial, path dependence is low, and knowledge resources are of high quality; otherwise the disruption can outweigh the gain.

     Grade

     A multi-firm panel study

     Design

     Panel study of structural recombination of business units and later innovation.

     Year

     2015

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     71 firms in the U.S. medical sector over 20 years.

     Limits

     One sector.

     Later work

     Treats the division map of an M-form as something firms redraw, not a fixed choice.

304. Katz and Allen 1985. Project performance and the locus of influence in the R&D matrix, Academy of Management Journal 28(1), 67 to 87

     Project performance was higher when influence over salaries and promotions was perceived as balanced between project and functional managers. Performance was highest when influence in the wider organization was centered in the project manager and influence over the technical details of the work was centered in the functional manager. Most of the sampled projects did not show this pattern, which the authors suggest may be one reason so many studies report role conflict and ambiguity among matrixed professionals.

     Grade

     A survey of 86 matrixed project teams in nine R&D organizations

     Design

     Questionnaire survey of matrixed project members on how much their project and functional managers influenced four areas (the technical details of the work, salaries and promotions, selection for the project, and the conduct of the wider organization), related to higher managers' ratings of each project's performance.

     Year

     1985

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     86 project teams with at least 20 percent of engineers in a pure matrix (486 matrixed engineers), drawn from more than 2,000 respondents in 201 project teams at nine R&D organizations: two government laboratories, three not-for-profit firms funded mainly by government agencies, and four companies (two in aerospace, one in electronics, and one in food processing).

     Limits

     Cross-sectional. Performance is a subjective rating by four to five managers at least one level above each project (with high agreement within each organization), used because no objective measure was comparable across technologies. The nine organizations were not chosen at random, and all are R&D settings. The text read in full is the authors' revised 1983 working paper; the figures were confirmed in snippets of the 1997 reprint in Katz's reader, but the AMJ article itself was not read.

     Later work

     Sytch and Wohlgezogen's 2026 review lists it among the few cross-sectional studies of matrix effectiveness.

305. Keister 1998. Engineering growth: business group structure and firm performance in China's transition economy, American Journal of Sociology 104(2), 404 to 440

     Interlocking directorates and finance companies in groups improved member firms' financial performance and productivity, and firms in groups with nonhierarchical structures performed better than firms in hierarchical groups.

     Grade

     A panel study of 535 firms in 40 groups

     Design

     Panel analysis of group structure and member-firm performance

     Year

     1998

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     China's 40 largest business groups and their 535 member firms, 1988 to 1990

     Limits

     Three years in one transition economy; groups formed under government encouragement.

306. Kelchen 2026. Do responsibility center management budget models encourage entrepreneurship? Evidence from master's programs at public universities, Education Finance and Policy, accepted for publication (author's final version, August 2026)

     There was no evidence that universities adopting the model changed the number or types of their master's programs, closed more programs, or awarded more master's degrees afterward, which the author reads as a limit on the incentives these budget models give unit leaders.

     Grade

     A national panel of 154 universities

     Design

     Event-study panel with inverse probability of treatment weights, comparing universities that adopted responsibility center management budget models with those that did not.

     Year

     2026

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     154 public research universities (58 adopted the model, 96 did not), over the 2004-05 to 2023-24 academic years.

     Limits

     The strength of each university's internal incentives (revenue rules, taxes on units, subsidies) varied and could not be coded at most universities; comparison universities also used some unit incentives. Master's programs are one outcome among many. Accepted paper, not yet issued.

     Later work

     The author notes that it runs against the earlier finding of Jaquette and colleagues (2018) of higher net tuition revenue at three of four early adopters.

307. Kellogg and colleagues 2006. Life in the trading zone: structuring coordination across boundaries in postbureaucratic organizations, Organization Science 17(1), 22 to 44

     Members of different communities used cross-boundary coordination practices that made work visible and legible to each other and enabled ongoing revision and alignment; the authors suggest these practices enact a trading-zone coordination structure that affords cross-boundary coordination while facilitating adaptability, speed, and learning. The practices did not eliminate jurisdictional conflicts and often generated problems such as privileging speed over quality, suppression of difference, loss of comprehension, misinterpretation and ambiguity, rework, and temporal pressure.

     Grade

     One case study

     Design

     Field study of boundary-spanning coordination.

     Year

     2006

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     One interactive marketing organization (the abstract does not name it).

     Limits

     One organization.

     Later work

     Shows the costs that the boundaryless prescription leaves out; Langley and colleagues (2019) review boundary work as an ongoing process.

308. Kellogg 2018. Subordinate activation tactics: semi-professionals and micro-level institutional change in professional organizations, Administrative Science Quarterly 64(4), 928 to 975 (online 2018, in print 2019)

     Managers in one hospital changed professional practice and those in the other did not. Change came through subordinate activation tactics: first empowering and motivating semi-professionals to use their favorable structural position toward the doctors on managers' behalf, then giving them positional tools to minimize the doctors' concerns about the threats of change.

     Grade

     A comparative ethnography of two hospitals

     Design

     Two-year comparative ethnography of the same reform in two hospitals.

     Year

     2018

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Primary care departments in two U.S. hospitals implementing patient-centered medical home reforms among doctors, under the same external pressures and organizational and reimbursement structure.

     Limits

     Two departments; ethnographic.

     Later work

     Qualifies the picture in Currie and colleagues (2012) of professional elites maintaining control: change was possible when managers worked through the semi-professionals around them.

309. Kellogg and colleagues 2020. Algorithms at work: the new contested terrain of control, Academy of Management Annals 14(1), 366 to 410

     Algorithmic control in the workplace operates through six mechanisms, the 6 Rs: employers use algorithms to direct workers by restricting and recommending, to evaluate them by recording and rating, and to discipline them by replacing and rewarding. Labor process theory highlights problems with a largely positive view of algorithms at work; algorithmic systems facilitate a form of rational control distinct from the technical and bureaucratic control of the past century; employers' use of algorithms is creating new algorithmic occupations; and workers resist individually and collectively through tactics the authors call algoactivism.

     Grade

     A review of earlier research through one theoretical lens, with no new data

     Design

     Review that synthesizes interdisciplinary research on algorithms at work through Edwards's (1979) contested-terrain perspective from labor process theory.

     Year

     2020

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Interdisciplinary research on algorithms at work (the abstract gives no count of the works reviewed or their designs).

     Limits

     Reads the field through one theoretical lens; no new data; only the abstract was read, so the number and kinds of studies behind the synthesis were not checked.

     Later work

     Noponen and colleagues (2024) call it an extensive review of algorithmic control, which they treat as one of the five functions of algorithmic management, and complement it with a qualitative systematic review of 172 articles.

310. Kelly 1978. A reappraisal of sociotechnical systems theory, Human Relations 31(12), 1069 to 1099

     There is no single homogeneous sociotechnical school but two streams; the autonomy granted to autonomous groups is limited and subordinate to economic objectives; joint optimization has little connection with practice and should be replaced by the notion of intensification of labor; the role of pay incentives was seriously underestimated; and organizational choice is inadequate because the cases showed the superior effectiveness of only one form, autonomous groups.

     Grade

     A critical reanalysis of several published case studies

     Design

     Critical reexamination of the case studies from which the principles of sociotechnical systems theory were partly derived.

     Year

     1978

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     The published sociotechnical case studies.

     Limits

     A reanalysis of published cases, not new data.

     Later work

     Beekun's (1989) meta-analysis found that interventions with increased monetary incentives raised productivity more, consistent with Kelly's point on pay.

311. Kemp and colleagues 1983. Autonomous work groups in a greenfield site: a comparative study, Journal of Occupational Psychology 56(4), 271 to 288

     The planned work design change succeeded, producing greater perceived work role complexity and differences in perceived leadership style, and these led to significantly higher job satisfaction; no effect was found for motivation, organizational commitment, trust, or mental health.

     Grade

     A comparative study at one site

     Design

     Comparative study using multiple comparison groups.

     Year

     1983

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Autonomous work groups at one greenfield site and comparison groups.

     Limits

     One site; attitudes only.

     Later work

     Wall and colleagues (1986) followed the same program over a longer period.

312. Kern and Schumann 1987. Limits of the division of labour: new production and employment concepts in West German industry, Economic and Industrial Democracy 8(2), 151 to 170

     Capitalist rationalization was at a turning point toward new concepts of production that use labor in new ways in the main industrial sectors (professionalization), opening chances for many workers there, with a dark side in the rigid exclusion of other parts of the workforce.

     Grade

     The authors' summary of their empirical research in West German industry

     Design

     The authors' English summary of their empirical research in West German industry (published in German as Kern and Schumann 1984): the conceptual and empirical characteristics of the analysis, then its main findings.

     Year

     1987

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Not given in the abstract; the article refers to research conducted in West German industry some years before 1987.

     Limits

     Only the abstract was read; the sectors, plants, and methods of the 1984 study were not read, and the authors' 1992 chapter opens by noting that predictions in the social sciences are often contradicted by later events before it returns to their 1984 forecast (Kern and Schumann's 1992 abstract).

     Later work

     Kern and Schumann (1992) returned to their 1984 forecast of new concepts of production in English.

313. Kessler and colleagues 2017. Examining organic and mechanistic structures: do we know as much as we thought?, International Journal of Management Reviews 19(4), 531 to 555 (online July 2016)

     Researchers have operationalized organic and mechanistic structures inconsistently, and the inconsistencies may interfere with the ability to consolidate knowledge about them. The authors call for further theoretical conceptualization of the concepts and for attention to Burns and Stalker's largely neglected corollary of the employee experience.

     Grade

     A review of the empirical studies

     Design

     Review of the empirical literature on Burns and Stalker's organic and mechanistic structures, cataloging how researchers have operationalized the two concepts and summarizing the findings from each operationalization.

     Year

     2017

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Published empirical studies of organic and mechanistic structure (the abstract does not give their number).

     Limits

     Only the abstract was read, so the review's summary of findings by operationalization is not recorded. It bears on the organic management system, a variant of the adhocracy entry, not on Mintzberg's adhocracy by name.

     Later work

     On our reading, a caution against treating studies of organic structure as one body of evidence, alongside Doty, Glick, and Huber's (1993) failure to support Mintzberg's configuration theory.

314. Ketchen and colleagues 1997. Organizational configurations and performance: a meta-analysis, Academy of Management Journal 40(1), 223 to 240

     In contrast to earlier qualitative reviews, an organization's performance was partly explained by its configuration. Configurations explained more when studies used broad definitions of configurations, single-industry samples, and longitudinal designs.

     Grade

     A meta-analysis of 40 tests

     Design

     Meta-analysis of tests of the configuration-performance relationship.

     Year

     1997

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     40 original tests.

     Limits

     Pools heterogeneous configuration definitions, many of them strategy types rather than structures.

     Later work

     Sits beside Doty, Glick, and Huber (1993): configurations matter on average, though the tests of pure structural types are mixed.

315. Keum and See 2017. The influence of hierarchy on idea generation and selection in the innovation process, Organization Science 28(4), 653 to 669

     Hierarchy of authority harms the idea generation phase of innovation but can help the screening or selection phase; the authors identify a behavioral mechanism behind the effect on selection.

     Grade

     A field study combined with an experiment

     Design

     Multimethod study: a field study and a laboratory experiment.

     Year

     2017

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     A field setting and a laboratory sample (details not read).

     Limits

     Hierarchy is measured as degree of managerial oversight, not number of strata.

     Later work

     With Lee (2022), it splits the effect of hierarchy by phase or outcome rather than calling hierarchy good or bad.

316. Khanna and Palepu 2000a. Is group affiliation profitable in emerging markets? An analysis of diversified Indian business groups, The Journal of Finance 55(2), 867 to 891

     Performance first falls and then rises with group diversification; affiliates of the most diversified groups outperform unaffiliated firms.

     Grade

     A statistical study of many firms in one country

     Design

     Comparison of affiliated and unaffiliated firms on accounting and stock market measures.

     Year

     2000

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Indian firms, affiliates of diversified business groups and unaffiliated firms

     Limits

     One country; the abstract does not give the sample period or size.

     Later work

     Carney and colleagues (2011) pooled 141 studies and found affiliation lowers performance on average.

317. Khanna and Palepu 2000b. The future of business groups in emerging markets: long-run evidence from Chile, Academy of Management Journal 43(3), 268 to 285

     Firms' benefit from affiliation with Chilean groups varied: the net benefit of unrelated diversification was positive once group diversification passed a threshold, and the threshold rose over time; benefits not related to diversification also appeared and atrophied over time. The authors conjecture that as the institutional context evolves it changes the value groups can create, but slowly.

     Grade

     A multi-firm study over nine years in one country

     Design

     Longitudinal analysis of how much firms benefited from affiliation with Chilean business groups over nine years, related to the diversification of their groups.

     Year

     2000

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Firms affiliated with Chilean business groups, 1988 to 1996; the abstract does not give the number of firms or say how unaffiliated firms enter the comparison.

     Limits

     One country over nine years of liberalization; performance is the outcome; only the abstract was read, so the sample size and the estimation method are not confirmed.

318. Kieser 1987. From asceticism to administration of wealth: medieval monasteries and the pitfalls of rationalization, Organization Studies 8(2), 103 to 123

     The monasteries were the first deliberately designed organizations in the West. Their rationally designed work organization and the monks' work ethic accumulated wealth that was incompatible with the ascetic ideal of poverty, and, leaving no room for self-determination, they were the first example of the iron cage of bureaucracy.

     Grade

     A historical and conceptual analysis

     Design

     A historical analysis of medieval monasteries through Weber's concept of rationalization.

     Year

     1987

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Medieval monasteries in the Occident.

     Limits

     Historical and interpretive; read from the abstract only, which does not say what sources the analysis rests on.

319. King and Griffin 2024. Governing for the common good: the possibilities of sociocracy in nonprofit organizations, Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations 35(6), 1046 to 1057

     Sociocracy, organized around circular hierarchy, consent-based decision-making, double linking, and practices that foster inclusion and voice, offered many benefits, including empowering members and reducing the risk of domination, but its implementation met many challenges, which four forms of inequality helped produce.

     Grade

     One case study

     Design

     Case study of a nonprofit organization that introduced sociocracy.

     Year

     2024

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     One self-governing nonprofit co-housing community for retired people in the Northwestern United States (Phoenix Co-housing, a pseudonym; 25 households and about 40 residents), all new to sociocracy; four days of observation including four general circle meetings, 16 interviews, and archival documents.

     Limits

     One case in the nonprofit sector.

     Later work

     The most recent study found of an organization structured by sociocracy's circles and double links.

320. Kirkman and Rosen 1999. Beyond self-management: antecedents and consequences of team empowerment, Academy of Management Journal 42(1), 58 to 74

     External leaders' actions, the production and service responsibilities given to teams, team-based human resource policies, and teams' social structure all enhanced team empowerment. More empowered teams were more productive and proactive and had higher customer service, job satisfaction, and organizational and team commitment.

     Grade

     A field study of 111 teams in four organizations

     Design

     Field study of the antecedents, consequences, and mediating role of team empowerment.

     Year

     1999

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     111 work teams in four organizations.

     Limits

     Correlational; the abstract does not say how outcomes were measured or whether they came from sources independent of the team members, so common-source inflation cannot be ruled out.

     Later work

     Seibert, Wang, and Courtright's (2011) meta-analysis found team empowerment positively related to team performance across studies.

321. Kitchener 2000. The 'bureaucratization' of professional roles: the case of clinical directors in UK hospitals, Organization 7(1), 129 to 154

     Physicians who became clinical directors were to some extent bureaucratized by taking on commercial and managerial responsibility, but they kept the occupational closure of the medical domain, protected high clinical autonomy, and resisted closer managerial control of medical practice; little support emerged for the de-professionalization thesis.

     Grade

     A scholar's study of several UK hospitals (the abstract gives neither the method nor the number of hospitals)

     Design

     Study of how the clinical director role developed in UK hospitals, with data collected from 1991 to 1995 (the abstract does not describe the method).

     Year

     2000

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     UK hospitals studied between 1991 and 1995 (the abstract does not give the number).

     Limits

     One country's public hospitals in the years of one reform; the abstract does not give the sample size.

322. Kitchener 2002. Mobilizing the logic of managerialism in professional fields: the case of academic health centre mergers, Organization Studies 23(3), 391 to 420

     Executives were expected to adopt managerial innovations, merger among them, to keep legitimacy as the institutional logic of professionalism was repressed; merger came to be adopted widely and uncritically. Its intended outcomes rarely emerged when it was sedimented uncritically on enduring aspects of the logic and structures of professionalism.

     Grade

     A qualitative field study of academic health center mergers

     Design

     Qualitative inductive study, integrating institutional, political, and social movement theory into a model of attempts to reorder the bases of legitimacy in professional fields.

     Year

     2002

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Mergers of academic health centers in the United States; the abstract does not give the number of sites.

     Limits

     One field and one kind of change; the number of mergers studied is not in the abstract.

     Later work

     Uses Cooper and colleagues' (1996) sedimentation idea from law firms; Kirkpatrick and Ackroyd (2003) question the archetype frame on which that idea rests.

323. Kleinbaum and Stuart 2014. Inside the black box of the corporate staff: social networks and the implementation of corporate strategy, Strategic Management Journal 35(1), 24 to 47

     Corporate staff members have larger, more integrative networks, richer in structural holes, but much of the difference comes from who is sorted into staff jobs rather than from working there, and people who move back to the line keep aspects of the corporate imprimatur; the authors conclude that the literature's emphasis on structure as the means of coordination undervalues a selection process in which people with broad networks are matched to coordination-focused staff jobs.

     Grade

     One firm's network data

     Design

     E-mail network analysis of one firm's corporate staff.

     Year

     2014

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     One multidivisional firm's corporate staff and line employees.

     Limits

     One firm.

     Later work

     Gives the line-and-staff entry its first network evidence on what staff roles do.

324. Knott and Turner 2019. An innovation theory of headquarters value in multibusiness firms, Organization Science 30(1), 19 to 39

     Knowledge growth rose with the number of units and with the heterogeneity of their knowledge, and rose then fell with their geographic distance; once these structural elements were accounted for, scale and hierarchy both suppressed innovation, so neither Chandler's nor Williamson's resource-allocation account of headquarters value held in this setting.

     Grade

     A quantitative study of many firms in one industry, with a formal model

     Design

     An interacting agent model of a theory in which headquarters creates value by fostering market-like dynamics among its businesses, with three propositions tested on industry data.

     Year

     2019

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Multibusiness firms in the banking industry; the theory is aimed at multibusiness firms with limited opportunities to reallocate resources across businesses, such as chains.

     Limits

     One industry; the abstract does not give the number of firms or years.

325. Kohlbacher 2010. The effects of process orientation: a literature review, Business Process Management Journal 16(1), 135 to 152

     Studies reporting positive effects predominated; the effects most often reported were faster speed, higher customer satisfaction, better quality, lower cost, and better financial performance. The author notes a possible bias toward reporting positive effects in the popular press and case studies, and a lack of quantitative studies.

     Grade

     A review of 26 published reports, classified as statements without direct empirical support, quantitative studies, and case studies

     Design

     Literature review of studies reporting the effects of process orientation on organizational performance.

     Year

     2010

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     26 studies, classified as statements without direct empirical support, quantitative studies, and case studies.

     Limits

     Not a meta-analysis; the reviewed evidence is mostly cases and claims, and the author names publication bias as a limit.

     Later work

     Kohlbacher and Gruenwald (2011) and Kohlbacher and Reijers (2013) followed with survey measures.

326. Kohlbacher and Gruenwald 2011a. Process orientation: conceptualization and measurement, Business Process Management Journal 17(2), 267 to 283

     Process orientation is a multidimensional construct: design and documentation of business processes, management commitment to process orientation, the process owner role, process performance measurement, a corporate culture in line with the process approach, continuous process improvement methods, and a process-oriented organizational structure.

     Grade

     A survey of 152 manufacturers

     Design

     Development and factor-analytic validation of a measure of process orientation.

     Year

     2011

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     152 Austrian manufacturing companies.

     Limits

     Austrian manufacturers only, as the authors note.

     Later work

     Used in Kohlbacher and Reijers (2013) to test performance effects.

327. Kohlbacher and Gruenwald 2011b. Process ownership, process performance measurement and firm performance, International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management 60(7), 709 to 720

     Adopting either process performance measurement or the process owner role alone is not enough for high firm performance; organizations must implement both.

     Grade

     A survey of manufacturing firms in one country

     Design

     A survey of manufacturing firms analyzed with multivariate methods, testing the joint effect of process performance measurement and the process owner role on firm performance.

     Year

     2011

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Austrian manufacturing firms, one interview per firm; the number of firms is not given in the abstract read.

     Limits

     As the authors say: Austrian manufacturers only, one interview per firm, a small number of cases in the regression models, and survey data open to self-serving bias. It may draw on the same survey as Kohlbacher and Reijers (2013), which was not checked.

328. Kohlbacher and Reijers 2013. The effects of process-oriented organizational design on firm performance, Business Process Management Journal 19(2), 245 to 262

     Process performance measurement, a process-oriented organizational structure, continuous process improvement methods, and above all a culture in line with the process approach were significantly and positively associated with organizational performance.

     Grade

     A survey of Austrian manufacturers

     Design

     Exploratory survey relating the dimensions of process orientation to profitability, customer satisfaction, product quality, and time-based performance.

     Year

     2013

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     A random sample of Austrian manufacturing firms.

     Limits

     Exploratory and associational; the abstract does not report a longitudinal design, so the direction of effect is not established; one country and sector.

329. Kolbjørnsrud 2018. Collaborative organizational forms: on communities, crowds, and new hybrids, Journal of Organization Design 7(1), article 11

     The framework maps forms by their institutional properties and the mechanisms by which they solve the universal problems of organizing, derives distinct hybrids at the intersections of the ideal types, and specifies conditions that push organizations toward another form.

     Grade

     A conceptual framework illustrated with three cases

     Design

     Theoretical review of collaborative organizational forms, building a framework from three ideal forms (markets, hierarchies, and communities) and their hybrids.

     Year

     2018

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Three illustrative cases in drug discovery, software development, and professional services.

     Limits

     The cases illustrate rather than test the framework.

     Later work

     Treats community as a third ideal form beside market and hierarchy, not a market and hierarchy hybrid, and derives community-based hybrids at the intersections; among the overlapping terms the literature uses for collaborative forms it lists the I-form, actor-oriented organizations, and the collaborative community, but it does not name the cellular form.

330. Kolind 2015. It works: I know it works, Journal of Organization Design 4(2), 16 to 17 (Organization Zoo section)

     Oticon dropped bosses, titles, departments, and most of its bureaucracy and paperwork; the author reports ten years of strong results and calls Valve the prototype knowledge-based company.

     Grade

     A practitioner's account written by an insider, labeled as such

     Design

     A practitioner's short account comparing Valve with Oticon.

     Year

     2015

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Oticon, the Danish hearing-aid maker, about fifteen years before Valve.

     Limits

     The author's own report, with no data or method given; Foss (2003) documents the design's partial reversal, which the abstract does not mention.

     Later work

     Read beside Foss (2003), the scholarly study of the same design.

331. Koljonen and Chan 2024. Balancing professional autonomy and managerial goals amid broad technology adoption pressures: intraprofessional segmentation at a Finnish school, Academy of Management Journal 67(3), 798 to 828

     Intraprofessional segmentation, the specialization of work tasks within the professional community, let the school pursue technology adoption while balancing teachers' professional autonomy and managers' goals. The segmentation emerged through differentiating practices and persisted and intensified through reinforcing practices that formalized, reorganized, and strengthened it.

     Grade

     One case study

     Design

     Sixteen-month ethnography of one organization.

     Year

     2024

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     A Finnish school facing broad pressures to adopt new technologies.

     Limits

     One school; ethnographic.

     Later work

     Adds a structural answer, segmentation inside the operating core, to the question of how managers in a professional organization get change without overriding autonomy.

332. Kraatz and Zajac 1996. Exploring the limits of the new institutionalism: the causes and consequences of illegitimate organizational change, American Sociological Review 61(5), 812 to 836

     Surprisingly little support for neoinstitutional predictions: many colleges professionalized or vocationalized their curricula contrary to institutional demands; global and local technical conditions, such as changes in consumers' preferences and local economic and demographic differences, strongly predicted the changes; the colleges became less homogeneous and generally did not mimic their most prestigious counterparts; and the illegitimate changes had no negative, and often positive, consequences for enrollment and survival. The authors suggest current research may underestimate adaptation-based explanations.

     Grade

     A longitudinal study of 631 private liberal arts colleges

     Design

     Longitudinal analysis, 1971 to 1986, of curricular change in colleges facing strong institutional and increasingly strong technical environments, testing neoinstitutional predictions.

     Year

     1996

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     631 private liberal arts colleges in the United States.

     Limits

     One sector; the change studied was curricular, not structural; the full text was not read.

333. Kunisch and colleagues 2020. Corporate headquarters in the twenty-first century: an organization design perspective, Journal of Organization Design 9, article 22

     Sets out four canonical questions about headquarters design, surveys changes in the twenty-first century business environment and their implications, and argues the headquarters may face a change as radical as its emergence in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

     Grade

     A conceptual essay with no empirical test

     Design

     Conceptual essay introducing a special collection.

     Year

     2020

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     No new data.

     Limits

     Conceptual.

     Later work

     Points to the Journal of Organization Design special collection on headquarters.

334. Kuntz and Vera 2007. Modular organization and hospital performance, Health Services Management Research 20(1), 48 to 58

     Modularization as a whole had no positive effect on hospital performance, but two of its central ideas, process orientation and internal market mechanisms, had positive efficiency effects.

     Grade

     A quantitative study of hospitals, read in its abstract

     Design

     Multiple regression analyses of whether modular structures (vertical disaggregation of the firm and market mechanisms inside the hierarchy) improve hospital performance.

     Year

     2007

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Hospitals (the abstract does not give the sample; the same authors' study of the same year used the hospitals of Rhineland-Palatinate, so the two may share data).

     Limits

     Abstract only; the sample is not stated, and the study is probably not independent of Vera and Kuntz (2007).

335. Kuprenas 2003. Implementation and performance of a matrix organization structure, International Journal of Project Management 21(1), 51 to 62

     Implementation problems predicted by earlier research appeared, including confusion over roles and responsibilities and the politicization of projects and resources. A two-sample t-test found no statistical difference in design costs between projects completed under the matrix and under the old functional structure (243 projects). At the program level, the Bureau reported a 40 percent reduction in time from work order to construction award in the Street Program and a 50 percent improvement in annual capital program delivery in the Street and Stormwater Programs.

     Grade

     One case study

     Design

     Single case study of a matrix implementation in a public engineering organization, with a before and after comparison of project and program performance.

     Year

     2003

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     The City of Los Angeles Bureau of Engineering (over 900 employees); 243 projects in the design-cost comparison.

     Limits

     One organization; before and after comparison with no control group; the program measures are the organization's own; written soon after the change.

     Later work

     The author calls for continued documentation of the case and for more matrix performance measures.

336. Kutney-Lee and colleagues 2016. Nurse engagement in shared governance and patient and nurse outcomes, Journal of Nursing Administration 46(11), 605 to 612

     Nurses' engagement in shared governance varied widely across hospitals. In hospitals with greater engagement, nurses were significantly less likely to report unfavorable job outcomes and poor ratings of quality and safety, and patients' HCAHPS scores were higher.

     Grade

     A survey of nurses across many hospitals

     Design

     Cross-sectional secondary analysis of linked nurse survey, hospital survey, and patient experience (HCAHPS) data, relating nurses' engagement in shared governance to nurse and patient outcomes.

     Year

     2016

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     425 hospitals in four U.S. states (California, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Florida), with nurse survey data from 2006 to 2007.

     Limits

     Cross-sectional, so the direction of effect is not shown; it measures nurses' reported engagement in shared governance rather than the presence or design of the council structure itself; the data are from 2006 to 2007 and from four states.

337. Kwok and colleagues 2020. Preparing for the COVID-19 pandemic from a community hospital perspective: team of teams approach, Cureus 12(11), e11387

     After several proposals were reviewed, a plan was agreed upon using the team of teams approach, and the authors report that they achieved their goal of having a plan in place to manage the pandemic's impact and care safely for their patients.

     Grade

     A practitioner's report from one hospital department

     Design

     A report of one emergency department's preparation for the COVID-19 pandemic.

     Year

     2020

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     One community hospital emergency department (the authors are emergency physicians at Richmond Hospital, Vancouver Coastal Health, Canada).

     Limits

     A self-report by the department's own physicians; the outcome reported is having a plan, not a measured result, and there is no comparison.

338. Kwon and Choi 2004. 하이퍼텍스트형 조직구조가 지식의 창조와 공유에 미치는 영향 (The effect of hypertext organizational structure on knowledge creation and sharing), 인사조직연구 (In'sa Jojik Yeongu), published by 한국인사조직학회, 12 (special issue), 199 to 228

     Hypertext organizational structure had a significant effect on both knowledge creation and knowledge sharing, and a larger effect on sharing. Of its features, an open, three-dimensional structure mattered more for knowledge creation, and interaction with the knowledge domain mattered more for knowledge sharing.

     Grade

     A survey of members of 107 organizations

     Design

     Questionnaire survey of organization members, aggregated and analyzed at the organization level; the abstract calls the analysis a structural analysis.

     Year

     2004

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     1,034 members of 107 organizations (the abstract does not name the country, the sectors, or how the organizations were chosen).

     Limits

     One cross-sectional survey; the abstract does not say how hypertext structure, creation, and sharing were measured, and if members reported both structure and outcomes the results may share a common source. The full text, in Korean, was not read.

     Later work

     The abstract calls it the first empirical test of the claim; no replication found. The only other study of the form since, Rusko (2018), is one auto-ethnographic case.

339. Lamin 2013. Business groups as information resource: an investigation of business group affiliation in the Indian software services industry, Academy of Management Journal 56(5), 1487 to 1509

     Affiliation let firms draw on sister affiliates' knowledge and connections, so affiliated firms attracted clients from more industries and foreign markets and reached higher international sales, but only in 2000 to 2002, when new deregulation raised competition; groups still give members information on market opportunities and reputation signals to clients.

     Grade

     A multi-firm study of one industry

     Design

     Quantitative test of hypotheses on whether group affiliation widens software firms' client reach and raises their international sales, using data on the Indian software industry.

     Year

     2013

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Firms in the Indian software services industry.

     Limits

     One industry in one country; the effect held only in one period.

     Later work

     Shows the group's information role surviving deregulation; Khanna and Yafeh (2007) review why groups form, prevail, and evolve in different environments.

340. Lanaj and colleagues 2013. The double-edged sword of decentralized planning in multiteam systems, Academy of Management Journal 56(3), 735 to 757

     Decentralized planning had positive effects on multiteam performance through greater proactivity and aspiration, but these were offset by even stronger negative effects from excessive risk seeking and coordination failures.

     Grade

     A study of 210 multiteam systems

     Design

     Study of decentralized versus centralized planning in multiteam systems.

     Year

     2013

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     210 multiteam systems, each of three six-person, functionally specialized teams.

     Limits

     The abstract does not state the setting, the task, or who the participants were.

     Later work

     Our reading: it bears on the empowered-execution claim of Team of Teams (McChrystal and others 2015), since in these multiteam systems the gains of decentralized planning were offset by even stronger losses from excessive risk seeking and coordination failures. The study did not vary how interdependent the component teams were.

341. Langfred 2004. Too much of a good thing? Negative effects of high trust and individual autonomy in self-managing teams, Academy of Management Journal 47(3), 385 to 399

     High trust can make members of self-managing teams reluctant to monitor one another, and low monitoring combined with high individual autonomy can hurt team performance: high trust went with higher performance when individual autonomy was low and with lower performance when it was high, with monitoring and autonomy in a moderated mediating role.

     Grade

     A quantitative study of 71 student self-managing teams

     Design

     Field study of how trust, monitoring, and individual autonomy combine to affect the performance of self-managing teams.

     Year

     2004

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     71 self-managing teams of MBA students.

     Limits

     Student teams in one program; the full text was not read.

342. Langfred 2007. The downside of self-management: a longitudinal study of the effects of conflict on trust, autonomy, and task interdependence in self-managing teams, Academy of Management Journal 50(4), 885 to 900

     Increased team conflict was associated with lower intrateam trust, which in turn may reduce individual autonomy and loosen task interdependence, a less than ideal team design: self-managing teams may unintentionally restructure themselves inefficiently in response to conflict. Longitudinal data supported these expectations.

     Grade

     A longitudinal study of 35 teams

     Design

     Longitudinal study of the effects of conflict on trust, autonomy, and task interdependence.

     Year

     2007

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     35 self-managing teams (setting not in the abstract).

     Limits

     35 teams; setting not confirmed.

     Later work

     Pairs with Langfred (2004) on the costs of high trust and low monitoring; both qualify the empowerment meta-analysis (Seibert and others 2011).

343. Langley and colleagues 2019. Boundary work among groups, occupations, and organizations: from cartography to process, Academy of Management Annals 13(2), 704 to 736

     Identifies competitive, collaborative, and configurational boundary work and argues that boundary work supports a processual view of organizational design as open-ended and continually becoming.

     Grade

     A review of the literature

     Design

     Review of scholarship on boundary work.

     Year

     2019

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Research on boundary work among groups, occupations, and organizations.

     Limits

     A review.

     Later work

     Our reading, not the review's words: its processual view of organizational design as open-ended and continually becoming bears on the boundaryless form, which the abstract does not name.

344. Larson and Gobeli 1987. Matrix management: contradictions and insights, California Management Review 29(4), 126 to 138

     Matrix management was still the dominant way of running development projects. The functional, balanced, and project matrix were used at comparable rates, and managers judged the project matrix the most effective of the three.

     Grade

     A survey of 500 managers experienced in product development

     Design

     Survey of managers about the matrix types used for development projects and how effective they judged them.

     Year

     1987

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     500 managers experienced in product development.

     Limits

     Effectiveness is the managers' own judgment; the abstract gives no objective performance measure. The respondents' firms and industries are not described in the abstract.

     Later work

     The same authors followed with a study of 540 projects (Larson and Gobeli 1988). Their three matrix types became a standard vocabulary, used for example by Kuprenas (2003) in choosing a design for the City of Los Angeles Bureau of Engineering.

345. Larson and Gobeli 1988. Organizing for product development projects, Journal of Product Innovation Management 5(3), 180 to 190

     Both the balanced matrix and the project matrix compared favorably with dedicated project teams on cost, schedule, and technical performance, contradicting Peters and Waterman's popular conclusion that project teams are superior to matrix structures for new products. Managers recommended the project matrix more strongly than the project team. There was little support for the functional organization or the functional matrix.

     Grade

     A comparison of 540 development projects

     Design

     Comparison of development project performance across five project management structures, on cost, schedule, and technical performance.

     Year

     1988

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     540 development projects.

     Limits

     The abstract does not say how performance was measured or who rated it; if the ratings came from the same managers who reported the structure, common-source bias is possible. The sample of firms is not described in the abstract.

     Later work

     Kuprenas (2003) cites the Larson and Gobeli typology. Ford and Randolph's review (1992) still called for more empirical research to settle the questions and paradoxes around matrix forms.

346. Larson and Gobeli 1989. Significance of project management structure on development success, IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management 36(2), 119 to 125

     Success varies by project structure even when other determinants are accounted for. Projects relying on the functional organization or a functional matrix were less successful than those using a balanced matrix, project matrix, or project team. The project matrix outperformed the balanced matrix in meeting schedule and the project team in controlling cost.

     Grade

     A quantitative study of 546 development projects

     Design

     Multivariate comparison of development project success across project management structures, accounting for other determinants of success.

     Year

     1989

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     546 development projects.

     Limits

     Only the abstract was read, so how success was measured and who reported it were not checked.

347. Lawrence and Lorsch 1967a. Organization and Environment: Managing Differentiation and Integration, Division of Research, Graduate School of Business Administration, Harvard University, Boston (xv and 279 pages)

     Functional departments such as sales, production, and research differ in goal orientation, time orientation, interpersonal orientation, and formality of structure. The high-performing organizations matched their differentiation to the diversity of their environments and achieved integration with devices proportioned to it: an integrating department and cross-functional teams in the most differentiated plastics firms, individual integrators in food, and the managerial hierarchy in containers.

     Grade

     A multi-firm comparative field study

     Design

     Comparative field study of differentiation among functional departments and of how firms integrate them.

     Year

     1967

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Ten organizations in three industries: six in plastics, two in food, and two in containers.

     Limits

     Small sample of firms; the measures are managers' perceptions.

     Later work

     For the functional form it is the main evidence that functions diverge in outlook, so integration across them has to be designed rather than assumed.

348. Lazerson 1995. A new phoenix? Modern putting-out in the Modena knitwear industry, Administrative Science Quarterly 40(1), 34 to 59

     A modernized putting-out system made of interlinked microfirms was compatible with high living standards and organizational efficiency, unlike the historical domestic system it is often equated with. Its success rested on technological and marketing factors, cohesive family units, cooperative relations between business and community actors, and an institutional environment supportive of small family firms.

     Grade

     One case study of an industrial district

     Design

     Field study of an industrial district's production system, set against the historical putting-out system and the theories that called it backward.

     Year

     1995

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     The contemporary knitwear industry of Modena, Italy.

     Limits

     One industry in one province; the abstract does not give the number of firms or the methods.

349. Lebovitz and colleagues 2022. To engage or not to engage with AI for critical judgments: how professionals deal with opacity when using AI for medical diagnosis, Organization Science 33(1), 126 to 148

     Opacity raised professionals' uncertainty because AI results often diverged from their initial judgment without reasons. Only in one of the three departments did professionals consistently incorporate AI results, by investing in what the authors call AI interrogation practices (engaged augmentation); in the other two, AI inputs were not incorporated (unengaged augmentation).

     Grade

     One field study in a single hospital

     Design

     In-depth field study.

     Year

     2022

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Diagnostic radiologists in three departments of a major U.S. hospital using AI tools for breast cancer, lung cancer, and bone age determinations.

     Limits

     One hospital; professionals' use of AI for judgments rather than management of work by algorithm.

     Later work

     Gives a field instance of the automation-augmentation tension Raisch and Krakowski (2021) theorize; Anthony (2021) found a related split in how knowledge workers treat opaque tools.

350. Lee and colleagues 1995. Synergism between information technology and organizational structure: a managerial perspective, Journal of Information Technology 10(1), 37 to 43

     Not verified against its source: only the abstract could be read. The company chose a hybrid structure to combine the benefits of centralization and decentralization within a more streamlined structure; the authors argue the hybrid is a viable and strategically valuable alternative, especially for diversified conglomerates that grow by acquisition, and that managers must use the interplay of information technology and structure.

     Grade

     One case study

     Design

     Observation of a restructuring process.

     Year

     1995

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     One coal company in Kentucky (unnamed in the source), restructured at its parent corporation's direction.

     Limits

     One firm, observed by the authors; the abstract does not say which units were grouped on which basis.

351. Lee 2001. 한국 기업의 지식진화와 노나카의 하이퍼텍스트 조직이 한국 기업에게 주는 시사점: 현대자동차의 지식진화 사례를 통하여 (Knowledge evolution in Korean companies and implications of the hypertext organization to the Korean companies: through the case of the Hyundai Motors), 지식경영연구 (Knowledge Management Research) 2(1), 95 to 108, The Knowledge Management Society of Korea

     The context on which Nonaka's hypertext organization concept is based could differ from the contexts some Korean companies experience, so the concept's applicability might be limited.

     Grade

     One case study

     Design

     Review of the characteristics and stages of knowledge evolution in Korean companies, compared with companies in advanced countries, and one evidence case.

     Year

     2001

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Hyundai Motors.

     Limits

     One company; the abstract states the conclusion tentatively, and the full text, in Korean, was not read.

     Later work

     Kwon and Choi (2004) later found, in a survey of 107 organizations, that hypertext structure went with knowledge creation and sharing; the two do not test the same thing.

352. Lee and Cole 2003. From a firm-based to a community-based model of knowledge creation: the case of the Linux kernel development, Organization Science 14(6), 633 to 649

     Thousands of volunteers dispersed across organizations and places collaborated over the Internet to produce a high-quality product; the authors model product development as an evolutionary process of learning driven by criticism and error correction, a community-based model of knowledge creation that extends beyond the firm.

     Grade

     One case study

     Design

     Case study comparing the Linux model with the traditional commercial model of software development.

     Year

     2003

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     The Linux kernel development project.

     Limits

     One project; model building rather than testing.

     Later work

     Earlier, Mockus, Fielding, and Herbsleb (2002) quantified developer participation, core team size, and code ownership in two other projects, Apache and Mozilla. Later, Puranam, Alexy, and Reitzig (2014) argued that little in such forms is new element by element and that the novelty lies in the bundle.

353. Lee and colleagues 2008. From diversification premium to diversification discount during institutional transitions, Journal of World Business 43(1), 47-65

     As institutional transitions unfold, the diversification premium found in emerging economies, under which some group-affiliated companies may outperform unaffiliated competitors, dissipates over time and eventually becomes a diversification discount; the authors describe it as the first study documenting that longitudinal process.

     Grade

     A longitudinal study of 84 Korean business groups and 751 firms, 1984 to 1996

     Design

     Longitudinal analysis of diversification and performance by a 'chop shop' method, extending the institution-based theory of corporate diversification.

     Year

     2008

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     84 business groups and 751 group-affiliated and independent firms in South Korea, 1984 to 1996.

     Limits

     One country, ending before the 1997 crisis; only the abstract was read, so the measures and effect sizes were not checked; it measures how diversified a group is, not whether its businesses are related.

354. Lee and colleagues 2015a. Effect of customer-centric structure on long-term financial performance, Marketing Science 34(2), 250 to 268

     A corporate-level customer-centric structure, aligning each business unit with a distinct customer group, raised customer satisfaction but also added coordinating costs; the benefit shrank when competitors had already adopted such structures, in fragmented markets, and in less profitable industries, so the structure pays only in specific competitive environments.

     Grade

     A multi-firm panel study

     Design

     Longitudinal panel with a dueling mediator model and allowance for endogenous structure choice.

     Year

     2015

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Fortune 500 firms, 1998 to 2010.

     Limits

     U.S. Fortune 500 firms; structure coded at the corporate level.

     Later work

     The only large-sample performance test of the customer division located.

355. Lee and colleagues 2015b. Working with machines: the impact of algorithmic and data-driven management on human workers, Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2015), 1603 to 1612

     Software algorithms assigned, optimized, and evaluated the drivers' work through tracked data; the study describes how drivers responded when algorithms assigned work, gave informational support, and evaluated performance, and how they used online forums to make sense of the algorithm's features together.

     Grade

     A qualitative study of drivers at two ride-sharing services

     Design

     Qualitative study of how drivers responded when algorithms assigned work, gave informational support, and evaluated performance, and of how drivers used online forums to make sense of the algorithms' features together.

     Year

     2015

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Drivers for two ride-sharing services, Uber and Lyft.

     Limits

     Two services in one industry at an early stage of the platforms; the abstract does not give the number of drivers; descriptive, with no outcome measures.

     Later work

     The abstract calls its subject algorithmic, data-driven management. Rosenblat and Stark (2016) and Möhlmann and colleagues (2021) studied Uber's drivers further and stressed information asymmetries and control; Kellogg, Valentine, and Christin (2020) folded such studies into the six mechanisms of algorithmic control.

356. Lee and Edmondson 2017. Self-managing organizations: exploring the limits of less-hierarchical organizing, Research in Organizational Behavior 37, 35 to 58

     Scholarly understanding of radical decentralization remains limited; the authors define self-managing organizations as those that radically decentralize authority in a formal and systematic way throughout the organization and set an agenda for studying less-hierarchical organizing at its limits.

     Grade

     A review of the literature

     Design

     Literature review and research agenda.

     Year

     2017

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Research on post-bureaucratic organizations, humanistic management, and organizational democracy.

     Limits

     A review, not a test.

     Later work

     Lee (2024) supplies the ethnographic follow-through on how decentralized authority is enacted and why it is hard to sustain.

357. Lee 2022. The myth of the flat start-up: reconsidering the organizational structure of start-ups, Strategic Management Journal 43(1), 58 to 92

     A flatter hierarchy can improve ideation and creative success, but it can lead to haphazard execution and commercial failure, because it overwhelms managers with the burden of direction and lets subordinates drift into power struggles and aimless exploration of ideas.

     Grade

     A quantitative study of many start-ups in one industry

     Design

     Quantitative study separating creative from commercial success in start-ups.

     Year

     2022

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     A large sample of game development start-ups.

     Limits

     One industry; hierarchy here is the number of layers and managerial oversight, not a test of any one named form.

     Later work

     Speaks directly to the claim that start-ups should be flat, citing Valve, Zappos, GitHub, Medium, and Buffer as the examples that claim rests on; complements Keum and See (2017) on hierarchy's opposite effects on generating and selecting ideas.

358. Lee 2024. Enacting decentralized authority: the practices and limits of moving beyond hierarchy, Administrative Science Quarterly 69(3), 791 to 833

     Successful enactments of decentralized authority were supported by practices that set clear boundaries of authority and focused collective attention on them, and by practices that depersonalized collective attributions of the source of authority; these practices were hard to sustain because they were cognitively, emotionally, and temporally demanding, so decentralization is an ongoing collective process, not a one-time structural change.

     Grade

     One ethnographic case study

     Design

     Ethnography of a decentralization effort, building theory on the practices that support enactments of decentralized authority.

     Year

     2024

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     One organization undergoing decentralization (the abstract does not name it).

     Limits

     One organization.

359. Lega and De Pietro 2005. Converging patterns in hospital organization: beyond the professional bureaucracy, Health Policy 74(3), 261 to 281

     Such hospitals are converging on a common design, which the authors call the care-focused hospital, moving beyond the professional bureaucracy; the paper sets out its features and its implications for managing people and for management.

     Grade

     A review of the literature and of hospital practice, without a new systematic test

     Design

     A framework built from an extensive review of the literature on hospital organizational design, which found a significant lack of such work over the preceding 30 years, and from a number of experiences in hospital settings.

     Year

     2005

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Large multi-specialty hospitals (above about 300 beds) in industrialized countries.

     Limits

     A review and synthesis of practice; no systematic test of the claimed convergence.

     Later work

     Glouberman and Mintzberg (2001) offered a contemporaneous framework for why managing hospitals is so convoluted. Among the later studies of the English National Health Service's professional bureaucracy in this ledger, Currie and colleagues 2012 found specialist doctors keeping their resource and control arrangements when new nursing and medical roles were introduced, while Finn and colleagues 2010 and Martin and colleagues 2016 (four genetics services, two of them hosted by acute hospital trusts) found the professional logic sustained in some cases and not in others, depending on local, organizational conditions; Kellogg 2018 found that managers in one of two U.S. hospitals did change professional practice, working through semi-professionals.

360. Leithwood and Menzies 1998. Forms and effects of school-based management: a review, Educational Policy 12(3), 325 to 346

     School-based management takes at least four forms in practice: administrative control, professional control, community control, and equal control. The studies report both positive and negative effects on students, teachers, and people in other roles, and the review finds little evidence of positive effects on students.

     Grade

     A review of 83 empirical studies

     Design

     A review of empirical studies of school-based management, sorting the forms it takes in practice and the effects reported for each.

     Year

     1998

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     83 empirical studies of school-based management.

     Limits

     A narrative review; only the abstract was read, so how the four forms differ beyond their names and how strong each study was are not reported here. On this site school-based management is out of scope, pointed to the decision-rights dimension and named on the professional bureaucracy page, so the review is cited there and not as evidence for the professional bureaucracy itself.

361. Lenfle and Söderlund 2018. Large-scale innovative projects as temporary trading zones: toward an interlanguage theory, Organization Studies 40(11), 1713 to 1739 (online 2018, in print 2019)

     Large-scale innovative projects act as temporary trading zones whose coordination practically requires creating an interlanguage, through interaction among linguistic representations, project management tools, and material representations, in five developmental phases.

     Grade

     One historical case study

     Design

     Historical case study used to build a process model.

     Year

     2018

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     The Radiation Laboratory project.

     Limits

     One historical project; the model is proposed, not tested.

     Later work

     Speaks to large single projects more than to the project-based firm as a whole.

362. Leong and Tan 1993. Managing across borders: an empirical test of the Bartlett and Ghoshal (1989) organizational typology, Journal of International Business Studies 24(3), 449 to 464

     Results gave partial support to the typology. Transnational corporations were the least often reported type, as expected. The practices hypothesized for multinational and global organizations matched the typology's predictions better than those for the international and transnational types.

     Grade

     A survey of 131 senior executives

     Design

     Survey of executives classifying their own firms with the Bartlett and Ghoshal typology and rating their practices.

     Year

     1993

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     131 senior executives of corporations with worldwide operations.

     Limits

     Self-classification by executives.

     Later work

     Harzing (2000) later used cluster analysis rather than self-classification and found stronger support for three types.

363. Lepak and Snell 2002. Examining the human resource architecture: the relationships among human capital, employment, and human resource configurations, Journal of Management 28(4), 517 to 543

     The strategic value and uniqueness of human capital differ across knowledge-based employment, job-based employment, contract work, and alliances or partnerships, and each mode is associated with a particular HR configuration (commitment-based, productivity-based, compliance-based, and collaborative).

     Grade

     A study of 148 firms

     Design

     Firm-level study of the characteristics of human capital and the human resource configurations used for employees in four employment modes.

     Year

     2002

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     148 firms.

     Limits

     Cross-sectional; the abstract does not say how the data were collected.

     Later work

     Gives the shamrock's leaves an empirical basis in the value and uniqueness of the work each group does.

364. Leviten-Reid and Fairbairn 2011. Multi-stakeholder governance in cooperative organizations: toward a new framework for research?, Canadian Journal of Nonprofit and Social Economy Research (Revue canadienne de recherche sur les OSBL et l'économie sociale) 2(2), 25 to 36

     The evidence suggests that different groups of actors are able to govern themselves successfully in one cooperative, contrary to the prediction of failure; the authors propose rooting research on these organizations in the literature on self-organized management of common pool resources.

     Grade

     A narrative review of the available evidence

     Design

     Review of the empirical evidence available on multi-stakeholder cooperatives, set against the prediction, made from a cost of decision-making approach, that their governance structure makes them untenable.

     Year

     2011

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     The small body of evidence available: Tomas (2004) and Münkner (2004) on Italian social cooperatives, Chagnon's (2004) survey of 73 Québec multi-stakeholder cooperatives, four Québec case studies by Langlois and colleagues, and growth figures for Québec and Italy, with a wider search of social enterprises and nonprofits that seat several constituencies on the board.

     Limits

     A short narrative review of a small evidence base, mostly from Québec and Italy; the authors call for research on whether the success holds more widely and over time.

365. Levitt and List 2011. Was there really a Hawthorne effect at the Hawthorne plant? An analysis of the original illumination experiments, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 3(1), 224 to 238

     Existing descriptions of supposedly remarkable data patterns prove to be entirely fictional; the authors find more subtle signs of possible Hawthorne effects.

     Grade

     A reanalysis of one plant's original experimental data

     Design

     Analysis of the recovered data from the original illumination experiments, with a proposed test for Hawthorne effects based on excess responsiveness to experimenter-induced variation relative to naturally occurring variation.

     Year

     2011

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     The data of the Illumination Experiment at the Hawthorne plant in the 1920s, long thought destroyed.

     Limits

     One set of experiments at one plant; read from the abstract.

     Later work

     Franke and Kaul (1978) had analyzed a different Hawthorne experiment, the first relay assembly test room.

366. Leyer and colleagues 2017. The influence of process-oriented organisational design on operational performance and innovation: a quantitative analysis in the financial services industry, International Journal of Production Research 55(18), 5259 to 5270

     Of the six components, organizational structure and process improvement encouraged both operational performance and innovation, personal autonomy was partially beneficial, and the others had no joint influence on operational performance and innovation.

     Grade

     A survey of 1,069 employees in one industry

     Design

     Survey analyzed with partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), relating six organizational design components of process orientation to operational performance and innovation.

     Year

     2017

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     1,069 employees in the financial services sector (the abstract does not say how many firms).

     Limits

     Employee responses in one industry, cross-sectional. The abstract does not name all six components, say how the outcomes were measured, or say how many firms the employees came from.

     Later work

     Sits beside Kohlbacher and Reijers (2013), another survey relating the dimensions of process orientation to performance; the abstract does not cite it.

367. Lifshitz-Assaf 2018. Dismantling knowledge boundaries at NASA: the critical role of professional identity in open innovation, Administrative Science Quarterly 63(4), 746 to 782

     The open (peer-production) innovation model led to a scientific breakthrough at unprecedented speed with unusually limited resources but challenged professionals' knowledge-work boundaries and identity. Only professionals who did identity refocusing work dismantled their boundaries; others failed to incorporate the solutions, and adopting open innovation without identity change produced no real change in the research process.

     Grade

     One longitudinal case study

     Design

     Longitudinal in-depth field study.

     Year

     2018

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     One organization, NASA, and its research and development professionals.

     Limits

     One organization.

     Later work

     Shows that opening the external boundary depends on the internal boundaries professionals hold, which Ashkenas and colleagues (1995) treat as removable by design.

368. Lincoln and colleagues 1986. Organizational structures in Japanese and U.S. manufacturing, Administrative Science Quarterly 31(3), 338 to 364

     Japanese plants showed less specialization, taller hierarchies, and greater formal but less de facto centralization than American plants, and operations technology had weaker effects on the structuring of plants in Japan, a pattern the authors anticipated from the premise that Japanese organizations are embedded in a tighter institutional environment.

     Grade

     A survey of about a hundred plants in two countries

     Design

     Comparative survey of the organizational structures of manufacturing plants and of the influence of task environment and other variables on them

     Year

     1986

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     55 United States and 51 Japanese manufacturing plants

     Limits

     Cross-sectional; plants in two regions; structural measures from managers' reports.

     Later work

     Lincoln and Kalleberg (1990) extended the comparison to workers' attitudes in the same plants.

369. Lindkvist 2004. Governing project-based firms: promoting market-like processes within hierarchies, Journal of Management and Governance 8(1), 3 to 25

     Its mode of governance differed radically from bureaucratic and cultural conceptions of governance. New rules of the game (a new organization structure, new individual responsibilities, and internal prices that shaped incentives and guided knowledge work) created an institutional framework that enabled lower-level, market-like processes of self-organizing discovery, which suggests that top managers have some discretion to design a market-promoting mode of governance for their project-based firms.

     Grade

     One case study

     Design

     In-depth study of one organization's governance after a transformation.

     Year

     2004

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     One R&D organization transformed into a strongly project-based organization (not named in the abstract).

     Limits

     One organization; only the abstract was read.

     Later work

     Pemsel, Müller, and Söderlund (2016) compare knowledge governance strategies across 20 project-based organizations.

370. Liu and Guenther 2024. How do incumbents affect the founding of cooperatives? Evidence from the German electricity industry, Organization Studies 45(1), 85 to 107 (online 2022)

     Energy cooperatives were more likely to be founded where the local incumbent utilities were older on average and more diverse in size, which the authors read as age-related inertia and weak competition among incumbents of diverse sizes limiting their adaptation to new demand for renewable energy, beyond the known effects of community characteristics and incumbent density.

     Grade

     A quantitative study of foundings across one national industry

     Design

     Organizational ecology study of where and when cooperatives are founded as an alternative to corporations.

     Year

     2024

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     German energy cooperatives founded from 2003 to 2010 (the abstract does not give the count of foundings or localities).

     Limits

     One industry and one country; the study explains the founding of the form, not how cooperatives are structured or how they perform.

371. Lorenzoni and Lipparini 1999. The leveraging of interfirm relationships as a distinctive organizational capability: a longitudinal study, Strategic Management Journal 20(4), 317 to 338

     Interfirm networks can be shaped and deliberately designed: over time managers developed a specialized supplier network and a narrower, more competitive set of core competencies. The capability to interact with other companies (relational capability) speeded the lead firm's access to and transfer of knowledge, with effects on growth and innovativeness.

     Grade

     A longitudinal study of three firms and their supplier networks

     Design

     Longitudinal study of the structure of lead firm and network relationships at two points in time.

     Year

     1999

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Three lead firms and their supplier networks in the packaging machine industry.

     Limits

     Three firms in one industry; the design shows association over time rather than causal effect.

     Later work

     Later work by the same group (Lipparini, Lorenzoni, and Ferriani 2014, Strategic Management Journal) studied how lead firms deliberately shape knowledge flows in their networks; not read here.

372. Luciano and colleagues 2018. Multiteam systems: a structural framework and meso-theory of system functioning, Journal of Management 44(3), 1065 to 1096

     Proposes two structural features of multiteam systems, differentiation (difference and separation between component teams at a point in time) and dynamism (instability over time), each with subdimensions generating boundary-enhancing and disruptive forces, and a meso-theory linking these forces to individual needs and emergent states, with coordination mechanisms that offset them.

     Grade

     A conceptual framework

     Design

     Conceptual framework and mesolevel theory.

     Year

     2018

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     None (conceptual).

     Limits

     No empirical test.

     Later work

     Synthesizes the multiteam-system research that began with Mathieu, Marks, and Zaccaro (2001).

373. Luger and colleagues 2018. Dynamic balancing of exploration and exploitation: the contingent benefits of ambidexterity, Organization Science 29(3), 449 to 470

     Ambidextrous firms, like one-sided ones, show self-reinforcing tendencies. Reinforcing ambidexterity helps long-term performance where change is incremental but hurts it where change is discontinuous, because of the misalignment it creates. The authors reconceive ambidexterity as the ability to balance exploration and exploitation dynamically.

     Grade

     A longitudinal study of many firms in one industry

     Design

     Longitudinal analysis combined with formal modeling arguments.

     Year

     2018

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Global insurance firms, 1999 to 2014.

     Limits

     One industry.

     Later work

     A contingent result: ambidexterity is not uniformly beneficial.

374. Lunnan and colleagues 2019. Dealing with headquarters in the multinational corporation: a subsidiary perspective on organizing costs, Journal of Organization Design 8, article 12

     A good relationship atmosphere reduced both bargaining and information costs, and distance increased bargaining costs. Centralization and formalization reduced information costs, while social integration, contrary to the authors' hypothesis, increased bargaining costs.

     Grade

     A survey of 104 subsidiary managers in two multinationals

     Design

     Survey of subsidiary managers on their interactions with corporate headquarters, framed as organizing costs (bargaining costs and information costs).

     Year

     2019

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     104 subsidiary managers in two multinational corporations.

     Limits

     Two multinationals, the subsidiary side only, and self-reported costs at one point in time.

375. MacCormack and colleagues 2012. Exploring the duality between product and organizational architectures: a test of the "mirroring" hypothesis, Research Policy 41(8), 1309 to 1324

     In all five pairs the product developed by the loosely coupled organization was significantly more modular than the product from the tightly coupled one, by up to a factor of eight in the potential for a design change in one component to propagate to others in the authors' working paper (the published article's abstract, in the Harvard DASH copy, says up to a factor of six), which supports the mirroring hypothesis.

     Grade

     A matched comparison of five pairs of software products

     Design

     Natural experiment with a matched-pair design: products of the same function and similar size developed by loosely coupled open source communities and by tightly coupled organizations, with modularity measured by the coupling between components (propagation cost). Where a commercial product's code was unavailable, the first open release of a formerly commercial product, or a product of a small dedicated organization, stood in for the tightly coupled side.

     Year

     2012

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Five matched pairs of software products in five categories (financial management, word processing, spreadsheet, operating system, and database), with two commercial matches for Linux (Solaris and XNU), so six comparisons in all.

     Limits

     Five pairs, limited by the few successful open source products of enough size and by firms' reluctance to share source code; the authors could not access data to match several well-known open source products, such as Apache; software only, where designs have no physical constraints; functional equivalence of the pairs was not tested directly, only similar size; the comparison is between two kinds of organization, not a test of one organization over time.

     Later work

     Reviewed with the other mirroring tests in Colfer and Baldwin (2016).

376. Maeura 2015. The mechanism of employment portfolio formation: empirical study through qualitative analysis, Japan Labor Review 12(4), 74 to 94 (Autumn 2015)

     The type of responsibility center decides the approach a company uses to set staff numbers and payroll (a financial approach in profit centers, a work volume approach in revenue centers, a strategic approach in discretionary cost centers such as planning and research), and the approach in turn forms the employment portfolio. The head office human resources department manages regular employees and sets their numbers and payroll first, and the business sites and workplaces then manage the non-regular workers, so the mix is not decided by the skills each kind of job needs; in some cases regular employees were not clearly more skilled than the others.

     Grade

     Several case studies of Japanese companies by one researcher

     Design

     Qualitative case studies, built on interviews with each company's head office human resources department and the managers of its business sites or departments, of how staff numbers and payroll budgets are set and work is assigned between regular and non-regular workers, with each case chosen to represent one type of responsibility center.

     Year

     2015

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Units of several Japanese companies (named in the article only by letter), among them a general insurance company of more than 10,000 employees treated as a profit center, an IT solutions division, a research unit, and a factory.

     Limits

     A handful of company units, chosen to illustrate types rather than sampled, and anonymized; the author treats the employment portfolio as the mix of employment types, not as a design of the firm's structure.

377. Mahmood and colleagues 2017. Centralization of intragroup equity ties and performance of business group affiliates, Strategic Management Journal 38(5), 1082 to 1100

     Centralization of intragroup equity ties raises affiliate performance, but the effect weakens when the environment turns turbulent, and listed affiliates gain less from centralization than unlisted ones.

     Grade

     A multi-firm quantitative study

     Design

     Difference-in-differences analysis around the 2008 financial crisis.

     Year

     2017

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     51,730 observations of business group affiliates in Taiwan.

     Limits

     One country; equity ties measure the group's ownership structure, which borders on governance.

     Later work

     Bears on the pyramidal family group variant (Almeida and Wolfenzon 2006) by measuring the shape of the equity network, not only its depth.

378. Mahringer and Danner-Schröder 2025. Autonomous, yet interdependent: designing interfaces across routine clusters, Academy of Management Journal 68(6), 1300 to 1327

     Designing interfaces between routine clusters was an endogenous, iterative process of creating and harmonizing interdependencies. Because the teams shared resources, they created interdependencies that challenged their planned autonomy, and the pooled interdependence from shared resources could escalate into more complex types.

     Grade

     One ethnographic case study

     Design

     Ethnography of the reorganization of agile software development in which a second routine cluster was set up to work autonomously.

     Year

     2025

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Teams in one organization's agile software development (the abstract does not name the organization).

     Limits

     One organization; agile software development.

     Later work

     Bears also on the agile-at-scale entry; echoes Ingvaldsen and Rolfsen (2012) that coordination between autonomous units becomes the central problem.

379. Maier and colleagues 2026. Design principles for long-lived circular organization: an Ostromian perspective, Journal of Co-operative Organization and Management 14(1), article 100283 (online June 2026)

     Ostrom's design principles for avoiding the tragedy of the commons may also explain how long circular organizations keep their circular form. The authors sort the principles into indispensable, queasy, and quite unproblematic ones, and conclude that organizations adopting circular forms must attend especially to monitoring, graduated sanctions, conflict resolution mechanisms, and the balance between individual contributions and rewards.

     Grade

     A comparison of eighteen organizations by scholars

     Design

     Comparative study of circular organizations against Ostrom's design principles for governing commons.

     Year

     2026

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Eighteen highly diverse circular organizations; the abstract names holacracy and sociocracy as examples of circular templates but does not say which templates the eighteen use.

     Limits

     The abstract gives no data or method beyond the eighteen organizations, and longevity is the outcome rather than performance; the journal is outside the eight major journals searched.

380. Malnight 2001. Emerging structural patterns within multinational corporations: toward process-based structures, Academy of Management Journal 44(6), 1187 to 1210

     MNCs responded to complex global competition by increasing internal structural complexity, a systematically differentiated structural response to the process subenvironments relevant to each process. The study found the characteristics associated with projected MNC models, but with systematic variation across internal structures.

     Grade

     A longitudinal comparison of two firms

     Design

     Longitudinal matched-pair analysis of the structures of common processes in two firms.

     Year

     2001

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Two leading pharmaceutical companies (not named in the abstract).

     Limits

     Two firms in one industry.

     Later work

     Bridges the transnational and the process view: different processes in one firm took different structures.

381. Maman 2002. The emergence of business groups: Israel and South Korea compared, Organization Studies 23(5), 737 to 758

     No single factor explains the groups' emergence. In both countries they arose in the 1960s and 1970s from state-society relations, the roles and beliefs of elites, and the relative absence of multinational corporations: the chaebol were largely an intended creation of the South Korean state, while the Israeli groups were an outcome of state policies in the economic realm. In both, a state elite with a developmental ideology did not rely on market forces, and foreign grants and loans reduced dependence on direct foreign investment, which shielded the groups from multinational competition.

     Grade

     A two-country comparative historical study

     Design

     Comparative institutional history of how business groups emerged in two countries.

     Year

     2002

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Business groups in Israel and South Korea from the 1960s and 1970s.

     Limits

     Two countries; a historical and qualitative argument with no performance data.

382. Manikandan and Ramachandran 2015. Beyond institutional voids: business groups, incomplete markets, and organizational form, Strategic Management Journal 36(4), 598 to 617

     Business groups' diverse portfolio gives affiliates privileged access to opportunities hidden by incomplete strategic factor markets, and their multi-entity organizational form lets affiliates sense and seize those opportunities better; in the context of institutional reform, these features strengthened affiliates' ability to capitalize on the wider set of opportunities the reform opened.

     Grade

     A quantitative study of many firms in one country

     Design

     Analysis of a sample of Indian firms over 1994 to 2010, a period of institutional reform, testing hypotheses on how business group affiliation bears on firms' sensing and seizing of growth opportunities.

     Year

     2015

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Indian firms, 1994 to 2010.

     Limits

     One country; the abstract does not give the sample size or the estimation method, and the text was not read.

     Later work

     Extends the institutional-voids account (Khanna and Palepu 2000a) to incomplete strategic factor markets and to a period of institutional reform.

383. Manz and Sims 1987. Leading workers to lead themselves: the external leadership of self-managing work teams, Administrative Science Quarterly 32(1), from page 106

     Correlations with overall leadership-effectiveness ratings generally indicated that the external leaders' most important behaviors are those that facilitate the team's own self-management through self-observation, self-evaluation, and self-reinforcement; the study suggests there is a legitimate role for external leaders of self-managing teams, but one that differs from traditional and participative leadership.

     Grade

     A study of one plant

     Design

     Observation, interviews, group elicitations, and a literature search to identify external leader behaviors, then a questionnaire measuring 21 behaviors correlated with leadership-effectiveness ratings.

     Year

     1987

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     One medium-sized manufacturing plant that had run self-managing work teams for several years.

     Limits

     One plant; effectiveness rated, not measured.

     Later work

     Batt (2004) shows the supervisory role shrinking under self-managed teams; Manz and Sims redefine rather than remove it.

384. March 1991. Exploration and exploitation in organizational learning, Organization Science 2(1), 71 to 87

     Adaptive processes, by refining exploitation more rapidly than exploration, are likely to be effective in the short run but self-destructive in the long run.

     Grade

     Formal models, with no field data

     Design

     Formal models of two situations: mutual learning between members and an organizational code, and learning in competition for primacy.

     Year

     1991

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     No field data.

     Limits

     Simulation and argument.

     Later work

     The foundation of the exploration and exploitation literature that Lavie, Stettner, and Tushman (2010) review, including its debates over definition and measurement.

385. Marchetti and Puranam 2026. Are less hierarchical firms organized around stronger cultures? Evidence from big data, Strategic Management Journal 47(2), 463 to 493

     Managerial hierarchy and organizational culture strength were negatively associated, and multiple correlational tests supported functional equivalence (strong culture substituting for hierarchy) as a plausible explanation.

     Grade

     A correlational study of 23,000 firms

     Design

     Correlational analysis of employee reviews and of managerial hierarchy estimated from professional social media profiles.

     Year

     2026

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     1.5 million Glassdoor reviews from 23,000 United States firms and 42 million professional profiles.

     Limits

     Correlational; culture and hierarchy are estimated from online data. It measures culture strength and the fraction of managers across ordinary US firms, not missionary or self-managing organizations as such, so it bears on those forms' mechanism (shared beliefs and values standing in for managerial hierarchy), not on the forms themselves.

     Later work

     Supports Martela's (2019) view that norms can carry coordination that managers otherwise carry; the authors note that flattening is more likely to succeed with efforts to build strong culture.

386. Martin and Villani 2026. Algorithmic management and working conditions in Europe: evidence from the AIM-WORK Survey, JRC Working Papers Series on Labour, Education and Technology 2026/05, European Commission, Joint Research Centre, Seville (report JRC147505)

     Algorithmic management is not one uniform phenomenon. Overall it is associated with less autonomy, fewer chances to take breaks, and more work-related stress, but the size and direction of these links vary with the specific practice. Algorithmic direction of tasks and of work pace shows the strongest links to reduced discretion and to work intensification, exposure to several practices appears to compound the negative outcomes, and the results vary across countries with institutional and organizational context.

     Grade

     A survey of workers across many firms in 27 countries

     Design

     Cross-country analysis of the AIM-WORK survey, which the authors describe as the first dataset covering several algorithmic management practices and working conditions across the EU-27, relating specific practices to job quality indicators.

     Year

     2026

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     The AIM-WORK survey, representative of the working population in all 27 European Union member states: more than 70,000 respondents aged 16 to 65, with country samples of 1,253 to 3,781; the analysis keeps employees only, leaving out the self-employed.

     Limits

     A working paper, not peer reviewed; cross-sectional associations, not effects (the authors say their inverse probability weighted estimates cannot be read causally either); the outcomes are job quality measures for individual workers, so the study speaks to what the form does to work rather than to how firms structure themselves (job design as such is outside the site's boundary).

387. Marks and colleagues 2005. Teamwork in multiteam systems, Journal of Applied Psychology 90(5), 964 to 971

     Cross-team processes predicted multiteam performance beyond within-team processes, and they mattered more when cross-team interdependence demands were high than when teams could work more independently.

     Grade

     A laboratory simulation of multiteam systems

     Design

     Multiteam system simulation measuring cross-team and within-team processes over several performance episodes that differed in required interdependence.

     Year

     2005

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Multiteam systems in a laboratory simulation (counts not in the abstract).

     Limits

     Laboratory simulation.

     Later work

     Davison and colleagues (2012), in 233 multiteam systems, found that coordination across team boundaries at the component-team level can hurt performance, and, separately, that coordinated actions by component-team boundary spanners and system leaders help performance only when centered on the component team most critical to the task.

388. Martela 2019. What makes self-managing organizations novel? Comparing how Weberian bureaucracy, Mintzberg's adhocracy, and self-organizing solve six fundamental problems of organizing, Journal of Organization Design 8(1), article 23

     The self-managing organization solves these problems through peer-based accountability and rewards, transparency of key information, and bottom-up emergent processes, and is a novel form that can better explain certain organizational outliers; it is argued to be especially viable where interdependence between units is low, outputs are highly tailored, and employee expertise and motivation are high.

     Grade

     A conceptual argument

     Design

     Ideal-type comparison of Weberian bureaucracy, Mintzberg's adhocracy, and self-organizing on six problems of organizing (task division, task allocation, rewarding desired behavior, eliminating free-riding, providing direction, and ensuring coordination).

     Year

     2019

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     None (conceptual).

     Limits

     Conceptual.

     Later work

     Foss and Klein (2022) reach the opposite conclusion on the need for managerial authority.

389. Martela and Nandram 2025. Buurtzorg: scaling up an organization with hundreds of self-managing teams but no middle managers, Journal of Organization Design 14(4), 227 to 237

     Buurtzorg operates without supervisors or middle management, radically decentralizing decisions to autonomous teams, and scales with supportive structures that include purpose-built information and communication technology and a small team of internal coaches.

     Grade

     One case description

     Design

     Organization Zoo case description.

     Year

     2025

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     One organization, Buurtzorg, a Dutch home care organization with over 14,000 employees and more than 900 teams.

     Limits

     A descriptive case; no outcome comparison.

     Later work

     A rare large-scale instance, in contrast to the reversions at Oticon and GitHub.

390. Martela and colleagues 2026. The ten functions of middle managers: identifying their functional substitutes in a decentralized organization without traditional middle managers, Journal of Organization Design (online first, 28 September 2026)

     The company's autonomous self-managing teams could not take on all ten managerial functions identified from the literature, so it built supportive structures, including roles such as coaches, client managers, and a salary team, each holding one narrow slice of a middle manager's authority.

     Grade

     One case study

     Design

     Abductive qualitative case study.

     Year

     2026

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Reaktor, a Finnish IT services company with more than 500 employees and no chain-of-command middle managers.

     Limits

     One firm.

     Later work

     Agrees with Lee (2024) that decentralized authority needs purpose-built supports.

391. Martin and Eisenhardt 2010. Rewiring: cross-business-unit collaborations in multibusiness organizations, Academy of Management Journal 53(2), 265 to 301

     A business-unit-centric process led by multibusiness teams of general managers produced better collaborations than a corporate-centric process, against the prevailing view that a corporate process fosters collaboration best; multibusiness organizations with strong performance operated as complex adaptive systems.

     Grade

     Several case studies by scholars

     Design

     Inductive multiple-case study of how executives create cross-business-unit collaborations that perform at high levels.

     Year

     2010

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Six multibusiness firms.

     Limits

     Six firms; an emergent theory.

392. Martin and colleagues 2016. Institutional complexity and individual responses: delineating the boundaries of partial autonomy, Organization Studies 38(1), 103 to 127 (online 2016, in print 2017)

     Three dominant logics (professional, market, and corporate) shaped divergent trajectories. Mediating influences below the level of the field but above the actor, at the level of the organization and its relationships among the carriers of logics, constrained or facilitated agency, with very different consequences for actors' ability to advance their interests.

     Grade

     Four comparative case studies by scholars

     Design

     Longitudinal, comparative case study of four ostensibly similar change initiatives in the same organizational field.

     Year

     2016

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Four genetics services in the English National Health Service, begun as pilots under a 2004 national initiative and sustained after pilot funding ended, followed from 2005 to 2011; two were hosted by primary care trusts and two by acute hospital trusts.

     Limits

     Four initiatives in one field; qualitative.

     Later work

     Part of the same program as Finn and colleagues (2010) and Currie and colleagues (2012).

393. Mathews 1993. TCG R&D networks: the triangulation strategy, Journal of Industry Studies 1(1), 65 to 74

     TCG developed a 'triangular' approach to fusion networking in new product development, refined through several successful projects with leading firms, which stands in contrast to the linear, proprietary model of innovation inside one firm.

     Grade

     Case studies of one company group

     Design

     Case studies of one technology group's approach to collaborative product development.

     Year

     1993

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     TCG, an Australian high-technology group that operates internally as a cluster of autonomous small firms, and its development projects with leading firms.

     Limits

     One group, described in one short article; outcomes are the source's own judgment of success.

     Later work

     The cellular-form article (Miles and colleagues 1997, on which Mathews is a coauthor) presents TCG (Technical and Computer Graphics of Sydney) as 'a complete cellular organization' and names its triangulation process, beside Acer as 'a global cellular company' (read in snippets of a 2002 reprint).

394. Matusik and colleagues 2022. The highs and lows of hierarchy in multiteam systems, Academy of Management Journal 65(5), 1571 to 1592

     Structural hierarchy facilitated multiteam learning by reducing members' cognitive depletion but hindered learning by weakening horizontal coordination between teams, and the depletion benefit faded across episodes; egalitarian structures have advantages of their own.

     Grade

     An experiment with 76 multiteam systems

     Design

     Experimental study of structural hierarchy in multiteam systems observed over three performance episodes.

     Year

     2022

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     76 multiteam systems.

     Limits

     Experimental setting.

     Later work

     Challenges the field's default assumption that multiteam systems should be nested under a central leadership team.

395. Maurer and colleagues 2023. Changes in formal structure towards self-managing organization and their effects on the intra-organizational communication network, Journal of Organization Design 12(3), 83 to 98

     After the change, communication was generally less dependent on formal hierarchy, but employees who had held higher rank lost centrality yet stayed more central than others; promotions increased centrality while demotions had no effect.

     Grade

     One case study

     Design

     Exploratory network analysis of intra-organizational communication before and after a change from rigid bureaucratic structures toward a self-managing model.

     Year

     2023

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     One medium-sized firm.

     Limits

     One firm.

     Later work

     Shows the persistence of the old hierarchy inside a new formal structure, consistent with Lee (2024).

396. Maurice and colleagues 1980. Societal differences in organizing manufacturing units: a comparison of France, West Germany, and Great Britain, Organization Studies 1(1), 59 to 86

     Differences between countries are more pervasive than usually recognized: differentiation and integration interact with how each society educates, trains, recruits, and promotes its workforce, within an institutional logic particular to the society, producing nationally different shapes of organization. A multidimensional concept of professionality is called for.

     Grade

     A comparison of matched factories in three countries

     Design

     Cross-national comparison of closely matched factories.

     Year

     1980

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Closely matched manufacturing units in France, West Germany, and Great Britain; the abstract read does not give the number.

     Limits

     Three countries; only the abstract was read, so the number of factories and the matching were not checked.

397. Mayer and Whittington 1999. Strategy, structure and 'systemness': national institutions and corporate change in France, Germany and the UK, 1950 to 1993, Organization Studies 20(6), 933 to 959

     Despite stable and distinctive institutions, European corporations transformed their strategies and structures steadily and in very similar ways over the whole postwar period, which favors loose over tight readings of national business systems.

     Grade

     A multi-country study of large firms

     Design

     Comparison of corporate strategies and structures with national institutions of finance, control, and management development.

     Year

     1999

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Large firms in France, Germany, and the U.K., 1950 to 1993.

     Limits

     Three countries; apparently the same data program as Whittington and colleagues (1999).

     Later work

     A counterpoint to claims that national institutions fix corporate structure.

398. Mays and colleagues 2000. The British quasi-market in health care: a balance sheet of the evidence, Journal of Health Services Research and Policy 5(1), 49 to 58

     Relatively little measurable change could be clearly tied to the core quasi-market mechanisms; the incentives were generally too weak and the constraints too strong to produce the effects that either supporters or critics predicted, though the reforms changed irrevocably the way the NHS operates.

     Grade

     A review of the evaluations of one national internal-market reform

     Design

     Review of published and unpublished evaluations of a national reform.

     Year

     2000

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Research from 1991 to late 1998 on the three main elements of the British National Health Service quasi-market: health authority purchasing, general practitioner fundholding, and hospital and community services becoming NHS trusts, judged on efficiency, equity, quality, choice and responsiveness, and accountability.

     Limits

     One public health system; the market's effects are hard to separate from other changes made at the same time.

     Later work

     Le Grand, Mays, and Mulligan's book of the same review (King's Fund, 1998) reached the same conclusion, as Ham's BMJ review of it reports.

399. McChrystal and colleagues 2015. Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World, Portfolio/Penguin, New York

     As the publisher's description states it: the task force had to become a team of teams, faster, flatter, and more flexible; giving small groups freedom to experiment and sharing what they learn across the organization lets a large organization respond faster and decide better.

     Grade

     A practitioner's report

     Design

     A practitioner's argument book by the task force's former commander and three co-authors (Tantum Collins, David Silverman, and Chris Fussell), drawn from the Joint Special Operations Task Force in Iraq; not his memoir, which Shultz (2016) names as a separate book, My Share of the Task.

     Year

     2015

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     One organization (the Joint Special Operations Task Force in Iraq) and examples from other sectors.

     Limits

     Self-report by the leaders involved; not a study.

     Later work

     Shultz (2016) supplies the scholarly case; the multiteam-system literature tests parts of the claim and finds costs to decentralization under high interdependence (Lanaj and others 2013).

400. McNulty and Ferlie 2004a. Process transformation: limitations to radical organizational change within public service organizations, Organization Studies 25(8), 1389 to 1412

     The data revealed important limits to the intended transformation to a new form of process organization: change was sedimented rather than transformational, and radical top-down change strategies were limited in a professionalized public service organization.

     Grade

     One case study

     Design

     A study of the implementation of business process reengineering in a UK National Health Service hospital; the companion book calls its method 'a longitudinal, contextual, and comparative case study-based method', comparing clinical directorates and specialties within the hospital.

     Year

     2004

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     One UK National Health Service hospital, which the companion book (McNulty and Ferlie 2004) names as the Leicester Royal Infirmary, 'a large NHS teaching hospital' that undertook reengineering in the mid-1990s.

     Limits

     One hospital; the move to process organization was attempted in a setting where clinicians hold strong professional authority.

     Later work

     Consistent with Buchanan (1997) on the political limits of reengineering in hospitals.

401. Meier and Bohte 2003. Span of control and public organizations: implementing Luther Gulick's research design, Public Administration Review 63(1), 61 to 70

     Gulick was right that diversity of function, time, and space help determine how spans of control are structured, but these variables mean different things at different levels of the hierarchy. The study also examined Woodward's link between span of control and performance.

     Grade

     A quantitative study of hundreds of public organizations

     Design

     Quantitative study of the determinants and effects of span of control, following Gulick's design.

     Year

     2003

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     678 Texas public school districts.

     Limits

     One sector in one state; the abstract does not state the performance result.

     Later work

     Cheon (2022) extended the test to Korean quasi-governmental organizations (abstract seen, not recorded as a study here).

402. Menz 2012. Functional top management team members: a review, synthesis, and research agenda, Journal of Management 38(1), 45 to 80

     Reviews disconnected research on functional top management team members, identifies the variables, relationships, and contributions, organizes the knowledge into a framework, and sets out gaps and an agenda.

     Grade

     A review of earlier research, with no new data

     Design

     Review of research on functional members of top management teams.

     Year

     2012

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Published research across several fields on senior executives responsible for one or more functions.

     Limits

     A review; no new data.

     Later work

     Guadalupe, Li, and Wulf (2014) supply large-sample evidence on the rise of functional executives that the review anticipates.

403. Menz and colleagues 2015. The corporate headquarters in the contemporary corporation: advancing a multimarket firm perspective, Academy of Management Annals 9(1), 633 to 714

     The two streams of research, on headquarters in the multibusiness firm and in the multinational, are integrated into one multimarket framework with a shared language and four inquiries for future research.

     Grade

     A review of research, with no new test

     Design

     Review integrating the multibusiness and multinational headquarters literatures.

     Year

     2015

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Research on the corporate headquarters since the early 1960s.

     Limits

     A review; no new data.

     Later work

     Followed by Kunisch, Menz, and Collis (2020) in the Journal of Organization Design.

404. Mertha 2005. China's 'soft' centralization: shifting tiao/kuai authority relations, The China Quarterly 184, 791 to 810

     The reform, successful to some extent, curbed local protectionism to a degree by transferring power from local governments to the newly centralized bureaucracies, but fell short of its goals: the cleavages and fragmentation that so often give rise to corruption appear to have shifted from horizontal, geographic lines to vertical, functional ones, and the main beneficiaries were the provinces, where personnel and budgetary allocation were concentrated, not Beijing.

     Grade

     One scholar's study of one national reform, read in its abstract

     Design

     A study of China's reform that moved a growing number of regulatory bureaucracies out from under local governments and centralized them at the provincial level, shifting the balance between the territorial (kuai) and functional (tiao) lines of authority.

     Year

     2005

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     China's regulatory bureaucracies centralized to the province in the reform, as the abstract describes them; the number and the agencies are not given in the abstract.

     Limits

     One national reform in one state; read in its abstract only; the article studies a shift of authority between the two lines, not the dual-authority structure as a design.

     Later work

     Zhou and Sui (2025) review the wider research on the tiao-kuai dual authority and its multiple principals.

405. Merton 1940. Bureaucratic structure and personality, Social Forces 18(4), 560 to 568

     The discipline bureaucracy demands can turn adherence to the rules from a means into an end in itself (the displacement of goals), which develops into rigidities, an inability to adjust readily, and trained incapacity.

     Grade

     A conceptual essay with no test

     Design

     Conceptual essay.

     Year

     1940

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     None.

     Limits

     Conceptual.

     Later work

     Gouldner (1954) and Crozier (1964) studied such dysfunctions in the field.

406. Mesmer-Magnus and colleagues 2011. A meta-analytic investigation of virtuality and information sharing in teams, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 115(2), 214 to 225

     Virtuality improves the sharing of unique information but hinders the openness of information sharing. Unique information sharing matters more to the performance of face-to-face teams, and open information sharing matters more to the performance of virtual teams. The effects of virtuality on information sharing are more curvilinear than linear: low levels of virtuality improve information sharing, and high levels hinder it.

     Grade

     A meta-analysis of 94 studies

     Design

     Meta-analysis that recasts the findings of earlier studies of virtual and face-to-face teams into a two-dimensional view of information sharing (sharing of unique information and openness of information sharing).

     Year

     2011

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     94 studies, 5,596 groups, and about 19,702 people.

     Limits

     Team level, not the whole organization's dispersion across places; the abstract does not say how many primary studies were of real work teams rather than laboratory groups.

     Later work

     Sits beside Gajendran and Harrison's meta-analysis of telecommuting at the level of the individual.

407. Meyer and Su 2015. Integration and responsiveness in subsidiaries in emerging economies, Journal of World Business 50(1), 149 to 158

     A transnational strategy enhanced subsidiary performance in particular when the subsidiary was wholly owned, was not established by acquisition, and was highly export oriented. The authors note that surprisingly little evidence shows under which conditions the transnational strategy is most appropriate, and that some gurus advocate it while other scholars consider it unworkable.

     Grade

     A survey of subsidiaries in two emerging economies

     Design

     Contingency test of when the transnational strategy improves subsidiary performance.

     Year

     2015

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Subsidiaries in two emerging economies (countries and sample size not given in the abstract).

     Limits

     Two emerging economies; strategy at subsidiary level, not the parent's structure.

     Later work

     On our reading, it supports a contingent rather than universal case for the transnational.

408. Midler 1995. "Projectification" of the firm: the Renault case, Scandinavian Journal of Management 11(4), 363 to 375

     Renault moved in four phases: skill-based functional departments with informal project coordination in the 1960s; project coordinators of fairly low corporate status from 1970 to 1988; then, from a reform by the CEO in December 1988, Project Directors with a powerful formal position and a team of departmental project supervisors with one foot in each hierarchy, in a matrix-type model; and a fourth phase in which the permanent departments, careers, and supplier relations were adapted to the strong projects. Midler writes that the change of 1988 was political, lying in the power given to the role rather than in a new structure or method, and that Renault chose to balance strong project and departmental identities rather than reduce the departments to labor pools for project managers.

     Grade

     One longitudinal case study

     Design

     Longitudinal case study of one firm's product development organization from the 1960s to the early 1990s, including real-time observation of the Twingo project from January 1989.

     Year

     1995

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Renault, the French automobile maker, mainly its product development function.

     Limits

     One firm and mainly one function, described by a researcher who observed its flagship project; no comparison firm and no performance measure beyond the Twingo project's own account.

     Later work

     Söderlund, Geraldi, Aubry, and Lenfle (2012, International Journal of Managing Projects in Business) review the projectification research that followed; it is not recorded here.

409. Miles and colleagues 1997. Organizing in the knowledge age: anticipating the cellular form, Academy of Management Executive 11(4), 7 to 20 (the journal now titled Academy of Management Perspectives)

     Hierarchical, vertically integrated organizations have largely given way to network organizations; some leading companies are experimenting with a cellular form built on entrepreneurship, self-organization, and member ownership, expected to suit situations requiring continuous learning and innovation.

     Grade

     A conceptual article with illustrations

     Design

     Conceptual article that proposes the cellular form, drawing on illustrative companies.

     Year

     1997

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     No systematic sample; illustrative firms.

     Limits

     Conceptual and anticipatory by its own title; no test.

     Later work

     The authors carried the idea into the I-form (Miles and colleagues 2009) and the actor-oriented architecture (Fjeldstad and colleagues 2012); no independent empirical test of the cellular form was found.

410. Miller 1975. Socio-technical systems in weaving, 1953 to 1970: a follow-up study, Human Relations 28(4), 349 to 386

     In the non-automatic experimental loom shed, work organization and performance had remained virtually unchanged over 16 years, while in a newer automatic shed group working had largely disappeared; the original automatic site had regressed considerably and the other non-automatic site showed varied group working. Persistence in one area substantially confirmed Rice's assumptions; regression was explained by failure to maintain the boundary conditions for group working as markets and other environmental factors changed.

     Grade

     A 16-year follow-up of one mill

     Design

     Follow-up study in 1970 of the group system of work introduced in 1953 to 1954.

     Year

     1975

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Four loom-shed locations in one Indian textile mill at Ahmedabad, including the two original experimental sites.

     Limits

     One company; follow-up by a Tavistock colleague of the original researcher.

     Later work

     One of the few long-run follow-ups in the literature; its regression finding anticipates Wall and colleagues (1986) on which effects last and which fade.

411. Mintzberg 1980. Structure in 5's: a synthesis of the research on organization design, Management Science 26(3), 322 to 341

     Simple structure: the strategic apex is the key part and coordinates by direct supervision; the structure is minimally elaborated and highly centralized; it goes with simple, dynamic environments and strong leaders, and tends to be found in smaller, younger organizations or those facing severe crises. Machine bureaucracy: coordinates mainly by work standards imposed from the technostructure; jobs are highly specialized and formalized, units functional and very large at the operating level, power centralized vertically at the strategic apex with limited horizontal decentralization to the technostructure; it tends to be found in simple, stable environments, in older, larger organizations, sometimes externally controlled, and with mass production technical systems. Effective organizations are claimed to favor a logically consistent configuration, while contradictory pressures or transitions drive some to hybrids.

     Grade

     A synthesis of earlier research, offering propositions without a new test

     Design

     Synthesis of prior research into a typology of five configurations.

     Year

     1980

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     The organization design literature to 1979; no new data.

     Limits

     A synthesis that states propositions; it does not test them. The associations it reports are drawn from the studies it reviews.

     Later work

     Configuration theory took the typology as a starting point (Miller 1986; Meyer, Tsui, and Hinings 1993); later tests of whether consistent configurations perform better are taken up in The Schools of Organization Design.

412. Mintzberg and Waters 1982. Tracking strategy in an entrepreneurial firm, Academy of Management Journal 25(3), 465 to 499; reprinted in Family Business Review 3(3), 285 to 315, 1990

     Shows how strategy can be operationalized as a pattern in a stream of actions and draws conclusions about strategy formation in an entrepreneurial firm that grows large and formalizes its structure, focusing on patterns of strategic change and on the contrasting characteristics of entrepreneurship and planning.

     Grade

     One case study of a single firm over 60 years

     Design

     Longitudinal single-case study tracking realized strategy from the firm's documented actions.

     Year

     1982

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     One retail chain, Steinberg Inc., over 60 years of its history (1917 to 1975).

     Limits

     One firm; the conclusions concern strategy formation more than structure.

     Later work

     Mintzberg and Waters reprinted it in Tracking Strategies (2007) as one of several tracking studies using the same method.

413. Mintzberg and McHugh 1985. Strategy formation in an adhocracy, Administrative Science Quarterly 30(2), 160 to 197

     The findings focus on three themes: the emergent nature of the organization's strategies, its cycles of behavior, and the organization's quest for adhocracy.

     Grade

     One case study

     Design

     Longitudinal study tracking the strategies an organization actually pursued.

     Year

     1985

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     The National Film Board of Canada across almost four decades of its history.

     Limits

     One organization, described as a single-project organization.

     Later work

     Doty, Glick, and Huber (1993) later found no support for the effectiveness claim Mintzberg made for his ideal types, adhocracy among them.

414. Mockus and colleagues 2002. Two case studies of open source software development: Apache and Mozilla, ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology 11(3), 309 to 346

     The authors quantified developer participation, core team size, code ownership, productivity, defect density, and problem resolution intervals, developed hypotheses from Apache, and tested and refined them on Mozilla, concluding with the prospects for commercial and open source process hybrids.

     Grade

     A quantitative study of two projects

     Design

     Quantitative analysis of email archives, source change history, and problem reports, with hypotheses developed on one project and tested on the second.

     Year

     2002

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     The Apache web server and the Mozilla browser, compared with several commercial projects.

     Limits

     Two projects; the abstract states the measures but not their values.

     Later work

     Crowston and colleagues (2012) reviewed the empirical literature that followed and called for better sampling and more longitudinal studies.

415. Moe and colleagues 2021. Finding the sweet spot for organizational control and team autonomy in large-scale agile software development, Empirical Software Engineering 26(5)

     The agile teams were partly self-managing; their autonomy was limited by the need for organizational alignment, maintained top-down through centralized decisions, supervisory roles, mandatory processes, and checklists. One case aligned bottom-up through a community of all teams, experts, and supporting roles, excluding managers, which the authors suggest is one way to balance control and autonomy.

     Grade

     A study of two organizations

     Design

     Multiple-case study, analyzing team autonomy with Hackman's classification of unit authority.

     Year

     2021

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Two large-scale software development organizations in the telecom industry.

     Limits

     Two organizations in one industry.

     Later work

     Agrees with Paasivaara and colleagues (2018) that full team interchangeability and autonomy are hard to reach at scale.

416. Möhlmann and colleagues 2021. Algorithmic management of work on online labor platforms: when matching meets control, MIS Quarterly 45(4), 1999 to 2022

     Online labor platforms use algorithms for both matching and control; under both, platform workers experience tensions over work execution, compensation, and belonging, and these tensions trigger both market-like and organization-like responses from workers.

     Grade

     One case study of a single platform

     Design

     Grounded-theory qualitative study of drivers' perceptions, supplemented by interviews with company executives and engineers.

     Year

     2021

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Uber drivers, plus Uber executives and engineers.

     Limits

     One platform; perception data; the abstract gives no sample size.

     Later work

     Extends Lee and colleagues (2015) and Rosenblat and Stark (2016) by adding the company's side. Vallas and Schor (2020) argue on a broader review that platforms are a governance mechanism distinct from markets, hierarchies, and networks, which fits the paper's market-like and organization-like responses.

417. Mohr 1971. Organizational Technology and Organizational Structure, Administrative Science Quarterly 16(4), 444-459

     A very weak relationship between technological manageability and subordinate participation in decision making, and a moderate one when technology is conceived more broadly. No support for the hypothesis that effectiveness depends on the consonance of technology and structure. The author suggests that research on most dimensions of structure emphasize causes other than technology.

     Grade

     A quantitative field study of technology and structure

     Design

     Test of the relationship between technology (technological manageability, then a broader conception) and subordinates' participation in decision making, and of whether effectiveness depends on the consonance of technology and social structure.

     Year

     1971

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Not given in the abstract read.

     Limits

     Only the abstract was read, so the sample and setting were not checked.

     Later work

     Donaldson (2001) groups it with Pennings (1975) as early tests that failed to find a positive fit and performance relationship, argues that such failures came from methodological limitations, and reports that later studies of the job unpredictability Mohr studied, unlike his, found positive evidence supporting contingency theory.

418. Monteiro and Adler 2022. Bureaucracy for the 21st century: clarifying and expanding our view of bureaucratic organization, Academy of Management Annals 16(2), 427 to 475

     Finds three perspectives, which arose in succession but persist in parallel: bureaucracy as an organizing principle, as a paradigmatic form of organization, and as one type of structure among others. Argues that bureaucracy remains the predominant form even as discussion of it recedes, and proposes research on bureaucracy in its wider context, in action, and in its interdependencies and configurations.

     Grade

     A review of earlier research, with no new data

     Design

     Review of a century of organizational research on bureaucracy.

     Year

     2022

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Published research on bureaucracy.

     Limits

     A review; no new data.

     Later work

     The most recent major review of bureaucracy research in the eight major journals searched.

419. Mortensen and Haas 2018. Perspective: rethinking teams: from bounded membership to dynamic participation, Organization Science 29(2), 341 to 355

     Argues that the line between team members and nonmembers is often blurred by increasing fluidity, overlap, and dispersion, which can undermine team effectiveness and calls into question the assumptions of team research; proposes viewing teams as dynamic hubs of participants rather than bounded groups.

     Grade

     A conceptual argument

     Design

     Conceptual perspective paper.

     Year

     2018

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     None (conceptual).

     Limits

     No empirical test.

     Later work

     Hollenbeck, Beersma, and Schouten (2012) had already proposed describing teams by dimensions (skill differentiation, authority differentiation, temporal stability) rather than types.

420. Muzio and Faulconbridge 2013. The global professional service firm: 'one firm' models versus (Italian) distant institutionalized practices, Organization Studies 34(7), 897 to 925

     Local regulations, norms, and cultural frameworks constrained and mediated the reproduction of home-country practices such as the one-firm model the large English law firms pursued. The difficulties came not from collisions between home and host institutional structures as such but between the practices that distant institutional environments generate.

     Grade

     One historical case study

     Design

     Historical case study using Scott's three pillars of institutions.

     Year

     2013

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     The internationalization of large English law firms into Italy.

     Limits

     One profession, one home country, and one host country.

     Later work

     Bears on Maister's (1985) one-firm firm as a partnership model that does not travel intact.

421. Nell and Ambos 2013. Parenting advantage in the MNC: an embeddedness perspective on the value added by headquarters, Strategic Management Journal 34(9), 1086 to 1103

     The multinational's external embeddedness is an antecedent of headquarters' value creation: headquarters' investment in their own relationships with subsidiaries' local contexts is positively related to the value they add, more so when the subsidiary itself is strongly embedded.

     Grade

     A quantitative study of 124 subsidiaries

     Design

     Hypothesis tests linking the embeddedness view of the multinational to the parenting-advantage literature, on an original dataset of subsidiaries.

     Year

     2013

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     124 manufacturing subsidiaries in Europe.

     Limits

     European manufacturing subsidiaries only; the abstract does not say how the data were gathered or who reported them.

     Later work

     Extends the parenting-advantage idea to multinational headquarters.

422. Nickerson and Zenger 2002. Being efficiently fickle: a dynamic theory of organizational choice, Organization Science 13(5), 547 to 566

     If the functionality a firm wants lies between what two discrete forms deliver in steady state, efficiency may be gained by modulating between the two forms over time, and under certain conditions such modulation is efficiency-enhancing; inertia can also yield efficiency benefits.

     Grade

     A formal model with no new data

     Design

     Analytical model of structural modulation between discrete organizational modes.

     Year

     2002

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     No new data.

     Limits

     A model.

     Later work

     Offers an alternative to a standing hybrid: alternating between pure forms. Siggelkow and Levinthal (2003) model a related sequence of decentralizing and then reintegrating.

423. Nielen and Schiersch 2014. Temporary agency work and firm competitiveness: evidence from German manufacturing firms, Industrial Relations 53(3), 365 to 393

     The results indicate an inverse U-shaped relationship between the extent to which firms use temporary agency workers and their competitiveness.

     Grade

     A panel study of German manufacturing firms

     Design

     Panel data models, including dynamic panel models with firm fixed effects and controls for endogeneity and selection, relating firms' use of temporary agency workers to their competitiveness measured by unit labor costs.

     Year

     2014

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     A newly built data set of German manufacturing enterprises (the abstract does not give its size).

     Limits

     Only the abstract was read; manufacturing only, with competitiveness measured by unit labor costs. The 2011 working paper's abstract calls the relationship U-shaped, and Pfeifer and Weche (2019) describe it as a U shape in unit labor costs.

     Later work

     Pfeifer and Weche (2019) replicated it and found a convex rather than U-shaped relationship with unit labor costs.

424. Nissen 2005. Hypothesis testing of edge organizations: specifying computational C2 models for experimentation, Paper 064, 10th International Command and Control Research and Technology Symposium (ICCRTS), track Edge Organizations; Naval Postgraduate School; DTIC ADA462259, approved for public release

     In the Industrial Age scenario the two organizations finished in statistically indistinguishable times (227 days for the Hierarchy, 223 for the Edge), but the Edge organization cost about three-fourths as much ($9B against $12B), in part because it had no command headquarters and staff functions. In the 21st Century scenario the Edge organization was faster and cheaper (235 against 314 days; $10B against $16B), and its performance degraded much less across scenarios than the Hierarchy's. In both scenarios the Edge organization carried over twice the project risk (0.78 against 0.36), leaving more tasks incomplete at the mission's end, and its coordination work was an order of magnitude greater.

     Grade

     A computer simulation, with no field data

     Design

     Computational experiment: Hierarchy and Edge command-and-control organizations specified on Mintzberg's rubric and modeled in the Virtual Design Team tools, then run on the same mission tasks in two mission contexts.

     Year

     2005

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Two modeled organizations (Hierarchy and Edge), each run in an Industrial Age scenario and a 21st Century scenario; no field data.

     Limits

     A simulation whose results its author calls preliminary and only a sample, since the full 3x2x2 experiment had not been run; outcomes depend on how the two forms were specified in the model; a symposium paper sponsored by the program that advocates the edge concept.

425. Nobeoka 1996a. Reorganizing for multi-project management: Toyota's new structure of product development centers, MIT Japan Program Working Paper MITJP 96-11, Center for International Studies, MIT (reprinted from the working paper series of the MIT International Motor Vehicle Program); an earlier version is Kobe University RIEB Discussion Paper 48 (1995, revised August 1995)

     Before 1992 about fifteen concurrent vehicle projects, each led by a chief engineer, drew on sixteen design engineering functional divisions, so chief engineers had too many divisions to integrate and functional managers too many projects to oversee. In 1992 Toyota grouped all vehicle projects into three development centers by similarity of platform (rear-wheel drive, front-wheel drive, and utility vehicles and vans), each of 1,500 to 1,900 people working on about five projects, with fewer and broader functional divisions inside each center and a planning division of about 170 to 200 people under each center head (the conclusion says more than 150); in 1993 it created Center 4 for components and systems shared by all projects, such as electronics and new engines. Nobeoka reads the change as a shift from project-oriented to multi-project management, improving cross-functional and inter-project integration at once, and says grouping projects alone is not enough; from interviews at Nissan, Mitsubishi, and Mazda he notes that their groupings differ from Toyota's, for example by leaving planning and cost management undivided among centers.

     Grade

     One case study built on interviews

     Design

     Single-firm case study from interviews with three general managers, four product managers, fifteen engineers, and three cost management planners, 1992 to 1994, with the firm's internal figures.

     Year

     1996

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Toyota's product development organization before and after its reorganization of 1992 and 1993.

     Limits

     One firm, studied soon after the change; the outcomes rest on interviews and on Toyota's internal measurements, whose method the company did not explain; the comparison with other automakers is from interviews and is left by the author for later work.

     Later work

     Cusumano and Nobeoka, Thinking Beyond Lean (1998).

426. Nohria and Ghoshal 1994. Differentiated fit and shared values: alternatives for managing headquarters-subsidiary relations, Strategic Management Journal 15(6), 491 to 502

     The more an MNC differentiated the formal structure of its headquarters-subsidiary relations to fit each subsidiary's context, the better its performance; a high degree of shared values between headquarters and subsidiaries also enhanced performance; MNCs that did both had the best relative performance.

     Grade

     A quantitative study of multinationals

     Design

     Empirical test of two approaches to managing headquarters-subsidiary relations against MNC performance.

     Year

     1994

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Multinational corporations (the abstract does not give the sample).

     Limits

     The abstract does not give the sample or the performance measure.

     Later work

     One of the few studies linking the differentiated network idea to performance; Devinney and colleagues (2000) argued that average-performance methods understate such differences.

427. Nonaka and Takeuchi 1995. The Knowledge-Creating Company: How Japanese Companies Create the Dynamics of Innovation, Oxford University Press, New York

     The authors propose the hypertext organization as the structure that supports middle-up-down management and lets a firm create knowledge efficiently and continuously, through effective use of three layers: the business system, the project team, and the knowledge base. Normal, routine operations run in the central business-system layer; in the top, project-team layer, multiple project teams whose members come from functions and departments across the business system engage in knowledge-creating activities and return to the business system when their project ends; and the knowledge-base layer, which does not exist as an actual organizational entity, stores the organizational knowledge generated in the other two. A member stays in only one layer at any one time.

     Grade

     Case studies of several Japanese firms by the theory's authors

     Design

     Comparative case studies of Japanese firms by the authors, used to build and illustrate a theory of organizational knowledge creation

     Year

     1995

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Japanese companies including Honda, Canon, Matsushita, Kao, and Sharp

     Limits

     Cases were chosen to illustrate the theory; no comparison with firms lacking the structure and no outcome measures. The authors' own question was whether the approach works outside Japan; they concluded from two cases that it can, with adjustments.

     Later work

     Later work cites the model widely but tests it rarely; Rusko (2018) studies multi-membership in a university's projects through auto-ethnography.

428. Nonaka and colleagues 2014. Dynamic fractal organizations for promoting knowledge-based transformation: a new paradigm for organizational theory, European Management Journal 32(1), 137 to 146

     Proposes the dynamic fractal organization, based on dynamic ba, as a departure from the information-processing paradigm: an organizational form that achieves a dynamic synthesis of knowledge exploration and exploitation through a triad of knowledge that integrates tacit and explicit knowledge and creates a third type, phronesis, in an upward spiral that carries knowledge transformation across the boundaries within and between organizations and their environments.

     Grade

     A conceptual model

     Design

     Conceptual model.

     Year

     2014

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     None.

     Limits

     Conceptual; no test of the model is reported in the abstract.

     Later work

     A later model by Nonaka, author of the hypertext organization (Nonaka 1994; Nonaka and Takeuchi 1995); the abstract does not relate the two.

429. Noponen and colleagues 2024. Taylorism on steroids or enabling autonomy? A systematic review of algorithmic management, Management Review Quarterly 74(3), 1695 to 1721 (online 5 April 2023)

     Algorithmic management at once restrains and enables workers' autonomy, though dependence on platform income pushes workers into inflexible practices; it creates a complex digital version of Taylorism; and it creates new power structures and changes existing ones. Companies have mostly used algorithmic systems to control workers rather than to enable them, which the authors present as a choice by organizations, not something the technology dictates; enabling uses are rare in the literature.

     Grade

     A qualitative systematic review of 172 published articles, many of them case studies, with no pooled analysis

     Design

     Systematic literature review with qualitative analysis, searching Scopus, Web of Science, EbscoHost, ProQuest, and JSTOR for algorithmic management, algorithmic leadership, and algorithmic labor; English-language peer-reviewed articles and conference papers.

     Year

     2024

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     172 articles (251 found, 44 excluded as using the term in another sense, 35 excluded at full-text review), counted in March 2023.

     Limits

     The studies reviewed are concentrated in platform work and Western settings, and developers' perspectives are understudied; the search terms may miss enabling uses that are not labeled algorithmic management; the authors' grid of control and enabling uses is a simplification.

     Later work

     Kadolkar, Kepes, and Subramony (2025) review the gig-economy part of the literature by topic modeling.

430. Nyland and colleagues 2014. Taylorism, the International Labour Organization, and the genesis and diffusion of codetermination, Organization Studies 35(8), 1149 to 1169

     The Taylor Society's leaders worked to internationalize participatory management together with the International Labour Organization, a body whose core purpose was and is to promote codetermination in workplaces and in wider society; the paper offers this as evidence for the heterodox reading of scientific management as supporting the democratization of management.

     Grade

     A documentary history of two organizations

     Design

     Documentary history of the Taylor Society's international work.

     Year

     2014

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     The leadership of the Taylor Society and its work with the International Labour Organization.

     Limits

     A history of advocacy and diffusion; it does not study codetermined firms.

     Later work

     Qualifies the labor-process reading of Taylorism (Braverman 1974 in that school) and links the functional entry's origin to the codetermined entry's.

431. O'Leary and Mortensen 2010. Go (con)figure: subgroups, imbalance, and isolates in geographically dispersed teams, Organization Science 21(1), 115 to 131

     Configuration alone, independent of distance and demographics, affected team dynamics: geographically based subgroups weakened team identification and transactive memory and increased conflict and coordination problems; imbalance in subgroup size made these worse for the minority subgroup; teams with geographically isolated members scored better than balanced or imbalanced configurations.

     Grade

     A quasi-experiment with 62 teams

     Design

     Quasi-experiment.

     Year

     2010

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     62 six-person teams in four one-site and two-site configurations.

     Limits

     Quasi-experimental teams, not standing organizational units.

     Later work

     Builds on O'Leary and Cummings (2007), which named configuration as a dimension of dispersion.

432. Olson and Olson 2000. Distance matters, Human-Computer Interaction 15(2 to 3), 139 to 178

     Groups with high common ground and loosely coupled work, ready both for collaboration and for collaboration technology, have a chance at succeeding with remote work; deviations on each create strain and require changes in the work or its processes, and often such efforts fail because distance still matters.

     Grade

     A review of ten years of field and laboratory studies

     Design

     Review of field and laboratory investigations.

     Year

     2000

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Over ten years of studies of collocated and noncollocated synchronous group collaboration.

     Limits

     Predates current collaboration tools; synchronous collaboration only; a narrative review, not a meta-analysis.

     Later work

     Herbsleb and Mockus (2003) measured the cost of distance in software work; the GitLab case (Choudhury and colleagues 2020) describes an organization that loosens coupling and leans on asynchronous work, as the review's conditions suggest.

433. O'Mahony and Ferraro 2007. The emergence of governance in an open source community, Academy of Management Journal 50(5), 1079 to 1106

     Members developed a shared basis of formal authority but limited it with democratic mechanisms that enabled experimentation with shifting conceptions of authority over time. The conception they settled on was more expansive than their original design, and a statistical test of the predictors of leadership reinforced this. By blending bureaucratic and democratic mechanisms, the governance system evolved with the community's changing conceptions of authority.

     Grade

     One case study

     Design

     Multimethod study of one open source software community, including a statistical test of the predictors of leadership.

     Year

     2007

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     One open source software community (the abstract does not name it).

     Limits

     One community.

     Later work

     Dahlander and O'Mahony (2011) showed how people progress to lateral authority roles in a collectively managed project; He and colleagues (2020) studied how communities resolve governance disputes over licenses.

434. O'Mahony and Bechky 2008. Boundary organizations: enabling collaboration among unexpected allies, Administrative Science Quarterly 53(3), 422 to 459

     Open-source projects and firms with divergent interests found convergent ones and adapted their organizing practices by creating boundary organizations, which managed four domains (governance, membership, ownership, and control over production) and produced a triadic structure of communities, boundary organizations, and firms.

     Grade

     A field study of four projects

     Design

     Field interviews and observation.

     Year

     2008

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Four community projects in the open-source movement and the firms they collaborated with.

     Limits

     Four projects in one movement; qualitative.

     Later work

     Bears on the federal-like layer that grows around large communities; O'Mahony and Ferraro (2007) traced governance inside one community.

435. O'Reilly and Tushman 2004. The ambidextrous organization, Harvard Business Review (April 2004)

     More than 90 percent of the ambidextrous designs reached their goals, against none of the cross-functional or unsupported teams and a quarter of the functional designs; functional designs did as well only for breakthroughs that directly substituted for existing products. In seven of eight initiatives moved into an ambidextrous design, performance rose substantially, and under ambidextrous designs the existing business's performance rose or held steady in almost every case.

     Grade

     A practitioner's report of a multi-unit comparison

     Design

     Comparison of the organizational designs used for breakthrough innovation attempts, rating each attempt's success in creating the innovation and its effect on the existing business.

     Year

     2004

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     35 attempts to launch breakthrough innovations in 15 business units in nine industries: 7 within functional designs, 9 as cross-functional teams, 4 as unsupported teams, and 15 within ambidextrous organizations.

     Limits

     A practitioner article reporting the authors' research; the method of rating success is described only briefly and most business units are not named.

     Later work

     Tushman and colleagues (2010) report a scholarly study with longitudinal data on 13 business units and 22 innovations.

436. O'Reilly and colleagues 2009. Organizational ambidexterity: IBM and emerging business opportunities, California Management Review 51(4), 75 to 99

     Multi-level selection processes, with ambidexterity and dynamic capabilities, may help organizations survive over long periods; one deliberate and repeatable version of this process enabled IBM to generate more than $15 billion in growth between 2000 and 2005.

     Grade

     One case study

     Design

     Case study framed by evolutionary theory of multi-level selection.

     Year

     2009

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     IBM's Emerging Business Opportunity process.

     Limits

     One firm, written with one of its executives as coauthor.

437. Ossenbrink and colleagues 2019. Hybrid ambidexterity: how the environment shapes incumbents' use of structural and contextual approaches, Organization Science 30(6), 1319 to 1348

     Firms used structural ambidexterity when emerging opportunities seemed to require culture and capabilities fundamentally different from their own, and contextual ambidexterity when opportunities were numerous and uncertain. Where both held, firms combined the two in what the authors call hybrid ambidexterity, so structural and contextual approaches are better seen as two ends of a continuum.

     Grade

     Four case studies by scholars

     Design

     Comparative, longitudinal case study.

     Year

     2019

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     The four largest electric utility companies in Germany.

     Limits

     Four firms in one industry and country.

     Later work

     Reframes the structural and contextual dispute between Tushman and O'Reilly (1996) and Gibson and Birkinshaw (2004).

438. Oster 1996. Nonprofit organizations and their local affiliates: a study in organizational forms, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 30(1), 83 to 95

     The choice between the franchise form and the branch office form is consistent with the predictions of agency theory; the study also describes mechanisms nonprofit franchises use to improve coordination inside the organization.

     Grade

     A survey of nonprofit organizations

     Design

     Survey analysis of why nonprofits grow through franchised affiliates rather than branch offices.

     Year

     1996

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     A survey of nonprofit organizations by the author (size not given in the abstract).

     Limits

     Sample size not in the abstract; one sector.

     Later work

     An economic account of when a federated (franchise) structure is chosen over a centralized one.

439. Osterman 1994. How common is workplace transformation and who adopts it?, ILR Review 47(2), 173 to 188

     About 35 percent of private-sector establishments with 50 or more employees made substantial use of flexible work organization in 1992. Adoption was associated with an internationally competitive product market, technology requiring high skill, a high-road strategy stressing variety, service, and quality over low cost, and human resource practices such as high training and innovative pay.

     Grade

     A survey of several hundred establishments

     Design

     Establishment survey of the incidence of innovative work practices (teams, job rotation, quality circles, and Total Quality Management) and of the factors associated with adopting them.

     Year

     1994

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     694 United States manufacturing establishments surveyed in 1992; the estimate covers private-sector establishments with 50 or more employees.

     Limits

     Cross-sectional; measures how common team practices were and who adopted them, not whether they worked.

     Later work

     Devine and colleagues (1999) found a similar order of prevalence across all United States organizations (48 percent using some type of team); neither study tests performance.

440. Ouchi 1980. Markets, bureaucracies, and clans, Administrative Science Quarterly 25(1), 129 to 141

     Goal incongruence and performance ambiguity distinguish three mechanisms: markets are efficient when performance ambiguity is low and goal incongruence high; bureaucracies when both are moderately high; and clans when goal incongruence is low and performance ambiguity high.

     Grade

     A conceptual article

     Design

     Conceptual analysis from transaction costs of the conditions under which each mechanism of control is efficient.

     Year

     1980

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     No sample.

     Limits

     Conceptual; no test in the article.

     Later work

     The clan is the closest economic statement of coordination by shared values, the missionary form's mechanism.

441. Paasivaara and colleagues 2018. Large-scale agile transformation at Ericsson: a case study, Empirical Software Engineering 23(5), 2550 to 2596

     The organization experimented with team setups, from component-based virtual teams to fully cross-functional, cross-component, cross-site teams, aiming at continuous feature delivery. The authors offer four lessons: transform experimentally, transform step-wise in complex settings, expect limits to team interchangeability (specialization may be needed), and note that not using a common framework, with too little common training and coaching, can leave the organization without common direction.

     Grade

     One case study

     Design

     Single case study: 45 semi-structured interviews at four sites and five observation sessions at three sites.

     Year

     2018

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     An Ericsson R&D program developing an XaaS platform and related services, distributed over five sites on two continents, with tens of agile teams.

     Limits

     One program in one firm; lessons are the authors' interpretation.

     Later work

     Moe and colleagues (2021) found in two telecom organizations that team autonomy was limited by the need for alignment; Annosi, Foss, and Martini (2020) reported learning and innovation pitfalls in another multinational telecom firm.

442. Pachidi and colleagues 2021. Make way for the algorithms: symbolic actions and change in a regime of knowing, Organization Science 32(1), 18 to 41

     Incumbent salespeople performed symbolic conformity, pretending to comply while avoiding change, and technologists performed symbolic advocacy; the two reinforced each other and, unintendedly, produced a radical change in the regime of knowing, from customer knowledge built through personal contact to model predictions from large datasets.

     Grade

     One field study of a single organization

     Design

     Field study of the introduction of an algorithmic technology (the abstract does not give the study's length).

     Year

     2021

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     One sales organization (unnamed in the abstract).

     Limits

     One organization; the abstract does not give the study's length or sample.

     Later work

     An instance of Faraj, Pachidi, and Sayegh's (2018) expectation that learning algorithms transform expertise and occupational boundaries.

443. Palich and colleagues 2000. Curvilinearity in the diversification-performance linkage: an examination of over three decades of research, Strategic Management Journal 21(2), 155 to 174

     Moderate diversification yielded higher performance than either limited or extensive diversification: performance rose as firms moved from a single business to related diversification and fell as they moved from related to unrelated diversification. How diversification and performance were measured had major effects on the results.

     Grade

     A meta-analysis of 55 studies

     Design

     Meta-analysis testing three competing models of the relationship between diversification and performance, derived from the literature.

     Year

     2000

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     55 previously published studies spanning three decades.

     Limits

     Corporate scope, not structure: the studies do not measure whether a firm is run as a holding company or as an M-form, so the result bears on the unrelated portfolio the holding company usually governs, not on the form itself.

     Later work

     Sits beside the M-form performance studies (Hoskisson 1987; Hill, Hitt, and Hoskisson 1992), which link the cooperative M-form to related and the competitive M-form to unrelated diversification.

444. Palmer and colleagues 1993. Late adoption of the multidivisional form by large U.S. corporations: institutional, political, and economic accounts, Administrative Science Quarterly 38(1), 100 to 131

     The results provide considerable support for an expanded institutional account of adoption of the multidivisional form between 1963 and 1968: interlock ties to firms that already had the form influenced adoption. A wider industrial or geographic scope, a higher debt to equity ratio, and a chief executive with sales experience each increased the likelihood of adoption. The results also support key elements of the economic account, give little support to the political account, and show no sign that family ownership coalitions suppressed adoption.

     Grade

     A multi-firm statistical study of adoption

     Design

     Event analysis of M-form adoption testing institutional, political, and economic accounts.

     Year

     1993

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Large U.S. corporations from the Fortune lists that had not adopted the multidivisional form by 1962, observed from 1963 to 1968.

     Limits

     Adoption, not performance; finding not read in the authors' own abstract.

     Later work

     Read with Fligstein (1985) as the institutional account of the M-form's spread.

445. Pan and colleagues 2026. Examining innovation in digital platforms: unveiling the strategy of Zhongtai, International Journal of Operations and Production Management 46(4), 611 to 641

     Zhongtai, a complex interplay of organizational, process, and product modularity, was central to managing innovation in the firm's digital platforms, offering a framework for dynamic flexibility that balances stability and agility in development; it addressed resource waste, duplication, uneven service performance, and silos, and became so successful that the conglomerate changed its organizational structure to mirror the architecture of its digital platform.

     Grade

     One firm's case study, with three embedded platform cases

     Design

     Embedded case study of three digital platforms of increasing complexity developed by one firm.

     Year

     2026

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     A leading Chinese e-commerce conglomerate (not named in the abstract): 38 formal interviews, 26 informal follow-up interviews, and documents.

     Limits

     One firm, studied mainly through interviews; the abstract does not describe the structure before and after the change in detail.

     Later work

     Bears on the mirroring hypothesis (Colfer and Baldwin 2016) as a case in which the organization was redesigned to match the product architecture rather than the reverse.

446. Park and Griffith 2025. The effect of customer-centric strategy and structure alignment on new product portfolio innovativeness and firm performance, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science 53(5), 1306 to 1334

     New product portfolio innovativeness mediated the positive effect of customer-centric strategy-structure alignment on firm performance, and increasing the firm's strategic resource emphasis toward R&D, relative to advertising, amplified the effect of that alignment on portfolio innovativeness.

     Grade

     A nine-year panel of 91 firms

     Design

     Panel analysis, built on configuration theory, of how the alignment of a customer-centric strategy with a customer-centric structure relates to new product portfolio innovativeness and firm performance.

     Year

     2025

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     A nine-year panel (2011 to 2019) of 695 firm-year observations covering 8,899 product launches across 91 firms.

     Limits

     Only the abstract was read. It does not say how customer-centric structure was measured or which industries the 91 firms are in. The study tests the alignment of strategy and structure, not the customer-aligned structure on its own. Published in a marketing journal.

     Later work

     Sits beside Lee, Sridhar, Henderson, and Palmatier (2015), another panel study of customer-centric structure and financial performance; the abstract does not cite it.

447. Parker and colleagues 2001. Clinical service lines in integrated delivery systems: an initial framework and exploration, Journal of Healthcare Management 46(4), 261 to 275

     Service lines integrate specific bundles of services across the operating units of a health system; the systems studied show a range of organizational arrangements and implementation issues in service line management.

     Grade

     A descriptive study of several health systems in one research consortium

     Design

     A conceptual model of clinical service lines and a descriptive investigation of how service lines were developed.

     Year

     2001

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Integrated delivery systems that belonged to one research consortium (the Industry Advisory Board); the abstract does not give the number.

     Limits

     Descriptive; members of one consortium; the abstract reports no outcomes.

     Later work

     Byrne and colleagues (2004), with two of the same authors, tested service lines across every VHA medical center and found little benefit.

448. Pasmore and colleagues 1982. Sociotechnical systems: a North American reflection on empirical studies of the seventies, Human Relations 35(12), 1179 to 1204

     The experiments were extremely successful overall on outcomes such as productivity, costs, quality, and satisfaction, but few involved technological innovation or change, so much remained to be learned about designing technical systems for joint optimization.

     Grade

     A review of 134 reported experiments

     Design

     Review of sociotechnical theory and of reported experiments, coding which design features were used and which were associated with reported success.

     Year

     1982

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     134 reported sociotechnical experiments, reviewed with attention to North America in the 1970s; the abstract does not say where each was run.

     Limits

     Success is as the original reports state it; published reports favor successes.

     Later work

     Beekun (1989) found, by meta-analysis, that interventions that included technological change improved productivity less.

449. Patanakul and colleagues 2012. Autonomous teams and new product development, Journal of Product Innovation Management 29(5), 734 to 750

     Autonomous teams were more effective than the other structures for projects with high technology novelty or radical innovation, and heavyweight teams performed best for incremental innovation, which the authors read as some support for contingency and information-processing theory at the project level.

     Grade

     A survey of several hundred projects

     Design

     Survey comparison of four project team structures (functional, lightweight, heavyweight, autonomous) on development cost, development speed, and overall product success, controlling for vision clarity, resource availability, and team experience.

     Year

     2012

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     555 new product development projects.

     Limits

     Project-level structures inside firms, not whole-organization forms; one study.

     Later work

     Compares the four team structures that the matrix entry's variant attributes to Clark and Wheelwright; the abstract does not name Clark and Wheelwright.

450. Pemsel and colleagues 2016. Knowledge governance strategies in project-based organizations, Long Range Planning 49(6), 648 to 660

     Six knowledge governance strategies were identified: Protector, Deliverer, Polisher, Explorer, Supporter, and Analyzer. Three main drivers shaped which one an organization chose: its attitudes about humans, about knowledge, and about knowledge control.

     Grade

     A study of 20 project-based organizations

     Design

     Comparative empirical study building a typology of knowledge governance strategies (the use of governance mechanisms to influence knowledge processes) in project-based organizations, and exploring how the strategies emerge and affect knowledge processes.

     Year

     2016

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     20 project-based organizations (the abstract calls it a large-scale empirical study of 20 organizations and does not give sectors or countries).

     Limits

     Only the abstract was read; it does not describe the data collected, and it relates the strategies to knowledge processes, not to performance.

     Later work

     It compares across firms the governance of knowledge that Lindkvist (2004) traced inside one R&D organization made strongly project-based.

451. Pennings 1975. The relevance of the structural-contingency model for organizational effectiveness, Administrative Science Quarterly 20(3), from p. 393 (September 1975)

     The analysis did not support the model, and the goodness of fit between environmental and structural variables failed to explain variance in effectiveness.

     Grade

     A quantitative field test of the structural-contingency model

     Design

     Test of the structural-contingency model using subjective and objective data on structure and on environmental uncertainty and the related measures of complexity, resourcefulness, competition, and instability, and of whether the goodness of fit between environment and structure explains effectiveness.

     Year

     1975

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Not given in the abstract read.

     Limits

     Only the abstract was read, so the sample, the setting, and the measures were not checked.

     Later work

     Donaldson (2001) groups it with Mohr (1971) as early tests that failed to find a positive relationship between contingency fit and performance, and argues that such failures came from methodological limitations.

452. Perotti and Gelfer 2001. Red barons or robber barons? Governance and investment in Russian financial-industrial groups, European Economic Review 45(9), 1601 to 1617

     Investment was sensitive to internal cash flow in the independent firms, and firms in industry-centered groups did not differ from them in that respect, while in bank-led group firms investment was negatively related to cash flow, which the authors read as extensive financial reallocation and the use of profitable members as cash cows. Measured by the sensitivity of investment to q, the hierarchical, bank-led group firms allocated capital comparatively better than other firms, which the authors attribute to the controlling bank's stronger profit motive and authority, while the extent of redistribution makes private appropriation of value by the controlling shareholders a serious possibility.

     Grade

     A multi-firm quantitative study in one country

     Design

     Regressions of firm investment on internal cash flow and on a Tobin's q proxy, comparing firms in Russian financial-industrial groups with independent firms, and bank-led groups with industry-centered ones.

     Year

     2001

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Large Russian firms that were members of official financial-industrial groups or owned by a large Russian bank, against a control set of large firms with dispersed ownership or with management and employee control (the number of firms was not read).

     Limits

     One country in its first years of transition; investment allocation is the only outcome; the reallocation found fits both an internal capital market and opportunistic value transfer by the controlling banks; the abstracts were read, not the full text.

453. Pfeifer and Weche 2019. Temporary agency work and firm performance: a replication study with extensions, Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie und Statistik (Journal of Economics and Statistics) 240(4), 455 to 465 (issue dated 2020; online 19 June 2019)

     The authors support a concave relationship between the share of temporary agency work and productivity, but find a convex relationship between that share and unit labor costs instead of a U shape. A new finding is that the correlation between the share and profitability is only moderate.

     Grade

     A firm-level replication study (data not named in the abstract)

     Design

     Replication with extensions of Hirsch and Mueller (2012) and Nielen and Schiersch (2014), relating firms' share of temporary agency work to productivity, unit labor costs, and profitability.

     Year

     2019

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Firm-level data; the abstract does not name the data set, its country, or its size (the two studies it replicates used German panel data and German manufacturing firms).

     Limits

     Only the abstract was read, and it does not say whether the replication uses new data or the earlier studies' data; correlations, as the abstract's wording on profitability shows.

     Later work

     It replicates Hirsch and Mueller (2012) and Nielen and Schiersch (2014) and agrees with them on a concave link between the agency-work share and productivity; whether it adds independent data is not stated in the abstract.

454. Picard and Islam 2020. 'Free to do what I want'? Exploring the ambivalent effects of liberating leadership, Organization Studies 41(3), 393 to 414 (online first January 2019)

     The 'liberating' leader drew intense psychological attachment from followers, with dark sides: personal exhaustion and breakdown, normative pressure to be overly happy, and the scapegoating of contrarian managers who represented symbolic prohibition. The authors read post-heroic, liberating leadership as reconfiguring followers' identification with ambivalent effects, against its promise of self-mastery and collective unity.

     Grade

     One case study

     Design

     An in-depth qualitative case study read through a Lacanian psychodynamic lens.

     Year

     2020

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     One Belgian banking department under a 'liberating' leader.

     Limits

     One department of one bank; interpretive design; it studies the leader and followers, not the structure's performance.

455. Pickering 2015. An exploratory study of organizational governance in publicly-quoted professional service firms, Organization Studies 36(6), 779 to 807

     One company mimicked the main attributes of the partnership's interpretive scheme of governance; the other moved to corporate governance and removed all vestiges of the partnership scheme. Governance had significant implications for performance, and moving from the partnership scheme contributed to the ultimate failure of one company. The findings suggest benefits of evolution rather than revolution when corporate-style governance is introduced.

     Grade

     Two case studies by a scholar

     Design

     Exploratory comparative case study of governance after the move from partnership.

     Year

     2015

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Two Australian publicly quoted accounting companies.

     Limits

     Two firms.

     Later work

     The author suggests that failed experiments in the governance of publicly owned professional service firms may contribute to conflicting earlier findings on how ownership form affects their performance.

456. Piekkari and colleagues 2010. Regional management as a system: a longitudinal case study, Management International Review 50(4), 513 to 532

     The authors conceptualize regional management as a system of differentiated centers, in which headquarters activities are spatially distributed rather than found in a single location, and which adapts over time to changing information processing requirements.

     Grade

     One longitudinal case study

     Design

     Longitudinal case study through information processing theory.

     Year

     2010

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     One European multinational (not named in the abstract), with two regions and their regional management centers analyzed in depth.

     Limits

     One firm.

     Later work

     Schotter, Stallkamp, and Pinkham (2017) tested the formation of regional centers on a large sample.

457. Pinnington and Morris 2002. Transforming the architect: ownership form and archetype change, Organization Studies 23(2), 189 to 210

     Prior work links the incorporated form, in place of partnership, to a shift to a more modern archetype, but the consequences where ownership and control remain inside the firm had not been well explored. Using survey and interview material from architecture practices, the authors examine how differences based on ownership emerge, and, drawing on Weberian theories of professionalization as a project with material and social rewards, they specify the context for change in professional firms' archetypes. The abstract does not state which differences were found.

     Grade

     A survey and interviews across architecture practices

     Design

     Survey and interviews on ownership form and archetype change.

     Year

     2002

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Architecture practices (the abstract does not give the number).

     Limits

     One profession in one country; sample size not in the abstract.

     Later work

     Pinnington and Morris (2003) extended the method to law firms.

458. Pinnington and Morris 2003. Archetype change in professional organizations: survey evidence from large law firms, British Journal of Management 14(1), 85 to 99

     Change toward a more commercially oriented, consciously managed organization is concentrated in the market-facing parts of the firm and coexists with continuity in governance and strategic management. The core elements of the traditional professional form have not been transformed. The results contest both the transformational and the sedimented change found in case-based research.

     Grade

     A survey of 197 law firms

     Design

     Survey questionnaire testing whether the professional partnership has changed into the managed professional business.

     Year

     2003

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     197 large British law firms.

     Limits

     One profession in one country; self-reported survey data.

     Later work

     A direct quantitative challenge to Cooper and colleagues (1996); the authors argue archetype change should be distinguished from greater managerialism in general.

459. Podolny and Hansen 2020. How Apple is organized for innovation, Harvard Business Review 98(6) (November to December 2020), 86 to 95

     When Jobs returned in 1997 Apple was divided into business units, each with its own P&L; he laid off the general managers of all the units in a single day, put the whole company under one P&L, and combined the units' separate functional departments into one functional organization, which Apple retains though it is nearly 40 times as large in revenue. The authors discuss the innovation benefits and the leadership challenges of this model.

     Grade

     A single company's account written by insiders

     Design

     Descriptive single-company account written by insiders.

     Year

     2020

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Apple, from 1997 to about 2019.

     Limits

     Written by Apple University's dean and a faculty member, so it is an insider's account, not an independent study; no comparison group.

     Later work

     Independent studies of Apple's structure were not searched for. The account is best read beside the strain that Chandler (1962) recorded in functional structures as firms diversify.

460. Poli and Gabriel 2024. From liberating leader to shared leadership: a process of role distribution, M@n@gement 27(4), 1 to 17

     The distribution and sharing of leadership roles at the individual (supporting), collective (catalyst), and organizational (driving) levels is an evolutionary and dynamic process rather than a tipping point, with opportunities and limits that differ by stage of the process.

     Grade

     One case study

     Design

     Single case study with a processual, multilevel approach to liberation.

     Year

     2024

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     HEA, the helicopter segment of the Flight Avionics line of Thales AVS France (part of the Thales group), about 80 employees, most of them engineers, liberated from about the end of 2017; 24 interviews averaging 55 minutes with 18 respondents during a week of full-time ethnographic involvement, plus observations and documents.

     Limits

     One unit inside a large group, studied in one week of fieldwork with interviews looking back over the process.

     Later work

     Moves the liberated-company literature from the liberating leader (Getz 2009) to how leadership roles are distributed afterward.

461. Pollert 1988. The 'flexible firm': fixation or fact?, Work, Employment and Society 2(3), 281 to 316

     The model's generalizations rest on very selective cases; restructuring follows more complex and uneven lines than core and periphery polarization, which is if anything better seen in the public sector the model omits. The core and periphery concepts are confused, circular, and value laden, and the model blurs description, prediction, and prescription.

     Grade

     A critical review of published evidence

     Design

     Critical review of the evidence for the flexible firm model of a permanent core and a peripheral workforce.

     Year

     1988

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Published evidence on employment restructuring in the 1980s.

     Limits

     A critique and review rather than new data.

     Later work

     The leading dissent on the core and periphery model; Hakim (1990) and Kalleberg (2001) took up the evidence question.

462. Prado and Sapsed 2016. The anthropophagic organization: how innovations transcend the temporary in a project-based organization, Organization Studies 37(12), 1793 to 1818

     Multiple innovations from projects were adopted within the same project-based organization as differentiated, combined forms, through a systematic process involving subject experts and a central database. Beyond technical factors, an anthropophagic attitude, the appetite to appropriate and adapt others' innovations, motivated adopters.

     Grade

     One case study

     Design

     Analysis of an innovation database, process documents, and observation of completed innovation projects.

     Year

     2016

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Petrobras, a large energy and engineering company: a database of 1,104 mandatory and discretionary innovations and 15 completed innovation projects.

     Limits

     One organization.

     Later work

     Its abstract sets the study against prior literature that stressed the difficulty of moving innovations from the temporary to the permanent, including the failure of database approaches, and argued that repeatable standardized templates may overcome it; Brady and Davies (2004) describe a related move from exploratory projects to company-wide capabilities for routine project work.

463. Prasnikar and colleagues 1992. Structural adjustment policies and productive efficiency of socialist enterprises, European Economic Review 36(1), 179 to 199

     Productive efficiency was unaffected by all four structural and policy variables tested: export orientation, joint venture status, divisionalization of the firm, and market share. The working-paper version found neither a linear nor a quadratic effect of the number of workers per basic organization on productive efficiency, and concluded that revamping the system of basic organizations should not be expected to bring a significant gain in productivity.

     Grade

     A panel study of a stratified random sample of firms in one country

     Design

     Production function estimates on panel data by instrumental variables, with industry-specific parameters and firm-specific fixed or random effects, testing whether structural and policy variables, the divisionalization of the firm into basic organizations of associated labor among them, affect productive efficiency.

     Year

     1992

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     A 5 percent stratified random sample of Yugoslav industrial enterprises, as the abstract states; the 1986 working-paper version (Prasnikar and colleagues 1986) used 120 work organizations of associated labor whose basic organizations averaged 316 workers.

     Limits

     It measures productive efficiency only, not the information flows, worker identification, or management problems the Yugoslav debate claimed for or against divisionalization; the extent of divisionalization was set largely by political forces; the published article's abstract was read, not its full text, and its market-share result differs from the working paper's, which found a positive effect.

     Later work

     The 1989 Law of Enterprise eliminated compulsory divisionalization along with many other compulsory features of labor management, as the authors' 1991 abstract of the same paper states.

464. Pratt 2000. The good, the bad, and the ambivalent: managing identification among Amway distributors, Administrative Science Quarterly 45(3), 456 to 493

     The organization manages identification with sensebreaking practices that break down meaning and sensegiving practices that provide it. When both succeed, members identify positively; when either fails, members deidentify, disidentify, or identify ambivalently.

     Grade

     One ethnographic case study

     Design

     Ethnography of how an organization manages its members' identification.

     Year

     2000

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Distributors for Amway, a network marketing organization.

     Limits

     One organization with an unusual, sales-based membership.

     Later work

     A general model of identification management; the source of this file's missionary case.

465. Prencipe and Tell 2001. Inter-project learning: processes and outcomes of knowledge codification in project-based firms, Research Policy 30(9), 1373 to 1394

     Distinguishing experience accumulation, knowledge articulation, and knowledge codification, the authors find three empirical patterns, which they call learning landscapes, in the mechanisms for inter-project learning at various levels of the project-based firm.

     Grade

     Six case studies by scholars

     Design

     Multiple case study of the mechanisms for learning across projects.

     Year

     2001

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Six case studies of project-based firms.

     Limits

     Six firms; qualitative.

     Later work

     Addresses the cross-project learning weakness in Hobday (2000).

466. Pugh and colleagues 1968. Dimensions of organization structure, Administrative Science Quarterly 13(1), from p. 65

     Five primary dimensions (specialization, standardization, formalization, centralization, and configuration) were operationalized as scales for 64 component variables. Four underlying dimensions emerged: structuring of activities, concentration of authority, line control of workflow, and size of supportive component. The authors concluded that the concept of the bureaucratic type is no longer useful.

     Grade

     A multi-organization comparative survey

     Design

     Comparative survey with scales built for five primary dimensions of structure, then principal-components analysis.

     Year

     1968

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     52 work organizations in England.

     Limits

     Cross-sectional; 52 organizations in one country (England).

     Later work

     Replicated in nine manufacturing firms (Hinings and Lee 1971) and in a national sample (Child 1972); Hickson and colleagues (1974) found the relations of context to structure stable across three countries; Aldrich (1972) reexamined the findings on technology and structure.

467. Pugh and colleagues 1969a. The context of organization structures, Administrative Science Quarterly 14(1), from p. 91

     Context predicts structure: a multiple correlation of 0.75 with structuring of activities from size and technology, 0.75 with concentration of authority from dependence and location, and 0.57 with line control of workflow from the operating variability scale of charter.

     Grade

     A multi-organization comparative survey of 46 organizations

     Design

     Scales for seven contextual concepts (origin and history, ownership and control, size, charter, technology, location, and dependence on other organizations) used in multivariate regression to predict three previously established dimensions of structure.

     Year

     1969

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     46 organizations in the English Midlands.

     Limits

     One region; cross-sectional; only the abstract was read.

468. Pugh and colleagues 1969b. An empirical taxonomy of structures of work organizations, Administrative Science Quarterly 14(1), from page 115

     A sevenfold classification: full bureaucracy, nascent full bureaucracy, workflow bureaucracy, nascent workflow bureaucracy, preworkflow bureaucracy, personnel bureaucracy, and implicitly structured organizations, each with characteristic size, technology, dependence, and ownership, and a possible developmental sequence. Bureaucracy takes different forms in different settings, so a single bureaucratic type is no longer useful.

     Grade

     A multi-organization comparative survey

     Design

     Cluster analysis of organizations on three empirical dimensions of structure.

     Year

     1969

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     52 organizations in the English Midlands.

     Limits

     One region; cross-sectional, so the developmental sequence is suggested, not observed.

     Later work

     Mintzberg (1979, 1980) nonetheless rebuilt a single machine bureaucracy configuration from such evidence, a disagreement over whether bureaucracy is one type or several.

469. Puranam and colleagues 2014. What's "new" about new forms of organizing?, Academy of Management Review 39(2), 162 to 180

     Proposes criteria for what makes a form of organizing new and concludes that even where existing theory can explain the individual elements of new forms, opportunities for new theory lie in the bundles of co-occurring elements and in why the same bundles appear in widely different organizations.

     Grade

     A conceptual argument

     Design

     Conceptual analysis with illustrative cases.

     Year

     2014

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Linux, Wikipedia, and Oticon contrasted with traditional counterparts.

     Limits

     No empirical test.

     Later work

     Martela (2019) argues that the self-managing organization is a genuinely novel form; Foss and Dobrajska (2015) argue that Valve does not challenge organization design theory.

470. Puranam and Håkonsson 2015. Valve's way, Journal of Organization Design 4(2), 2 to 4

     Valve is a rare example of a firm that appears to operate without any formal hierarchy; the piece asks what the case shows about the viability of authority hierarchies.

     Grade

     One case description

     Design

     Organization Zoo case description written from public information, with invited expert commentaries.

     Year

     2015

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     One firm, Valve Corporation.

     Limits

     Based on public sources, not fieldwork.

     Later work

     Foss and Dobrajska (2015) replied that Valve is and will remain an outlier, albeit a voguish one.

471. Qian and colleagues 2006. Coordination and experimentation in M-form and U-form organizations, Journal of Political Economy 114(2), 366 to 402

     Compared with the U-form, the M-form coordinates better in attribute matching but worse in attribute compatibility and gains less from specialization; its distinctive advantage is flexibility in choosing between small-scale and full-scale experimentation.

     Grade

     A formal model

     Design

     Formal model comparing the M-form and the U-form in experimenting with uncertain projects, where the form sets the organization's information structure and so the way changes are coordinated.

     Year

     2006

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     None.

     Limits

     A model; the authors' motivating cases are the Chinese and Soviet economies, not firms, as Qian and Xu (1993) shows.

     Later work

     Extends Williamson's comparison of the two forms (Williamson 1975) to experimentation.

472. Qiu and Donaldson 2012. Stopford and Wells were right! MNC matrix structures do fit a 'high-high' strategy, Management International Review 52(5), 671 to 689

     The authors replace foreign product diversification with corporate integration in the model. In the preliminary test, corporate integration and area diversification were the two dominant strategies associated with MNCs' use of matrix structures.

     Grade

     A preliminary test on a sample of German multinationals

     Design

     Revision of the Stopford and Wells (1972) model of when MNCs use a matrix, with a preliminary empirical test.

     Year

     2012

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Data from a study of German MNCs (sample size not given in the abstract).

     Limits

     The authors call the support preliminary; the data come from another study of German MNCs.

     Later work

     Revisits the Stopford and Wells prediction (Stopford and Wells 1972), which the authors say had lacked theoretical clarification and a solid test.

473. Raddats and Burton 2011. Strategy and structure configurations for services within product-centric businesses, Journal of Service Management 22(4), 522 to 539

     Strategy was the main parameter determining where services sit in the structure. The authors' framework links four services strategies (engagement, extension, penetration, and transformation) to structures aligned to strategic business units: combined product and services, independent services, and customer-focused.

     Grade

     Interviews in 25 firms

     Design

     Interview study of how product-centric businesses configure their organizations for services.

     Year

     2011

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     40 interviews with managers in 25 UK-based product-centric businesses in 11 sectors.

     Limits

     UK firms; interviews; the authors call for research comparing the effectiveness of the configurations.

474. Rahman 2021. The invisible cage: workers' reactivity to opaque algorithmic evaluations, Administrative Science Quarterly 66(4), 945 to 988

     The platform introduced an opaque evaluation algorithm to differentiate rating scores; freelancers experienced it as control but could not align their actions with criteria they could not identify. Some experimented to raise their scores and others constrained their activity, depending on their general success on the platform, how much they depended on it for work, and whether their scores had fallen. The author calls this form of control, in which the criteria for success and their changes are unpredictable, an invisible cage.

     Grade

     One field study of a single platform

     Design

     Inductive field study over more than three years: interviews, archival data, and observation as a registered user of the platform.

     Year

     2021

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Freelance workers on one online labor platform (unnamed in the abstract).

     Limits

     One platform; the abstract gives no count of workers; inductive theory, not a test.

     Later work

     Curchod and colleagues (2020) found similar sensitivity to evaluations among eBay sellers; Cameron and Rahman (2022) traced how resistance shifts across the stages of a gig. Burbano, Koo, and Luo (2026) found in field experiments that workers disengaged when a rating system was proposed where they held less power.

475. Rahman and Valentine 2021. How managers maintain control through collaborative repair: evidence from platform-mediated gigs, Organization Science 32(5), 1300 to 1326

     When client managers used the platform's tools for coercive control over contractors acting unexpectedly, it backfired and contributed to uncompleted projects; when they instead engaged in collaborative repair, surfacing misaligned interpretations and negotiating new reciprocal expectations, projects were completed.

     Grade

     One field study of a single platform

     Design

     Inductive field study of interactions between client managers and contractors.

     Year

     2021

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Software development gigs on one platform labor market.

     Limits

     One platform; one kind of work; inductive.

     Later work

     Shows that the human manager role persists on platforms in a new form, a point Hillebrand, Raisch, and Schad (2025) build into their integration of human-AI collaboration and algorithmic management.

476. Elidrissi and Courpasson 2021. Body breakdowns as politics: identity regulation in a high-commitment activist organization, Organization Studies 42(1), 35 to 59

     Activists' passionate commitment meets vulnerable bodies; body breakdowns lead activists to separate their passion for the cause from the organizational culture and ultimately to exit, which the authors read as political events and a form of resistance to controlling regimes.

     Grade

     One ethnographic case study

     Design

     Ethnography of identity regulation through a culture of self-sacrifice.

     Year

     2021

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     One activist organization.

     Limits

     One organization.

     Later work

     Names a cost of the missionary form: body breakdowns among passionately committed members that end in their exit.

477. Raja and colleagues 2018. Organizing for servitization: examining front- and back-end design configurations, International Journal of Operations and Production Management 38(1), 249 to 271

     Each division offered a different mix of product-, use-, and result-oriented services, and front-end and back-end configurations varied with the offering and existed side by side in the same company. The complexity and temporality of the offering and the power of the customer shaped the structure. The authors identify a further configuration, integrated project teams, in which a dominant customer dictates the organizational interfaces, and argue that the standard advice to split activities by customer contact is too simple and rests mostly on anecdote.

     Grade

     One case study of three divisions inside one manufacturer

     Design

     Large-scale exploratory case study with embedded cases.

     Year

     2018

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Three divisions of one UK-based global original equipment manufacturer.

     Limits

     One firm; analytic rather than statistical generalization, as the authors state.

     Later work

     Challenges the one-configuration assumption in the front-back literature.

478. Rajan and Wulf 2006. The flattening firm: evidence from panel data on the changing nature of corporate hierarchies, Review of Economics and Statistics 88(4), 759 to 773

     Firm hierarchies became flatter: the number of positions reporting directly to the chief executive rose significantly over time, and the number of levels between division heads and the chief executive fell. More of these managers reported directly to the chief executive and were made officers of the firm, which the authors read as delegation of authority, and division managers who moved closer to the chief executive received higher pay and greater long-term incentives. Flattening cannot be characterized simply as centralization or decentralization.

     Grade

     A panel study of more than 300 large firms

     Design

     Panel analysis of managerial job descriptions, reporting relationships, and compensation structures.

     Year

     2006

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     More than 300 large United States firms.

     Limits

     Large United States firms only; the abstract does not give the years covered; reporting lines and pay, not how decisions were actually made.

     Later work

     Wulf (2012) returned to the question and argued that flattened firms typically show more control and decision making at the top; Guadalupe, Li, and Wulf (2014) traced the rise of functional managers in the executive team.

479. Rao and Greve 2018. Disasters and community resilience: Spanish flu and the formation of retail cooperatives in Norway, Academy of Management Journal 61(1), 5 to 25

     Communities hit by the Spanish flu, a disaster attributed to infected members, were unable to form new retail cooperatives in the short and long run, while disasters attributed to nature, like frost, were argued to strengthen cooperation; the flu's effect weakened over time and was countered by civic capacity to form diverse nonprofits.

     Grade

     A quantitative historical study across many communities

     Design

     Historical quantitative study of whether communities formed new retail cooperatives after two kinds of disaster.

     Year

     2018

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Norwegian communities hit by the Spanish flu of 1918 to 1919, compared with communities hit by spring frost (the abstract does not give the number of communities).

     Limits

     Uses the founding of retail cooperatives as a measure of community resilience, so it speaks to the conditions for the form's emergence, not to its structure or performance; one country and period.

480. Raveendran 2020. Seeds of change: how current structure shapes the type and timing of reorganizations, Strategic Management Journal 41(1), 27 to 54

     Current structure shaped the next reorganization. A greater share of homogeneous (function-like) units raised the probability that the next reorganization moved toward heterogeneous (product- or market-based) units, and a greater share of heterogeneous units raised the probability of a move back toward homogeneous ones. A greater share of homogeneous units also brought the next reorganization sooner, and a greater share of heterogeneous units delayed it. The author's explanation is that employees grouped with others of similar backgrounds need less time to collaborate effectively after a change. In a robustness check, controlling for whether the current structure was a matrix had no appreciable effect on the direction or rate of change.

     Grade

     A multi-firm panel study of reorganizations in one industry

     Design

     Panel of corporate-level reorganizations (the addition or removal of top-level business units), each unit coded from 50 to 100 trade press and newspaper articles as based on products, markets, or functions and so as homogeneous (such as global R&D or sales) or heterogeneous (such as cell phones or North America); fixed-effects logit models for the direction of the next reorganization and fixed-effects Poisson models for the days until it.

     Year

     2020

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     34 cell-phone manufacturers holding over 99 percent of the global market, 1983 to 2008 (two reported no corporate-level reorganization and drop out of the fixed-effects models); 102 reorganizations, 47 percent toward more homogeneous units and 53 percent toward more heterogeneous ones.

     Limits

     One industry and a small sample; reorganizations are coded from press reports at the corporate level only, the unit-level employee counts were not available, and the matrix control's estimates are not reported in the article (the author offers them on request).

     Later work

     Builds on the oscillation argument of Nickerson and Zenger (2002) and on Gulati and Puranam (2009).

481. Rawley and colleagues 2018. How and when do conglomerates influence the creativity of their subsidiaries?, Strategic Management Journal 39(9), 2417 to 2438

     A subsidiary's creativity rose when it joined a conglomerate whose creativity was either very low or high, read as an imprinting effect of the conglomerate's internal environment on how well the subsidiary is integrated; over time its creativity rose with that of the other subsidiaries, evidence of creativity spillovers inside conglomerates.

     Grade

     A multi-firm quantitative study in one industry

     Design

     A framework for how membership in a sectoral conglomerate (several subsidiaries in one industry) affects a subsidiary's creativity, split into an imprinting effect at affiliation and a concurrent effect from ongoing interaction with sister subsidiaries, tested in the high-end fashion industry.

     Year

     2018

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Subsidiaries of high-end fashion conglomerates such as LVMH and Kering; the sample size was not read.

     Limits

     One industry, sectoral rather than unrelated conglomerates; only the summaries were read.

482. Raymond 1998. The cathedral and the bazaar, First Monday 3 (1998); the DOI record gives issue 2, and the journal's 2005 reprint notice gives Volume 3, Number 3, March 1998

     The author contrasts the cathedral model of most commercial development with the bazaar model of Linux, argues that they rest on opposing assumptions about debugging, and argues from the Linux experience that given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.

     Grade

     A practitioner's report

     Design

     A participant's account of running an open source project as a deliberate test of theories drawn from the history of Linux.

     Year

     1998

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     The fetchmail project, run by the author.

     Limits

     A practitioner's essay about his own project; no systematic data.

     Later work

     Mockus, Fielding, and Herbsleb (2002) measured Apache and Mozilla; Lee and Cole (2003) modeled Linux development as learning by criticism and error correction.

483. Reitzig and Maciejovsky 2015. Corporate hierarchy and vertical information flow inside the firm: a behavioral view, Strategic Management Journal 36(13), 1979 to 1999

     Information economics predicts that middle managers pass more suggestions up the line of command as the hierarchy grows, to avoid omission errors; organizational psychology predicts fewer, through evaluation apprehension and perceived lack of control. The study finds evidence for all of these mechanisms and sets out the conditions under which each prevails.

     Grade

     A field study combined with experiments

     Design

     Field data combined with model-guided experiments.

     Year

     2015

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Field data from a firm plus experimental studies (a press release names a large multinational consumer goods firm headquartered in Europe).

     Limits

     One firm's field data; experiments abstract from real hierarchies.

     Later work

     Bears on the cost of added layers that Jaques's theory seeks to minimize, though it does not test time-span strata.

484. Rhee and colleagues 2019. Performance feedback in hierarchical business groups: the cross-level effects of cognitive accessibility on R&D search behavior, Organization Science 30(1), 51 to 69

     Group-level managers shape member firms' problemistic search: when underperforming firms are widespread in a group, a member firm performing below its aspiration level intensifies R&D search, because member firm performance becomes a group-level problem accessible to group-level managers; and when more members operate in R&D-intensive industries, R&D investment becomes a solution accessible to group-level managers, and a member firm's shortfall again leads to more R&D search.

     Grade

     A multilevel quantitative study of firms in one country's business groups

     Design

     Multilevel analysis of member firms' R&D search intensity in response to performance below their aspiration level, with group-level conditions as moderators.

     Year

     2019

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Member firms of Korean business groups (the sample size was not read).

     Limits

     One country's groups and one kind of search; the cognitive accessibility to group-level managers is inferred from the distribution of member performance and industries, not observed; the abstract was read, not the full text.

485. Richardson 1971. Fair Pay and Work: An Empirical Study of Fair Pay Perception and Time Span of Discretion, Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale (124 pages); also Heinemann, London, 1971

     Not verified against its source: the book was not read, so the account is secondhand. As described on the Global Requisite Organization site: a direct relationship between time span of discretion and felt-fair pay. A later paper reports a correlation of .86 with 180 people, citing this study (secondary).

     Grade

     One company study (as described secondhand)

     Design

     A controlled experiment inside one company.

     Year

     1971

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Employees of Honeywell (sample size not read).

     Limits

     One company; the description comes from an organization that promotes Jaques's ideas; the measure of time span has been criticized as hard to operationalize.

     Later work

     A 1972 Canadian review in Relations industrielles, seen only as a search summary, judged the correlations impressive but the criticisms of the time-span method serious. Carraher and Chait (1999) tested two of Jaques's pay constructs in public-sector samples.

486. Richter and Brühl 2017. Shared service center research: a review of the past, present, and future, European Management Journal 35(1), 26 to 38

     More than three quarters of Fortune 500 companies have adopted shared service models; the research is less scant than fragmented, and it sorts into four perspectives (determinants, process, control, and outcome) with 17 research areas and an agenda for the operational maturity phase.

     Grade

     A review of research, with no new test

     Design

     Comprehensive literature review classifying peer-reviewed articles on shared service centers by their research questions.

     Year

     2017

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     83 works retained from 137 found.

     Limits

     A review; no new data.

     Later work

     The most recent review of shared services located.

487. Rigby and colleagues 2018. Agile at scale, Harvard Business Review (May 2018)

     The authors advise that leaders use agile methods themselves, build a taxonomy of opportunities, take the journey in small steps, modularize and then integrate workstreams, have functions not reorganized into agile teams learn agile values, and complement annual budgeting with a venture-capital-like approach to funding.

     Grade

     A practitioner's report

     Design

     Practitioner report drawing on the authors' study of companies scaling agile.

     Year

     2018

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Hundreds of companies, by the authors' own account (no method stated).

     Limits

     Consultants' and practitioners' account; no stated method or data.

     Later work

     Dikert, Paasivaara, and Lassenius (2016) found that the published evidence on large-scale transformations is mostly experience reports of this kind; Annosi, Foss, and Martini (2020) reported pitfalls such accounts tend to omit.

488. Rojek and Wilson 1987. Workers' self-management in the world system: the Yugoslav case, Organization Studies 8(4), 297 to 308

     Self-management was a reasonable idea given Yugoslavia's break from the Soviet bloc, but its practice proved problematic: it became largely a myth in a country interdependent with a capitalist world market, and was hard to sustain against factions and pressure groups that put their own interests first.

     Grade

     Conceptual

     Design

     Conceptual analysis at the level of the world system.

     Year

     1987

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Yugoslav self-management.

     Limits

     Conceptual; no sample of enterprises.

     Later work

     The cooperative entry's labor-managed firm variant rests on Ward's (1958) model of the Yugoslav firm; this is a study of the practice it modeled.

489. Romme 1997. Organizational learning, circularity and double-linking, Management Learning 28(2), 149 to 160

     Teams are the key learning units but a hierarchy is needed to store learning, so larger organizations must integrate teams into a hierarchy; double linking between teams, an elaboration of Likert's single linking pin and Ackoff's circularity used in several Dutch organizations, supports both upward and downward information processing.

     Grade

     A conceptual argument

     Design

     Conceptual argument.

     Year

     1997

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     None; the argument draws on several Dutch organizations that use double linking.

     Limits

     Conceptual; no data on the organizations named.

     Later work

     Sets sociocracy's double linking against Likert (1961) and Ackoff (1994).

490. Romme 1998. Toward the learning organization: the case of circular re-engineering, Knowledge and Process Management 5(3), 158 to 164

     Circular re-engineering treats human decision making as the key business process and runs in two stages: a circle structure for learning and communication is first added to the organization's administrative structure, and that new structure is then used to re-engineer and reorganize work processes. The case is offered as showing how this can reduce an organization's learning disability.

     Grade

     One case study

     Design

     Case study of circular re-engineering, the sociocratic circle method applied to redesign, in one industrial company.

     Year

     1998

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Matrex, an industrial company (named in the abstract; its country is not given there).

     Limits

     One case reported by a scholar closely tied to the method's designers, read only in its abstract, with no measure of outcomes in the abstract.

     Later work

     Romme and Endenburg (2006) report the circular design process in more than 30 organizations.

491. Romme and Endenburg 2006. Construction principles and design rules in the case of circular design, Organization Science 17(2), 287 to 297

     Construction principles mattered for creating new design rules and for understanding the systems and practices built from those rules, and explicit principles and rules appeared to help transfer learning between design projects.

     Grade

     The designers' report of projects in more than 30 organizations

     Design

     Science-based organization design: a circular design process (the approach of Endenburg, who developed sociocracy) built from construction principles and design rules, tested in practitioner and academic projects.

     Year

     2006

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     More than 30 organizations in which the circular process was tested.

     Limits

     Reported by the method's own designers (Endenburg developed sociocracy); the abstract does not describe how the tests were measured.

     Later work

     Gives the double-linking variant a scholarly source beyond Endenburg's own book (Endenburg 1998).

492. Rosenblat and Stark 2016. Algorithmic labor and information asymmetries: a case study of Uber's drivers, International Journal of Communication 10, 3758 to 3784

     Uber exerts significant indirect control over how drivers do their jobs while promoting them as entrepreneurs; the information and power asymmetries the app produces are fundamental to that control, and rhetorical appeals to technology and algorithms are used to structure asymmetric relationships to labor that favor the company.

     Grade

     One case study of a single firm's drivers

     Design

     Nine-month qualitative case study of Uber drivers' experiences: archival and real-time analysis of drivers' posts in online forums and in-depth interviews, combined with a design critique of the app and a discursive critique of Uber's corporate communications.

     Year

     2016

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     About 1,350 archival items from five online forums of Uber drivers (December 2014 to September 2015), and semi-structured interviews with seven drivers.

     Limits

     One firm; the authors note that forum participants and interviewees are not necessarily representative of Uber's drivers; written from the drivers' side.

     Later work

     Möhlmann and colleagues (2021), adding interviews with Uber's executives and engineers, described both matching and control by algorithm and found tensions over execution, compensation, and belonging. Cameron (2024) found, in the same industry, that many drivers report liking the work and finding choice in it, a consent the author argues masks structural problems.

493. Roulet and colleagues 2019. Microfoundations of institutional change in the career structure of UK elite law firms, In Microfoundations of Institutions (Research in the Sociology of Organizations 65A), Emerald Publishing, 251 to 268

     A larger share of women among ranked partners had a positive and significant effect on adopting non-equity partnership. Higher profit per partner, higher average lawyer reputation, and a high ratio of associates to partners each went with keeping the single equity tier. Compensation disparity, which the authors had expected to drive the change, did not.

     Grade

     A panel of 100 law firms over 17 years

     Design

     Multilevel panel analysis of adoption of non-equity partnership, with firm characteristics and characteristics of lawyers aggregated to the firm.

     Year

     2019

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     The top 100 UK law firms, 2000 to 2016, with Chambers and Partners rankings of their lawyers' reputation in eight practice areas.

     Limits

     The findings were read in the authors' business school's account of the study, not in the chapter. One country's elite firms, one profession.

     Later work

     Bears on the two-tier variant of the partnership; Pinnington and Morris (2003) and von Nordenflycht (2014) studied other departures from the classic P2 form.

494. Rugman and Verbeke 2004. A perspective on regional and global strategies of multinational enterprises, Journal of International Business Studies 35(1), 3 to 18

     Very few of the largest firms are successful globally: for 320 of the 380 firms with geographic sales data, an average of 80.3 percent of total sales are in their home region of the triad, so many of the world's largest firms are regionally based rather than global.

     Grade

     An archival study of 380 of the largest multinationals

     Design

     Archival analysis of the geographic spread of sales across the triad of NAFTA, the European Union, and Asia.

     Year

     2004

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     The 500 largest multinational enterprises; sales data available for 380.

     Limits

     Sales are one measure of multinationality; assets, production, and staff are not covered in the abstract.

     Later work

     Questions how many firms face the global integration pressure that the transnational answers; it does not test the transnational form itself.

495. Rumelt 1974. Strategy, Structure, and Economic Performance, Division of Research, Harvard Business School, Boston

     Firms were sorted into Single, Dominant, Related, and Unrelated Business categories, with subcategories such as Related-Constrained and Related-Linked; the Related-Constrained and Dominant-Constrained categories were the top performers in almost all measures, and Related-Constrained firms significantly outperformed Related-Linked firms.

     Grade

     A multi-firm study of large corporations

     Design

     Classification of large firms by diversification strategy and organizational structure in 1949, 1959, and 1969, related to economic performance.

     Year

     1974

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     246 large United States industrial firms drawn from the 500 largest in 1949, 1959, and 1969.

     Limits

     The categories depend on the researcher's judgment of relatedness; the book itself notes that part of the differences may be industry effects. Text read in the 1986 reissue.

     Later work

     Christensen and Montgomery (1981, Strategic Management Journal) reanalyzed a subsample of Rumelt's firms against market structure; this is known here from a secondary account and their article was not read.

496. Rusko 2018. Knowledge creation in the hypertext organizations: multi-membership practices in the university, International Journal of Information Systems and Social Change 9(4), 12 to 29

     Knowledge transfer of projects rests not only on the linkages between the separate education unit, research unit, and unit of project activities, but also on individuals' attitudes, features, and capabilities as members of several projects at once; and, instead of being externalized, much of the knowledge created stays with individual actors as tacit knowledge.

     Grade

     One author's study of his own university's projects

     Design

     Auto-ethnography of multi-project work, read through the project-as-practice view

     Year

     2018

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     One university's education, research, and project units

     Limits

     One setting, one observer, a university rather than a firm; no measure of outcomes.

497. Russell and colleagues 2013. The Renewal of the Kibbutz: From Reform to Transformation, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, NJ (181 pages)

     Kibbutzim reformed from the late 1980s; from 1995 they began paying salaries tied to the market value of members' work, and by 2010, 75 percent of the 248 nonreligious kibbutzim were 'renewed'. Less economically successful kibbutzim were the most open to reform, and reforms spread by imitation from weaker kibbutzim to stronger ones.

     Grade

     A study of a whole population of communities over two decades

     Design

     Study of reform and its diffusion across kibbutzim, read through organizational theories of openness to change

     Year

     2013

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Israel's 248 nonreligious kibbutzim, from the late 1980s to 2010

     Limits

     One national population of a distinctive form.

498. Ryan and colleagues 2017. Casual academics: a new public management paradox, Labour and Industry 27(1), 56 to 72

     New Public Management practices in universities have produced a tightly controlled core academic workforce alongside a peripheral workforce of casual academics paid on hourly contracts, and the line management of casual academics is informally delegated to subject coordinators. The authors conclude that managing casual academics shows the contradictions between efficiency and effectiveness in these practices and, given the growing reliance on casuals, threatens the future of tenured academics and the idea of a university.

     Grade

     One case study (one university)

     Design

     A study of the paradox of New Public Management in universities through the experiences of academic managers responsible for casual academic employment (the abstract does not name the method).

     Year

     2017

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Academic managers at one Australian university; their number is not given in the abstract read.

     Limits

     One university, seen through its managers rather than its casual staff; the study concerns the core and periphery split the shamrock shares with the flexible firm and does not use Handy's term.

499. Sandhu and Kulik 2019. Shaping and being shaped: how organizational structure and managerial discretion co-evolve in new managerial roles, Administrative Science Quarterly 64(3), 619 to 658

     Three organizational configurations differed in top-down structure and bottom-up managerial discretion. A configuration with semi-structured formalization and a decentralized sustainability program gave managers the most room to champion innovative initiatives. Roles in the other configurations were not static: as programs matured and managers championed them, the structuring of functions and roles co-evolved, a process the authors call shaping and being shaped.

     Grade

     A multiple-case study of 21 organizations

     Design

     Qualitative multiple-case study with interviews, archival, and observational data.

     Year

     2019

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Sustainability managers in 21 case study organizations in India and Australia.

     Limits

     One kind of new role; two countries.

     Later work

     Shows a recent staff specialty acquiring discretion over time, where earlier line and staff work treated staff authority as fixed by design.

500. Santos and Eisenhardt 2005. Organizational boundaries and theories of organization, Organization Science 16(5), 491 to 508

     Develops four conceptions of organizational boundaries (efficiency, power, competence, and identity), each with its assumptions, theoretical arguments, empirical validity, and limits, and argues against the dominance of transaction cost and exchange-efficiency views.

     Grade

     A conceptual review

     Design

     Conceptual review.

     Year

     2005

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     None (conceptual).

     Limits

     No new data.

     Later work

     Its four conceptions inform the boundary-permeability dimension, though it gives no scale; Santos and Eisenhardt (2009) study entrepreneurial power in shaping boundaries in nascent fields.

501. Santos and Eisenhardt 2009. Constructing markets and shaping boundaries: entrepreneurial power in nascent fields, Academy of Management Journal 52(4), 643 to 671

     Successful entrepreneurs attempt to dominate nascent markets by co-constructing organizational boundaries and market niches through claiming, demarcating, and controlling a market; power is the underlying boundary logic.

     Grade

     Several case studies by scholars

     Design

     Inductive, longitudinal multiple case study.

     Year

     2009

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Five ventures in nascent markets.

     Limits

     Five ventures; nascent markets.

     Later work

     Treats boundaries as shaped by strategy rather than given; the boundaryless literature treats them as barriers to remove.

502. Santos and colleagues 2014. Organizational culture, organizational structure and human resource management as bases for business process orientation and their impacts on organizational performance, Brazilian Business Review 11(3), 100 to 122

     The three constructs were positively and significantly associated with one another, and culture and human resource management with performance, but the structure construct (items such as process managers formally shown on the organization chart, teams responsible for coordinating cross-department processes, and a unit that proposes process improvements) had no significant direct relationship with organizational performance. The structural coefficients were 0.474 for culture, 0.306 for human resource management, and 0.009 for structure, with 53.6 percent of the variance in performance explained.

     Grade

     A survey of 368 companies

     Design

     Survey analyzed by structural equation modeling (partial least squares) of how organizational structure, organizational culture, and human resource management, each framed by the business process orientation approach, relate to one another and to performance on the balanced scorecard's four dimensions.

     Year

     2014

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     368 medium and large Brazilian companies (55 percent industry, 45 percent services), answering an email survey sent to 2,000 companies from October to December 2010; respondents were middle or senior managers in operations, logistics, marketing, sales, product return, finance, or quality.

     Limits

     Self-reported, perceptual measures of structure and performance, gathered at one time; the sample came from an executive education organization's contact list. The authors suggest structure may work as a moderator rather than a direct cause.

     Later work

     It runs against Kohlbacher and Reijers (2013), in Austrian manufacturing firms, and Leyer and colleagues (2017), in financial services, who found a process-oriented structure positively associated with performance; it agrees with Kohlbacher and Reijers that a culture in line with the process approach matters most.

503. Schilling and Steensma 2001. The use of modular organizational forms: an industry-level analysis, Academy of Management Journal 44(6), 1149 to 1168

     Not verified against its source: the results section could not be read. The results could not be read. The abstract states the model and the test only. Later papers citing it (read as citation passages through Semantic Scholar, not checked against the article) describe heterogeneity of inputs and demands, availability of standards, competitive intensity, and technological change as the drivers it tested, and report the availability of standards and, weakly, technological change as associated with more modular forms.

     Grade

     An industry-level study of 330 U.S. manufacturing industries

     Design

     Industry-level quantitative analysis testing a model, built on the logic of general systems modularity, of why some industries use modular organizational forms (contract manufacturing, alternative work arrangements, and alliances) more than others.

     Year

     2001

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     330 U.S. manufacturing industries.

     Limits

     Industry averages, not firm decisions; the results could not be read from the abstract, and the journal page refused automated requests.

     Later work

     Campagnolo and Camuffo (2009) applied the same model to 68 Italian manufacturing industries and found results that differed significantly from the U.S. findings, with labor intensity and industry-specific and nation-specific factors driving modularity.

504. Schmidt and Bouville 2026. A worker cooperative takeover: organizing radical transformation according to Lefebvre's experimental utopia, Organization Studies 47(8), 1287 to 1312

     Building on Lefebvre's concept of experimental utopia, the study shows how spatial and temporal dynamics intertwined in the transformation and introduces the mechanotransducer as essential to producing the worker cooperative.

     Grade

     One case study

     Design

     Hybrid ethnography of a factory's conversion into a worker cooperative.

     Year

     2026

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     One factory taken over by its workers after a multinational refused to cede its brand and announced closure and relocation.

     Limits

     One case; the abstract does not describe the cooperative's structure after the takeover.

     Later work

     A European case for the worker-recuperated enterprise variant, which Vieta (2012) grounds in Argentina.

505. Schneider 2013. Hierarchical Capitalism in Latin America: Business, Labor, and the Challenges of Equitable Development, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

     Latin America has a distinctive, enduring hierarchical capitalism of multinational corporations, diversified business groups, low skills, and segmented labor markets, held together by institutional complementarities, which has not promoted rising productivity, good jobs, or equitable development.

     Grade

     A comparative study of several countries' institutions

     Design

     Comparative institutional analysis

     Year

     2013

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Latin American economies

     Limits

     Region-level argument; the business group is one element of several.

506. Schoonhoven 1981. Problems with contingency theory: testing assumptions hidden within the language of contingency 'theory', Administrative Science Quarterly 26(3), 349 to 377

     The traditional contingency hypotheses were not supported, while the more precise hypotheses received stronger support; relationships among technology, structure, and effectiveness are more complicated than contingency theory assumes. The paper proposes a contingency theory with interactive, nonmonotonic, and symmetrical arguments.

     Grade

     A quantitative study of hospital operating room suites

     Design

     Tests of traditional contingency hypotheses drawn from Galbraith's (1973) theory of organizing for effectiveness, beside more precise hypotheses built to address five problems with contingency theory, including its hidden symmetrical and nonmonotonic assumptions.

     Year

     1981

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Acute care hospital operating room suites; the abstract read does not give the number.

     Limits

     One kind of unit in one sector; only the abstract was read.

507. Schoper and colleagues 2018. Projectification in Western economies: a comparative study of Germany, Norway and Iceland, International Journal of Project Management 36(1), 71 to 82

     About a third of all work in the three economies was done as projects, with similar shares despite the countries' differences in size and industry. Most projects were internal; the external projects the public sees were 16 to 22 percent of them. Projectification had risen over time, and the respondents' estimates showed it rising further.

     Grade

     Surveys of many organizations in three countries

     Design

     Representative surveys of organizations in three countries with one measure of projectification, the share of project work in total working hours (a project being a non-routine task with a clearly specified target, a minimum duration, and a minimum number of participants), applied to internal and external projects alike.

     Year

     2018

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     A random sample of 500 private and public organizations in six economic sectors in Germany (telephone interviews), then 1,412 organizations in Norway and 142 in Iceland (online surveys).

     Limits

     Read only in the publisher-approved summary, not the article; respondents' estimates of working hours; the measure counts project work, not whether the project or the function holds authority, so it does not by itself show a project-based structure.

     Later work

     Wald, Ingason, and Fridgeirsson (2025) repeated the surveys about ten years later.

508. Schotter and colleagues 2017. MNE headquarters disaggregation: the formation antecedents of regional management centers, Journal of Management Studies 54(8), 1144 to 1169

     The number and dispersion of a multinational's subsidiaries in a region, as dimensions of complexity, affect whether a regional management center forms and whether it takes the form of a dedicated regional headquarters or a regional mandate given to an operating subsidiary; within-region experience, global footprint, and effects between regions bound the result.

     Grade

     A large-sample statistical study

     Design

     Event history analysis of the formation of regional management centers.

     Year

     2017

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Japanese multinationals' foreign investments, 1992 to 2014.

     Limits

     Japanese firms only; the abstract does not state each effect's direction.

     Later work

     A large-sample test of the information-processing reading in Piekkari, Nell, and Ghauri (2010).

509. Schreyögg and Sydow 2010. Organizing for fluidity? Dilemmas of new organizational forms, Organization Science 21(6), 1251 to 1262 (Crossroads section)

     Taken to its conclusion, promoting organizational fluidity would mean losing the very essence of organizing, yet flexibility remains imperative in complex and volatile environments; the authors propose instead balancing countervailing processes between the demands of efficiency and fluidity.

     Grade

     A conceptual essay

     Design

     Conceptual essay juxtaposing the stream of thought that proposes highly flexible, fluid forms (relentlessly changing templates, quick improvisation, and ad hoc responses) with research on identity, path dependence, economies of specialization, and recursive practices.

     Year

     2010

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     None; conceptual.

     Limits

     Conceptual, with no data; only the abstract was read.

510. Schröter 2018. Germany, In Asli M. Colpan and Takashi Hikino (eds), Business Groups in the West, Oxford University Press, Oxford

     Perhaps a quarter of the largest 100 firms qualified as diversified unrelated business groups, found mainly around large universal banks up to the First World War (only Deutsche Bank continuing to the millennium), among state-owned enterprises merged into large groups between the wars and spun off in the 1990s, and among resilient family-owned groups; pyramids were rare among the 100 largest.

     Grade

     A historical study of many firms in one country

     Design

     Historical survey of business groups among Germany's largest firms.

     Year

     2018

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     The 100 largest German firms in the twentieth century.

     Limits

     Read in the chapter abstract only; the abstract hedges the share as 'perhaps a quarter'.

511. Seashore and Bowers 1970. Durability of organizational change, American Psychologist 25(3), 227 to 233

     As Burnes (2019) reports it: workers' satisfaction with the company and their own jobs had continued to increase, as had profitability, and the organization was more participative than in 1964.

     Grade

     A follow-up study of one company

     Design

     Follow-up study in 1969 of the Weldon Manufacturing Company, five years after the change program described in Marrow, Bowers, and Seashore (1967).

     Year

     1970

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     One company (Weldon), its managers, supervisors, and workers.

     Limits

     Read only through a secondary account; one company; the original change program was run by the same research group.

     Later work

     Burnes (2019) treats Weldon as the template for the system-wide approach to organization development.

512. Seibert and colleagues 2011. Antecedents and consequences of psychological and team empowerment in organizations: a meta-analytic review, Journal of Applied Psychology 96(5), 981 to 1003

     High-performance managerial practices, sociopolitical support, leadership, and work characteristics were each strongly related to psychological empowerment, which was positively associated with satisfaction, commitment, and task and contextual performance and negatively with strain and turnover intentions. Team empowerment was positively related to team performance, and the antecedent and outcome relationships were statistically indistinguishable across the individual and team levels.

     Grade

     A meta-analysis of empowerment studies

     Design

     Meta-analysis of the antecedents and consequences of psychological (individual) and team empowerment.

     Year

     2011

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Published studies of psychological and team empowerment; the number of studies is not in the abstract.

     Limits

     Empowerment is a perceived state, not a structure; the meta-analysis does not separate team-based organizations from teams inside conventional hierarchies.

     Later work

     Bunderson and Boumgarden (2010) and Langfred (2004, 2007) qualify the empowerment result for self-managing teams: more structure, not less, aided learning in stable tasks, and high autonomy with low monitoring could hurt performance.

513. Sengul and Gimeno 2013. Constrained delegation, Administrative Science Quarterly 58(3), 420 to 471

     Where multimarket contact was greater, subsidiaries had less discretion over resource commitments, and it counteracted the internal capital market's tendency to fund subsidiaries with low market share or in high-growth industries; the authors call the pattern constrained delegation: business-level decisions are delegated, but the scope of decision rights and the resources available are limited. Multimarket contact went with even less competitive aggressiveness where the design constrained subsidiaries' resource allocation more.

     Grade

     A population study of subsidiaries in one country

     Design

     Hypothesis tests of how competitive spillovers among subsidiaries (multimarket contact) shape the design of headquarters and subsidiary relationships in multi-industry firms.

     Year

     2013

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     The population of majority-owned subsidiaries of groups operating in France, 1997 to 2004.

     Limits

     One country's groups; decision rights measured over resource commitments; only the abstract was read.

514. Sewell and Wilkinson 1992. 'Someone to watch over me': surveillance, discipline and the just-in-time labour process, Sociology 26(2), 271 to 289

     Just-in-time and total quality regimes create and demand systems of surveillance that instill discipline and so enhance central control: tactical responsibility is delegated to the shop floor while strategic control is centralized, through two disciplinary forces, the horizontal scrutiny of peers in cells and quality circles, which the regime's organizational structure supports, and the vertical surveillance of management information systems.

     Grade

     A theoretical argument drawing on observation of one plant

     Design

     Theoretical argument from Foucault's account of disciplinary power, drawing extensively on the authors' observations at one plant and briefly on other factories they visited.

     Year

     1992

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Kay Electronics, the authors' fictitious name for a foreign-owned maker of electronic household products visited during their research, whose JIT and TQC system was among the most advanced they observed and whose personnel practices were those associated with Japanese companies in the United Kingdom; brief notes on other factories visited, and published accounts of other plants.

     Limits

     Mainly one plant, under a pseudonym; the number of plants visited and the method and length of the observations are not stated in the passages read; the argument is mainly theoretical, and it concerns just-in-time regimes in general, not Japanese firms only.

     Later work

     Delbridge (1995) found the same tightening of control by participant observation in a Japanese transplant; Barker (1993), already in the ledger, found concertive control in self-managing teams.

515. Shah 2006. Motivation, governance, and the viability of hybrid forms in open source software development, Management Science 52(7), 1000 to 1014

     A need for software improvements drives initial participation and most participants leave once it is met; a small subset stays, for whom participation becomes a hobby. These hobbyists take on tasks that might otherwise go undone and keep the code simple and modular; governance structure affects how motives evolve.

     Grade

     A qualitative study of two communities

     Design

     Inductive qualitative study.

     Year

     2006

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Developers in two software communities with different governance structures.

     Limits

     Two communities; qualitative.

     Later work

     Qualifies Lerner and Tirole's (2002) emphasis on career concerns as the motive; von Hippel and von Krogh (2003) framed such use-driven contribution as the private-collective model.

516. Shaw and Hill 2014. Laboratories of Oligarchy? How the Iron Law Extends to Peer Production, Journal of Communication 64(2), 215-238

     In contrast to previous studies, the authors find support for Michels' iron law: oligarchy increases as wikis' contributor bases grow, and they conclude that peer production entails oligarchic organizational forms.

     Grade

     A quantitative study of 683 wikis

     Design

     Quantitative test of Michels' iron law of oligarchy in peer production, with empirical measures of participation built from exhaustive data on the wikis' internal processes, testing for increases in oligarchy associated with growth in the contributor base.

     Year

     2014

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     683 wikis.

     Limits

     Wikis only, not software projects; only the abstract was read, so the measures of oligarchy and the size of the effect were not checked.

517. Sherman and colleagues 1973. Team policing: seven case studies, Police Foundation, Washington, D.C., with contributing authors Thomas F. McBride, Susan Michaelson, and Robert Wasserman and a foreword by James Q. Wilson (Library of Congress Catalogue No. 73-87136)

     Team policing meant something different in each city, but all programs except Richmond's tried to put teams permanently in small neighborhoods, to maximize interaction within the team, and to maximize communication with the community. The departments that went furthest in carrying these out also had unity of supervision (one supervisor responsible for an area at all times), lower-level flexibility in policy making, unified delivery of services in the team's area, and combined investigative and patrol functions. In the foreword, James Q. Wilson, for the Police Foundation, calls the approach promising but still somewhat vague in conception, weak in execution, and uncertain in results.

     Grade

     Seven descriptive case studies by a police research foundation, not evaluations

     Design

     Descriptive case studies of team policing programs, each with the city's background, the program, and how far it realized three operational elements and four organizational supports, built from site visits, ride-alongs, interviews with officers at all levels and community members, and documents.

     Year

     1973

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Seven American police departments in 1971 and 1972: Holyoke, Richmond, Dayton, Syracuse, Detroit, Los Angeles, and New York City.

     Limits

     The authors call the cases reportorial accounts with subjective assessments, not in-depth evaluations; none of the programs was run under controlled experimental conditions. The full report was read; its obstacles and evaluations chapters are not summarized here.

518. Shimotani 2012. Japanese holding companies: past and present, Japanese Research in Business History 29, 11 to 28

     Because Article 9 of the 1947 Antimonopoly Act banned pure holding companies until 1997 while operating holding companies were allowed, Japanese practice split the form into pure and operating holding companies. To decentralize without breaking the ban, Sony in 1994 divided its parent company into a corporate area with only strategic headquarters functions and eight company areas run as if they were subsidiaries, each with a president, a board, income statements, balance sheets, and internal capital; the company system spread to many firms, some kept it after 1997, and some that had switched to a pure holding company went back to it. Pure holding companies then grew to about 10% of listed companies, in an internal reorganization type (a parent turned into a strategic headquarters over spun-off units) and an industrial reorganization type (a joint holding company in place of a merger), and some firms that had converted were trying to return to division or company systems because they had lost the ability to place their core businesses or found it hard to coordinate the businesses under them.

     Grade

     A business historian's review with one firm's case worked through

     Design

     Business-historical review of the holding company in Japan from the prewar zaibatsu to the years after the 1997 change in the law, with Sony's company system as the worked example.

     Year

     2012

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Japanese zaibatsu, corporate groups, and listed companies; Sony's 1994 reorganization.

     Limits

     A narrative history by one scholar, without a systematic sample; the adoption figure (pure holding companies at about 10% of listed companies) is stated without a data source in the article, reversion is reported only as some companies, with no figures, and the comparison of degrees of decentralization is left to the author's Japanese books.

     Later work

     Pairs with Lincoln and Shimotani (2010) on the keiretsu after the 1990s and with Morikawa (1992) on the zaibatsu.

519. Shortell and colleagues 2021. Hospital-based health systems 20 years later: a taxonomy for policy research and analysis, Health Services Research 56(3), 453 to 463

     Four cluster types: decentralized and less differentiated (54 percent of systems), highly differentiated but decentralized, highly differentiated and highly centralized, and undifferentiated, decentralized, with low integration. Overall 82 percent of systems remain relatively decentralized, which the authors read as their operating largely as holding companies. The new taxonomy bears similarities to and differences from the one of twenty years earlier.

     Grade

     A cluster analysis of several hundred health systems from national surveys

     Design

     A new taxonomy built on the 1999 one: principal components factor analysis and cluster analysis of 2016 survey data to derive measures of differentiation, centralization, and integration, with a 2017 to 2018 national survey of organizations and systems.

     Year

     2021

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Hospital-based health systems in the 2016 American Hospital Association Annual Survey (the four clusters hold 202, 85, 57, and 33 systems), with the National Survey of Healthcare Organizations and Systems.

     Limits

     Survey-based measures of where services are provided; centralization is measured from service location, not from where decisions are made, though the paper defines centralization as both.

     Later work

     No later work read disputes this taxonomy. Our reading, not a published dispute: Luke (2006) argued that American Hospital Association survey data designed to capture local hospital and system interrelationships are not appropriate for classifying multihospital systems at the company level; he wrote about the earlier taxonomy, fifteen years before this one, but this one also clusters Annual Survey data, so his objection may reach it.

520. Shultz 2016. Military Innovation in War: It Takes a Learning Organization. A Case Study of Task Force 714 in Iraq, JSOU Report 16-6, Joint Special Operations University Press, MacDill Air Force Base, FL

     The task force transformed from a specialized, compartmented unit into an intelligence-led organization through a joint interagency task force, decentralized authority, and a find, fix, finish, exploit, analyze, and disseminate cycle; raids rose from 18 in August 2004 to about 300 a month by August 2006, and its operations seriously degraded al-Qaeda in Iraq's networks.

     Grade

     One case study

     Design

     Case study using an organizational learning and innovation framework, drawing on McChrystal's two books and in-depth interviews with Task Force 714 leaders.

     Year

     2016

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     One organization, Task Force 714, the United States counterterrorism force in Iraq, 2003 to 2009.

     Limits

     One organization; relies heavily on its own leaders' memoirs and interviews; the author credits the surge, the counterinsurgency strategy, and the awakening movement as contributing causes of the security turnaround.

     Later work

     The scholarly account of the organization McChrystal and colleagues (2015) describe in their memoir; the multiteam-system studies (Lanaj and others 2013; Davison and others 2012) show where empowered, highly connected teams can underperform.

521. Siedlok and colleagues 2024. Strategy performation to avoid degeneration: how producer cooperatives can achieve social and economic goals, Organization Studies 45(1), 31 to 57 (online 2023)

     Pressures on a producer cooperative to degenerate into business as usual can be resisted and even reversed: the study shows cooperative principles being regenerated while new competitive strategies were introduced, through three types of performativity (performative dualism, instrumental performativity, and performative multiplicity) and through modes of ordering (distribution, coordination, and mutual inclusion).

     Grade

     One longitudinal case study

     Design

     Longitudinal single case study through a performativity lens.

     Year

     2024

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Zespri, a producer cooperative responsible for 30% of global kiwifruit exports.

     Limits

     One case, read only in its abstract; the abstract does not describe Zespri's formal structure.

522. Siggelkow and Levinthal 2003. Temporarily divide to conquer: centralized, decentralized, and reintegrated organizational approaches to exploration and adaptation, Organization Science 14(6), 650 to 669

     When interactions among a firm's activities are pervasive, neither the centralized nor the permanently decentralized structure performs well; temporary decentralization followed by reintegration yields the highest long-term performance, at a short-term cost.

     Grade

     A computer simulation, with no field data

     Design

     Agent-based simulation of three structures searching a changed performance landscape.

     Year

     2003

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     No field data.

     Limits

     Simulation.

     Later work

     A sequential alternative to holding exploit and explore units apart at once; Boumgarden, Nickerson, and Zenger (2012) compare such vacillation with simultaneous ambidexterity.

523. Sine and colleagues 2006. Revisiting Burns and Stalker: formal structure and new venture performance in emerging economic sectors, Academy of Management Journal 49(1), 121 to 132

     New ventures with higher founding team formalization, specialization, and administrative intensity outperformed those with more organic structures, contrary to the Burns and Stalker proposition that organic structures are more effective in dynamic sectors. The authors ground the hypothesis in Stinchcombe's liability of newness.

     Grade

     A quantitative study of new ventures in one sector

     Design

     Quantitative study of new ventures relating founding team structure to performance.

     Year

     2006

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     New ventures in the emergent Internet sector, 1996 to 2001.

     Limits

     One sector in one boom period; formal structure is measured in the founding team, not the whole firm.

     Later work

     Lee (2022) finds a related split for start-ups: flatter hierarchy helps creative success but hurts commercial execution.

524. Skocpol and colleagues 2000. A nation of organizers: the institutional origins of civic voluntarism in the United States, American Political Science Review 94(3), 527 to 546

     Membership associations emerged early and converged toward the representatively governed federation, which let leaders and members spread interconnected groups across the expanding nation; at the height of local proliferation most voluntary groups belonged to regional or national federations that mirrored the structure of U.S. government.

     Grade

     A historical study of many membership associations by scholars

     Design

     Historical analysis of newly collected data on U.S. voluntary membership associations, read through institutionalist theory.

     Year

     2000

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     U.S. membership associations from early in the nation's history; the abstract does not give the count.

     Limits

     One country's civic associations; it explains the spread of the form, not its performance.

     Later work

     Sets the history behind Young's later finding of a drift toward franchise-like control by national headquarters.

525. Škrinjar and colleagues 2008. The impact of business process orientation on financial and non-financial performance, Business Process Management Journal 14(5), 738 to 754

     Business process orientation led to better non-financial performance and, through it, indirectly to better financial performance; the link was stronger than in the original investigation the study replicates.

     Grade

     A survey of companies in one transition economy

     Design

     Survey with exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling.

     Year

     2008

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Companies in a transition economy (the abstract does not name the country or give the sample size).

     Limits

     One transition economy; maturity of process orientation, not structure as such.

     Later work

     Presented by the authors as confirming an earlier investigation in a new setting.

526. Shantz and colleagues 2020. How formal and informal hierarchies shape conflict within cooperatives: a field experiment in Ghana, Academy of Management Journal 63(2), 503 to 529

     Formal hierarchical control structures led to lower collective psychological ownership, which in turn led to more conflict among members than flat control structures did; how much the formal structure mattered for conflict depended on whether an informal hierarchy was present.

     Grade

     A field experiment across 40 cooperatives

     Design

     Field experiment: newly formed cooperatives were randomly assigned a flat or a hierarchical formal control structure, followed by qualitative data.

     Year

     2020

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     40 newly formed cooperatives in rural Ghana.

     Limits

     One country, one sector of new rural cooperatives, and an outcome (conflict) measured early in the cooperatives' lives; the abstract does not report performance or survival.

527. Smirnova and colleagues 2022. Building status in an online community, Organization Science 33(6), 2519 to 2540

     Newcomers are recognized for easier-to-evaluate contributions; as actors rise in status, further gains come increasingly from actions that are hard or impossible to evaluate, producing a positive feedback loop for those already accorded stature.

     Grade

     An observational study and two experiments

     Design

     Observational analysis of an online community plus two online experiments.

     Year

     2022

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Stack Overflow, and participants in two online experiments.

     Limits

     A question-and-answer community, not a production community with a shared artifact.

     Later work

     Complements Dahlander and O'Mahony (2011) on progression and Bianchi, Kang, and Stewart (2012) on status markers.

528. Snow and Hrebiniak 1980. Strategy, Distinctive Competence, and Organizational Performance, Administrative Science Quarterly 25(2), from p. 317

     The managers perceive four strategy types (Defender, Prospector, Analyzer, and Reactor) in their industries. Defenders, Prospectors, and Analyzers all show competence in general and financial management; Defenders and Prospectors have different identifiable configurations of distinctive competence; Reactors have no consistent pattern. Defenders, Prospectors, and Analyzers consistently outperform Reactors in competitive industries but not in a highly regulated one, though the authors call the data only suggestive.

     Grade

     A study of top managers' perceptions in four industries

     Design

     Study of top managers' perceptions of strategy types and distinctive competence in their industries, related to organizational performance.

     Year

     1980

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Top managers in four industries: plastics, semiconductors, automotives, and air transportation.

     Limits

     Perceptual data; the authors call the performance data only suggestive; only the abstract was read, so the number of firms and managers was not checked.

529. Snow and colleagues 2011. Organizing continuous product development and commercialization: the collaborative community of firms model, Journal of Product Innovation Management 28(1), 3 to 16 (published online December 16, 2010)

     The authors trace a move from stand-alone firms to multifirm networks to community-based designs. Blade.org combined a community commons, in which member firms developed and shared knowledge, with explicit institutional mechanisms for direct collaboration between members, and the authors say these elements are used to overcome the challenges of concurrent technological and market experimentation and of coordinating a complex system of hardware, software, and services from otherwise independent firms. Blade.org had developed more than 60 new products, which the authors take as strong evidence of the model's innovation prowess.

     Grade

     One illustrative case described by the form's originators

     Design

     Conceptual history of organizational designs for product development since the 1980s, with one illustrative case described in detail.

     Year

     2011

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Blade.org, a purposefully designed collaborative community of firms dedicated to developing and commercializing blade servers.

     Limits

     One illustrative case, described by the cellular form's own authors; the abstract gives no comparison group, so the product count does not show that the design caused the output. The community joins independent firms, so it sits at the edge of the site's boundary (forms beyond the firm's own boundary are named inside the network entry, not covered).

     Later work

     Fjeldstad, Snow, Miles, and Lettl (2012) generalize the design as the actor-oriented organizational architecture.

530. Snow and colleagues 2017. Designing the digital organization, Journal of Organization Design 6(1), article 7

     Because digitization lets all actors, things, and places be reached digitally, organizations can be designed for self-organization rather than hierarchical control; actor-oriented principles are proposed as the core of such designs.

     Grade

     A conceptual article

     Design

     Conceptual framework for designing digital organizations.

     Year

     2017

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     No sample.

     Limits

     Conceptual; no test.

     Later work

     Applies the actor-oriented organizational architecture of Fjeldstad, Snow, Miles, and Lettl (2012), the cellular entry's actor-oriented variant, to digital organizations; the text does not use the word cellular or cite the 1997 cellular article.

531. Söderlund and Tell 2011. Knowledge integration in a P-form corporation: project epochs in the evolution of Asea/ABB, 1945-2000, In Christian Berggren, Anna Bergek, Lars Bengtsson, Michael Hobday, and Jonas Söderlund (eds.), Knowledge Integration and Innovation, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2011, 170 to 202

     The project-based organizational form (P-form) is a specific permanent configuration conducive to knowledge integration in complex products and systems industries. Four distinct project epochs appear over the period, marked by increasing market and technological complexity, and complexity and organizational design influence how projects are generated and executed.

     Grade

     One case study

     Design

     Longitudinal analysis of market complexity, technological complexity, and organizational design.

     Year

     2011

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Asea/ABB, a P-form corporation in complex products and systems, over more than fifty years (1945 to 2000).

     Limits

     One corporation.

532. Sosis and Bressler 2003. Cooperation and commune longevity: a test of the costly signaling theory of religion, Cross-Cultural Research 37(2), 211 to 239

     The results support aspects of the costly signaling theory of religion, in which rituals and taboos promote cooperation inside the group; the authors also discuss shortcomings of the theory.

     Grade

     A historical study of 83 communes

     Design

     Historical data analysis testing whether communes with costlier requirements survived longer, and whether costly requirements and religiosity interact.

     Year

     2003

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     83 nineteenth-century U.S. communes.

     Limits

     The abstract does not state which effects held; historical records only.

     Later work

     Consistent with Kanter (1968): demanding membership requirements go with longer survival in ideological communities.

533. Srikanth and Puranam 2011. Integrating distributed work: comparing task design, communication, and tacit coordination mechanisms, Strategic Management Journal 32(8), 849 to 875

     Interdependence between offshored and onshore processes can lower offshored process performance, and investing in coordination mechanisms reduces the harm; tacit coordination mechanisms are distinct from both building communication channels and modularizing processes.

     Grade

     A survey of 126 offshored processes

     Design

     Survey.

     Year

     2011

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     126 offshored business processes.

     Limits

     Business process offshoring, one setting; survey measures.

     Later work

     Read with Herbsleb and Mockus (2003): the cost of distance falls when coordination needs are designed down or met by shared understanding, the same lever the GitLab case describes in its handbook.

534. Stark 1986. Rethinking internal labor markets: new insights from a comparative perspective, American Sociological Review 51(4), 492 to 504

     Internal labor markets take mirrored forms: firms in a market environment reduce uncertainty about labor through internal bureaucratic rules with a classificatory logic, while the socialist firm, facing a bureaucratic environment, responds with internal market transactions based on affiliative ties. The market-like character of these internal mechanisms is sharpest in Hungary's semi-autonomous subcontracting units inside the enterprise.

     Grade

     A comparative analysis with one national reform as its case

     Design

     Comparative institutional analysis of internal labor markets in capitalist and socialist firms, with an analysis of a Hungarian reform.

     Year

     1986

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Firms in market and in socialist economies; Hungary's semi-autonomous subcontracting units inside the enterprise, which the abstract calls recently established (Héthy dates the Hungarian work partnerships to the early 1980s).

     Limits

     Only the abstract was read; the evidence base for the Hungarian units is not stated there.

535. Staw and colleagues 1981. Threat rigidity effects in organizational behavior: a multilevel analysis, Administrative Science Quarterly 26(4), from page 501

     Evidence from several levels of analysis shows a restriction in information processing and a constriction of control under threat; the authors explore mechanisms that could produce such an effect at several levels, and its possible functional and dysfunctional consequences.

     Grade

     A review of earlier evidence at several levels, with no new data

     Design

     Review of evidence at the individual, group, and organizational levels for a general threat-rigidity effect, with possible mechanisms and consequences.

     Year

     1981

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     None of its own; evidence summarized from several levels of analysis.

     Limits

     A review with no new data; read from the abstract, not the text, so the studies reviewed are not listed here.

     Later work

     Cameron, Kim, and Whetten (1987), in 334 institutions of higher education, found centralization affected by turbulence but not by decline.

536. Steer and Cable 1978. Internal organization and profit: an empirical analysis of large U.K. companies, The Journal of Industrial Economics 27(1), 13 to 30

     Not verified against its source: the results section could not be read, so the finding is secondhand. Not read in the article. Capon and colleagues (1987) report that Steer and Cable found firms with optimal structures (a single business with a functional form, or a diversified firm with a multidivisional form that separates corporate from division roles) outperformed firms with nonoptimal ones (a holding company, a diversified firm with a functional form, or a multidivisional form whose corporate office is too involved in the divisions); Reid (1987) counts the study among the early tests that favored the M-form hypothesis.

     Grade

     A multi-firm statistical study

     Design

     Cross-sectional regression of profitability on organizational form, controlling for size, growth, and control type.

     Year

     1978

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     82 large U.K. companies, 1967 to 1971.

     Limits

     Results known only from secondary accounts; one country and five years.

     Later work

     Hoskisson, Hill, and Kim (1993) reviewed this group of tests. Bettis and Chen, in Risk, Strategy, and Management (JAI Press, 1990), report that Thompson (1981) reanalyzed the Steer and Cable data using financial market returns, and that the difference Steer and Cable found was due to poor performance by firms organized as holding companies rather than superior performance by firms organized into M-form structures.

537. Steinberg 2022. From automobile capitalism to platform capitalism: Toyotism as a prehistory of digital platforms, Organization Studies 43(7), 1069 to 1090 (online July 2021)

     Steinberg traces the platform concept and data-driven production practice to the Toyota Production System, parses the platform into two types (the stack and the intermediary), and argues that the data-intensive production of firms such as Uber and Amazon continues the organizational paradigms of the automobile industry, cautioning against assuming that new technologies require new organizational forms.

     Grade

     A historical and conceptual argument

     Design

     Historical and conceptual analysis of the term and practice of the platform.

     Year

     2022

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     The automobile industry over the twentieth century, the Toyota Production System, and American and Japanese analyses of it.

     Limits

     No new data on structure; an argument from history and terminology.

538. Stettner and Lavie 2013. Ambidexterity under scrutiny: exploration and exploitation via internal organization, alliances, and acquisitions, Strategic Management Journal 35(13), 1903 to 1929 (online 2013, in print 2014)

     Balancing exploration and exploitation within a mode (internal organization, alliances, or acquisitions) undermines performance because of conflicting routines, negative transfer, and limited specialization; balancing across modes enhances it more. Exploring through acquisitions or alliances while exploiting through internal organization enhanced these firms' performance.

     Grade

     A quantitative study of 190 firms

     Design

     Panel analysis of exploration and exploitation across modes of operation.

     Year

     2013

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     190 U.S.-based prepackaged software firms, 1990 to 2001.

     Limits

     One industry.

     Later work

     A challenge to doing both inside one firm: exploration may be better placed outside it.

539. Stewart 2006. A meta-analytic review of relationships between team design features and team performance, Journal of Management 32(1), 29 to 55

     Increased autonomy and intrateam coordination corresponded with higher team performance, though the effect varied with task type. Aggregated member ability and disposition correlated positively with performance, member heterogeneity correlated near zero, project and management teams performed slightly better with more members, task meaningfulness had a modest and inconsistent relationship, and leadership, especially transformational and empowering leadership, improved performance.

     Grade

     A meta-analysis of 93 studies

     Design

     Quantitative review (meta-analysis) of relationships between team design features and team performance.

     Year

     2006

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     93 studies.

     Limits

     Team-level design features rather than the organization's structure; the abstract does not give the effect sizes or which task types moderate the autonomy effect.

     Later work

     A meta-analytic test of the autonomy claim of socio-technical design.

540. Stjerne and Svejenova 2016. Connecting temporary and permanent organizing: tensions and boundary work in sequential film projects, Organization Studies 37(12), 1771 to 1792

     Tensions arose at several levels, and boundary work and boundary roles addressed them, bringing in the shadows of past and future projects. Ongoing work at the boundaries affects how connected the permanent and temporary organizing are and what they achieve; the study challenges an overly bracketed view of temporary organizations.

     Grade

     One case study

     Design

     In-depth process study of a permanent organization and a series of temporary ones.

     Year

     2016

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     A Danish film production company producing a novel children's film and its sequels, in a troubled industry.

     Limits

     One company.

     Later work

     Part of the 2016 Organization Studies special issue on temporary organizing (Bakker, DeFillippi, Schwab, and Sydow 2016).

541. Stonham 1997a. Demergers and the Hanson experience. Part one: the prelude, European Management Journal 15(3), 266 to 274

     Hanson, a diversified industrial holding company built through acquisitions, lost favor with investors and saw its share price fall before announcing in 1996 that it would split into four companies; its management approach (short-term earnings focus, buying and selling businesses, little internal investment, high dividends, complex accounting and tax arrangements, and a culture of financial engineering) magnified the harm of a worsening climate for conglomerates.

     Grade

     One case study

     Design

     Case study of one firm.

     Year

     1997

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Hanson plc.

     Limits

     One firm; abstract only.

     Later work

     Part two (Stonham 1997b) covers the demerger itself.

542. Stopford and Wells 1972. Managing the Multinational Enterprise: Organization of the Firm and Ownership of the Subsidiaries, Basic Books, New York

     Structure evolved in stages, from an international division set as an umbrella over foreign business to global structures: area divisions, worldwide product divisions, or a mixed structure of the two. Among the firms with more than 40 percent of their sales abroad, most had area divisions, and none of the firms with area divisions had less than 25 percent of their sales abroad. The authors expected a grid structure, with worldwide product divisions and area divisions sharing jurisdiction, to emerge, though its precise nature remained unclear. The book classifies the firms by structure and by foreign product diversity; that relationship was read only in table titles, and Qiu and Donaldson (2012) name foreign product diversification as one element of the model.

     Grade

     A study of 187 U.S. multinational enterprises

     Design

     Study of the organizational structures of U.S.-based multinational enterprises and how structure changed with their international strategies (foreign product diversity and the importance of foreign sales), traced through stages of structural change.

     Year

     1972

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     187 U.S. manufacturing enterprises on Fortune's list of the 500 largest in 1963 or 1964 that held 25 percent or more of the equity in manufacturing facilities in six or more foreign countries at the end of 1963, with structures followed into 1968.

     Limits

     Read in Internet Archive full-text snippets, not in full; the tables relating structure to foreign product diversity were not read. U.S. firms of the 1960s.

     Later work

     Egelhoff (1988) found some of its relationships supported and others not, and added the size of foreign manufacturing; Wolf and Egelhoff (2002) found general support among German firms.

543. Strikwerda and Stoelhorst 2009. The emergence and evolution of the multidimensional organization, California Management Review 51(4), 11 to 31

     The interviews confirmed a tension between the need to exploit synergies across business units (through shared service centers, corporate account management, and matrix forms) and the need for clear accountability. Seven of the 36 firms had evolved a multidimensional form: they are organized around several dimensions at once (for example region, product, and account), hold different managers accountable for performance on each, organize resources and market opportunities separately so that unit managers depend on each other, and treat the customer as the main profit center, which the authors say avoids the matrix's two bosses.

     Grade

     Interviews at 36 Dutch organizations and five case studies

     Design

     Interviews with the CEO, CFO, or controller of large organizations about alternatives to the M-form, followed by detailed case studies of five of the firms found to be multidimensional.

     Year

     2009

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     36 large organizations in the Netherlands, including subsidiaries of non-Dutch multinationals and some nonprofits; case studies of ABN-AMRO, Ahold's Albert Heijn, IBM, PwC, and Van Hattum & Blankevoort.

     Limits

     Dutch organizations only; interviews with one senior executive per organization; the case studies were written with the firms and approved by them before publication.

     Later work

     Galbraith (2010) treats multidimensional and reconfigurable designs in a conceptual article (only its record was read).

544. Sytch and colleagues 2018. Collaborative by design? How matrix organizations see/do alliances, Organization Science 29(6), 1130 to 1148

     Matrix firms were more likely than nonmatrix firms to enter complex alliances (multilateral, multifunctional, or with partners from diverse industries). Unexpectedly, the stock market penalized matrix firms that entered multifunctional alliances, which the authors call a double-complexity discount.

     Grade

     A quantitative study of many firms' alliances, with interviews

     Design

     Quantitative analysis of alliance entry and stock market reactions, combined with semistructured interviews.

     Year

     2018

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Firms with and without matrix structures (the abstract does not give the sample).

     Limits

     The abstract does not give the sample or the measure of matrix structure; the stock market reaction is an indirect measure of the alliances' value.

     Later work

     Raises the question the authors frame as managerial confidence against competence in complex collaboration. Sytch and Wohlgezogen's 2026 review for the Joint Research Centre describes the study as archival and quantitative, with 500 U.S. firms, and reports that 5.6 percent of companies sampled from the Fortune 500 list were matrix firms when only formal, wide-scope matrices were counted; that is the authors' later account, not the 2018 article's, whose text was not read.

545. Sytch and Wohlgezogen 2026. Solving the integration challenge: a review of research and best practices for high-performance matrix organisations, Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg, JRC145912 (an external study report for the European Commission's Joint Research Centre; Laurine Heris and Paul Smits, editors; ISBN 978-92-68-39416-8)

     The authors conclude that robust empirical evidence on the performance of matrix organizations is scant: most claims about their advantages and disadvantages rest on anecdotes or single case studies, virtually no research examines how the managerial capabilities said to make a matrix work affect its effectiveness, and no longitudinal study tracks whether mature matrices outperform young ones. The cross-sectional studies suggest that matrices can raise technical success, new-product implementation, and collaboration, but may also reduce role clarity and, in some situations, investor confidence. Prevalence estimates run from 2 percent of companies (Stopford and Wells, on 1966 data) and 5.6 percent of firms sampled from the Fortune 500 when only formal, wide-scope matrices are counted (Sytch, Wohlgezogen, and Zajac 2018), to 84 and 96 percent in surveys that rest on employees' or managers' own descriptions.

     Grade

     A narrative review of the research

     Design

     Narrative review of research and practice on matrix organizations, written as an external study report for the European Commission's Joint Research Centre, with tables of prevalence and effectiveness studies, published case evidence, and recommendations for public organizations.

     Year

     2026

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Six published estimates of matrix prevalence (1972 to 2018), eight cross-sectional studies of matrix effectiveness (1969 to 2020), and published cases of ABB, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, the World Bank, and Jones Lang LaSalle.

     Limits

     A narrative review, not a systematic review or a meta-analysis: it states no search method. It was written to advise public organizations, including EU bodies, and its two authors, with Zajac, wrote one of the studies it reviews (Sytch, Wohlgezogen, and Zajac 2018). Its case evidence comes partly from teaching cases, which it says are often portrayed favorably. Its reference list contains a stray drafting note left by an editing tool (after the Egelhoff and Wolf entry).

546. Takayama and Cannon 1979. Formal polity and power distribution in American Protestant denominations, The Sociological Quarterly 20(3), 321 to 332

     Data from the 26 denominations suggest a relationship between formal polity and the distribution of power, and the relationship held independent of size, administrative specialization, and bureaucratic formalization; the authors conclude that constitutionally defined and normatively shaped aspects of polity should be taken into account when studying power distributions in purposive organizations.

     Grade

     A comparative study of 26 denominations

     Design

     A comparative quantitative study of whether a denomination's formal polity (congregational, presbyterian, or episcopal) relates to the distribution of power among its structural levels, with formal polity measured as the authority of local churches to hire and fire their ministers and power distribution as the location of the pastoral placement bureau.

     Year

     1979

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     26 American Protestant denominations.

     Limits

     Read in its abstract only; a single measure of each construct; American Protestant bodies in the 1970s; the abstract does not say which polity concentrates power where.

     Later work

     Chaves (1993) treats denominations as dual structures of religious authority and agency.

547. Takeda and Boyns 2014. Management, accounting and philosophy: the development of management accounting at Kyocera, 1959-2013, Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal 27(2), 317 to 356

     Both the amoeba management system and its accounting system contain a mixture of influences, traditional Asian and Japanese ones and others specific to Inamori and Kyocera, so the approach may transfer within Japan or Asia, while outside that context cultural conflicts, though not necessarily insurmountable, may lead to incomplete applications.

     Grade

     One company traced through published sources

     Design

     Historical analysis of Kyocera's philosophy, its amoeba management system, and its management accounting system from secondary sources, including Inamori's semi-autobiographical works.

     Year

     2014

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Kyocera, 1959 to 2013.

     Limits

     One company, from secondary and largely self-authored sources; the abstract says nothing about internal prices.

     Later work

     A scholarly history of Kyocera's amoeba management; Adler and Hiromoto (2012) and Adler and colleagues (2019) also study Kyocera.

548. Teece 1980. The diffusion of an administrative innovation, Management Science 26(5), 464 to 470

     The spread of the M-form, defined as quasi-independent divisions with profit center standing monitored by a headquarters, was fitted well by a simple deterministic model of the kind used for technological innovations, suggesting that diffusion research on technology applies to administrative innovation.

     Grade

     A multi-firm statistical study of adoption timing

     Design

     Diffusion model fitted to the timing of M-form adoption.

     Year

     1980

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Two classes of large industrial firms (the abstract does not give counts).

     Limits

     Describes the timing of adoption, not its effects.

     Later work

     Fligstein (1985) and Palmer, Jennings, and Zhou (1993) offered sociological accounts of the same diffusion, stressing executives' backgrounds, imitation, and institutional pressure rather than efficiency.

549. Teece 1981. Internal organization and economic performance: an empirical analysis of the profitability of principal firms, The Journal of Industrial Economics 30(2), 173 to 199

     Not verified against its source: no abstract or text could be read, so the finding is secondhand. Not recorded from the text. Secondary accounts cite it as finding that M-form adopters outperformed comparable firms in their industries.

     Grade

     Not graded

     Design

     An empirical analysis of the profitability of principal firms by internal organization, as the title states; the design was not read.

     Year

     1981

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Principal firms (the counts and industries were not read).

     Limits

     Finding not yet read.

     Later work

     Reviewed in Hoskisson, Hill, and Kim (1993).

550. Tourish and Willmott 2023. Despotic leadership and ideological manipulation at Theranos: towards a theory of hegemonic totalism in the workplace, Organization Studies 44(11), 1801 to 1824

     Business leaders may engage in despotic practices while invoking apparently positive ideals to enforce the performance of consent by employees; the study identifies three main countervailing forces that limit hegemonic totalism.

     Grade

     One case study

     Design

     Case study built from empirical material on one company, used to develop the notion of hegemonic totalism.

     Year

     2023

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Theranos, a Silicon Valley biotech company that went bankrupt in 2018.

     Limits

     One extreme case, analyzed from empirical material on the company (the abstract does not say what material).

     Later work

     A recent warning on the dark side of coordination by ideology in a business setting.

551. Trist and Bamforth 1951. Some social and psychological consequences of the longwall method of coal-getting, Human Relations 4(1), 3 to 38

     The hand-got methods rested on small, self-selected, pair-based groups that took on the whole coal-getting task and had responsible autonomy. The mechanized longwall method spread the cycle over three shifts of specialized roles, broke up that pattern, and brought defensive reactions such as self-compensatory absenteeism. The authors concluded that the method needed a qualitative change so that a social as well as a technological whole could exist, with responsible autonomy restored to primary groups that each have a satisfying sub-whole as their task.

     Grade

     An interview-based field study in one industry

     Design

     Field study of the longwall method as a technological system and a social structure, through two years of repeated discussions and long interviews with some twenty key informants from the coal-face occupations, interviews with managers of all grades up to Area Manager, group discussions at two divisional schools for colliery managers, and talks with three psychiatrists; Bamforth had worked at the coal face for 18 years.

     Year

     1951

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     British coal mining soon after nationalization: about twenty key informants among the face workers, managers up to Area Manager, and three psychiatrists; the pits are not named.

     Limits

     Qualitative and interview-based, with no measured comparison of outcomes; informants chosen by the researchers; one industry.

     Later work

     Trist, Higgin, Murray, and Pollock (1963) developed it into the argument that the same technology admits alternative work organizations. Kelly (1978) argued that the case studies supported only one form, autonomous groups, and underrated pay.

552. Trist and colleagues 1963. Organizational Choice: Capabilities of Groups at the Coal Face under Changing Technologies, Tavistock Publications, London; reissued by Routledge, 2013

     As the publisher's description states it: the sociotechnical system as a whole is the object of study, and alternative modes of work organization can exist for the same technology, giving the possibility of organizational choice.

     Grade

     Several field studies in one industry

     Design

     Comparative field studies of work organization at the coal face under changing technologies.

     Year

     1963

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     British coal mining groups (details not confirmed).

     Limits

     Only the publisher's description was read; performance comparisons reported in the book are not recorded here.

     Later work

     Kelly (1978) contested 'organizational choice', arguing that the case studies showed the superior effectiveness of only one form, autonomous groups.

553. Turato and colleagues 2024. The insights of allied health professionals transitioning from a matrix structure to a centralized profession-based structure within a public hospital setting, Journal of Organization Design 13(4), 197 to 212

     Staff perceived the centralized, profession-based structure with single points of accountability as superior to the matrix in this context, citing better governance, administrative efficiency, cost savings from aligning budget and professional management, better workforce planning and flexibility, and clearer training and succession pathways.

     Grade

     One case study

     Design

     Case study with a qualitative staff survey run across three years after a restructure.

     Year

     2024

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Allied health professionals in the bed-based services of one public hospital.

     Limits

     One hospital; perceptions of the staff who moved, collected after the change; no performance data reported in the abstract.

554. Turco 2016. The Conversational Firm: Rethinking Bureaucracy in the Age of Social Media, Columbia University Press, New York

     As the publisher's description states it: open dialogue across the hierarchy produced an engaged workforce and an ability to change, but the firm faced difficulties, and its experience shows which bureaucratic elements persist even when a company tries to discard them.

     Grade

     One ethnographic case study

     Design

     Ten-month ethnography.

     Year

     2016

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     One firm, TechCo, a fast-growing social media marketing company.

     Limits

     One firm; only the description was read.

     Later work

     Read with Lee and Edmondson (2017) on what counts as self-management: the publisher's description and the endorsements on its page report open communication alongside hierarchy and bureaucratic elements that remained, not decentralized authority.

555. Turner and Miterev 2019. The organizational design of the project-based organization, Project Management Journal 50(4), 487 to 498

     Identified three common organizational design configurations of project-based organizations and discussed internal and external factors that can influence the choice among them; the findings are summarized in five overriding conclusions.

     Grade

     An interview study of 12 project-based organizations

     Design

     Interview study of the organizational design choices of project-based organizations and their antecedents.

     Year

     2019

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     12 project-based organizations in various sectors.

     Limits

     Only the abstract was read, and it does not name the three configurations or the factors. Interviews only; the abstract does not give the sectors, the countries, or how many people were interviewed. Published in a project management journal, not one of the major organization journals.

     Later work

     Follows Miterev, Mancini, and Turner (2017), a literature review that proposes the design choices available for the project-based organization from a contingency perspective.

556. Tushman and colleagues 2010. Organizational designs and innovation streams, Industrial and Corporate Change 19(5), 1331 to 1366

     Ambidextrous designs were relatively more effective in executing innovation streams than functional, cross-functional, and spinout designs. Transitions to ambidextrous designs were associated with more innovation, and shifts away with less. The senior team's ability to deal with contradictory internal architectures is a crucial determinant of a firm's ability to exploit in the short term and explore over time.

     Grade

     A longitudinal field study of 13 business units

     Design

     In-depth longitudinal field study of organization designs and innovation streams.

     Year

     2010

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     13 business units and 22 innovations.

     Limits

     Thirteen units; the authors include the form's originators.

     Later work

     The scholarly evidence closest to the original structural claim.

557. Uludağ and colleagues 2022. Revealing the state of the art of large-scale agile development research: a systematic mapping study, Journal of Systems and Software 194, article 111473

     The study describes large-scale agile endeavors reported in industry, maps existing research, identifies influential studies and central themes, and sets a research agenda covering thirteen years of research and practice.

     Grade

     A mapping study of 136 studies

     Design

     Systematic mapping study with a classification framework.

     Year

     2022

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     136 studies of large-scale agile development.

     Limits

     A map of what has been studied, not of what works.

     Later work

     Shows the growth of primary research since Dikert, Paasivaara, and Lassenius (2016).

558. Umezaki and Yashiro 2019. 「新時代の日本的経営」の何が新しかったのか？: 人事方針（HR Policy）変化の分析 (What is new in the Japanese-style management system? An analysis of HR policy processes in Japanese companies), RIETI Discussion Paper Series 19-J-009, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry, Tokyo, February 2019 (in Japanese, with an English abstract; no published English translation)

     An employment portfolio of two categories of human resources, flow and stock, was already set out during the bubble economy of the late 1980s, so the 1995 report did not create it in response to falling profits. The report's novelty was a third category, a group built on advanced, professional skills whose members were meant to be short-term employees, unlike the internal professional tracks of the 1980s, and it kept the earlier policy's long-term perspective and emphasis on developing people. Whether to keep three categories or return to two remained disputed, and no growth of the professional group could be confirmed by the early 2000s: it was set out as policy but did not take hold in practice.

     Grade

     A historical study of one employers' federation's policy, from its documents and oral histories

     Design

     Historical analysis of the human resource policy that Nikkeiren, the Japan Federation of Employers' Associations, set for Japanese companies, from its reports and from oral histories the authors recorded with its former staff, centered on its 1995 report on Japanese management for a new era.

     Year

     2019

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Nikkeiren's reports from the 1970s on and oral history interviews with former Nikkeiren staff (the number of interviews is not given in the abstracts).

     Limits

     A study of one employers' federation's policy documents and the recollections of its staff, not of what firms did; the claims here rest on the Japanese and English abstracts, not the paper's text.

     Later work

     Maeura (2015) studies how Japanese firms actually set the mix of regular and non-regular workers.

559. Urban and Czerska 2016. Reaching an entrepreneurial management system of amoebas: a qualitative insight into the European experiences, Economics and Management (Ekonomia i Zarządzanie) 8(1), 7 to 18

     The companies introduced amoeba management for different reasons and along different paths, matched to their management styles and national cultures; the authors propose a four-level scale of amoeba system maturity.

     Grade

     Three case studies

     Design

     Qualitative multiple case study.

     Year

     2016

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Three companies that introduced amoeba management, one in Sweden and two in Poland.

     Limits

     Three firms, practice-oriented and qualitative; no measure of outcomes.

560. Uzzi 1997. Social structure and competition in interfirm networks: the paradox of embeddedness, Administrative Science Quarterly 42(1), 35 to 67

     Embeddedness is a logic of exchange that promotes economies of time, integrative agreements, and other benefits. These positive effects rise up to a threshold, after which embeddedness can derail economic performance by making firms vulnerable to exogenous shocks or insulating them from information outside their network. The effects vary with the quality of ties, the structure of the network, and a firm's position in it.

     Grade

     An ethnographic study of 23 firms

     Design

     Ethnographic fieldwork on how embedded ties between firms affect economic action and outcomes.

     Year

     1997

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     23 women's better-dress apparel firms in New York City, with sales from $500,000 to $1 billion; interviews with their chief executives and selected staff.

     Limits

     One industry and one city; ethnographic, so the threshold is a proposition rather than an estimate.

     Later work

     The embeddedness paradox became a standard caution in the network literature; Podolny and Page (1998) called for more attention to the constraints and dysfunctions of network forms.

561. Uzzi and Barsness 1998. Contingent employment in British establishments: organizational determinants of the use of fixed-term hires and part-time workers, Social Forces 76(3), 967 to 1005

     The use of fixed-term hires and part-time workers depends on organizational structures that help or hinder flexible employment strategies, including size and age, management and labor relations, governance, the organization of work, job control technology, and recruitment options.

     Grade

     A representative survey of British establishments

     Design

     Analysis of organizational factors in the intensity of two kinds of contingent worker use.

     Year

     1998

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     A representative sample of United Kingdom establishments.

     Limits

     Cross-sectional; the abstract does not report effect sizes.

     Later work

     Consistent with Davis-Blake and Uzzi (1993): the flexible workforce is shaped by structure, not only by cost.

562. Valentine and Edmondson 2015. Team scaffolds: how mesolevel structures enable role-based coordination in temporary groups, Organization Science 26(2), 405 to 422

     Before the redesign, staff coordinated in ad hoc groupings that were flexible but lacked mutual accountability, shared understanding, and safety in reaching across roles. The redesign introduced team scaffolds, mesolevel structures that bounded a set of roles rather than specific people and gave them collective responsibility for a whole task. Team processes followed despite unstable membership, coordination patterns changed, and patient throughput time improved by 40 percent.

     Grade

     One case study

     Design

     Multimethod study of a redesign, with quantitative data that include a two-mode network of coordination patterns.

     Year

     2015

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     One hospital emergency department.

     Limits

     One department; the throughput gain is a before and after comparison.

     Later work

     A recent study of fluid, ad hoc coordination among experts; it suggests the pure ad hoc grouping needs a light structure to work, which qualifies a reading of adhocracy as structure-free.

563. Valentine and colleagues 2017. Flash organizations: crowdsourcing complex work by structuring crowds as organizations, Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 3523 to 3537

     Flash organizations carried out open-ended, complex goals previously out of reach for crowdsourcing, by encoding the division of labor into de-individualized roles and reconfiguring the structure continuously.

     Grade

     A system deployment reported by its designers

     Design

     Design and deployment of a system that structures crowd workers into computationally represented roles, teams, and hierarchies that can be reconfigured through a version-control model.

     Year

     2017

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Crowd workers from a globally distributed online workforce, assembled into flash organizations for product design, software development, and game production.

     Limits

     A demonstration by the system's designers; few deployments; no comparison group.

     Later work

     Shows formal structure (roles, teams, and hierarchy) encoded in software rather than abandoned; Kellogg, Valentine, and Christin (2020) review the wider shift of direction and evaluation into algorithms.

564. Van de Ven and colleagues 1976. Determinants of coordination modes within organizations, American Sociological Review 41(2), from p. 322

     The results largely support the hypotheses: each determining factor differs in the degree and kind of its influence on the mix of coordination mechanisms a unit uses.

     Grade

     A quantitative study of 197 work units in one agency

     Design

     Tests of nine hypotheses relating task uncertainty, interdependence, and unit size to the use of impersonal, personal, and group modes of coordination, drawn from Thompson (1967) and others.

     Year

     1976

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     197 work units within one large employment security agency.

     Limits

     One agency; read from the abstract, not the text, so which hypotheses failed and the size of the effects are not given here.

565. Vanneste 2017. How much do industry, corporation, and business matter, really? A meta-analysis, Strategy Science 2(2), 121 to 139

     On the variance measure, industry, corporate, and business effects are 0.08, 0.14, and 0.36; on the standard deviation measure, 0.28, 0.36, and 0.59. Business effects have about twice the explanatory power of corporate effects, and corporate effects explain somewhat more than industry effects.

     Grade

     A meta-analysis of 16 variance decomposition studies

     Design

     Meta-analysis of variance decomposition studies of performance differences, with simulations showing that the sum-of-squares effect-size measure depends on a sample's dimensions; the meta-analysis therefore uses the variance and standard deviation measures.

     Year

     2017

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     18 samples from 16 studies, N = 225,183 (the simulation check used 25 samples from nine studies, N = 212,112).

     Limits

     A corporate effect is the share of performance differences associated with which corporation owns a business; it bundles corporate strategy, the center's structure and roles, and anything else that varies by parent, so it does not isolate the corporate center's design. The abstract does not say how performance is measured. The full text was not read.

     Later work

     It gives, on comparable measures, pooled estimates for the variance decomposition literature that Bowman and Helfat (2001) reviewed, where early studies had found little corporate effect.

566. Varottil 2015. Corporate law in colonial India: rise and demise of the managing agency system, NUS Centre for Asian Legal Studies Working Paper 15/11 (NUS Law Working Paper 2015/016), National University of Singapore, December 2015

     Under the system a managing agent (an individual, a partnership, or a company) was appointed by contract to manage one or more joint stock companies, held shares in them, and controlled their boards; agency contracts usually ran twenty or thirty years, the agents were paid a share of profits plus commissions on purchases and sales, and the agency firms were largely sole proprietorships or partnerships, and at most private limited companies, so that a few people kept control. The agents ran the companies in their portfolio as a single unit, moving money raised by one company to another and trading among them on terms that were not necessarily at arm's length, which brought economies of scale, superior management, diversification, and access to finance but also the abuse of each company's minority shareholders. Indian law first restricted the system in 1936, tightened the restrictions after 1947, and abolished it with effect from 1970.

     Grade

     A historical study of one national system from secondary and official sources

     Design

     Historical analysis of the managing agency system through a corporate law and governance framework, drawing on secondary histories, official inquiry reports, and the companies legislation.

     Year

     2015

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     The managing agency system of colonial and independent India, from the agency houses of the early nineteenth century to the system's abolition in 1970, with named agency firms such as Carr, Tagore and Company.

     Limits

     A legal and governance history built from secondary sources, not a quantitative study; a working paper; its outcome of interest is shareholder protection.

     Later work

     Mazumdar (2008) argues that the gap-filling explanation once given for the managing agencies is the one now given for business groups, and that it explains neither the multi-company form nor the contractual vesting of management in an agency.

567. Venaik and colleagues 2005. Dual paths to performance: the impact of global pressures on MNC subsidiary conduct and performance, Journal of International Business Studies 36(6), 655 to 675

     There were two independent paths to better subsidiary performance, one through networking and inter-unit learning and one through subsidiary autonomy and innovation. The dual-path finding held after controlling for a wide range of environmental pressures and firm and industry factors, but was rejected when environmental controls were left out.

     Grade

     A survey of subsidiary managers

     Design

     Survey of managers in MNC subsidiaries, with a structural model of learning, innovation, and performance.

     Year

     2005

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Managers in subsidiaries of multinational firms; a note in the article refers to 163 responses in the sample.

     Limits

     A survey of managers; the full text was not read, so who responded and how they were chosen are not confirmed here.

     Later work

     Shows how sensitive structure-performance findings in MNCs are to the controls used.

568. Vera and Kuntz 2007. Process-based organization design and hospital efficiency, Health Care Management Review 32(1), 55 to 65

     A high degree of process-based organization had a moderate but significant positive effect on hospital efficiency. The authors add that the effect depends on implementation rules, in particular mobilizing physicians' participation and creating an adequate organizational culture.

     Grade

     A survey of the hospitals of one German state

     Design

     Hospital efficiency measured by data envelopment analysis on data from the state's statistical office, and the degree of process-based organization measured by a written questionnaire to chief executives, related by factor analysis and regression.

     Year

     2007

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     The hospitals of the German federal state of Rhineland-Palatinate: data from the state's statistical office and a questionnaire sent to the chief executives of all 92 hospitals (the number that answered is not given in the abstract).

     Limits

     One German state, self-reported structure from chief executives, and efficiency rather than quality of care; the abstract does not give the response count, the years of data, or the effect size.

     Later work

     Kuntz and Vera (2007) found positive efficiency effects of process orientation within a wider test of modular organization.

569. Villalonga 2004. Diversification discount or premium? New evidence from the business information tracking series, The Journal of Finance 59(2), 479 to 506

     With business units defined from census data rather than reported segments, the same sample shows a diversification premium, robust to variations in sample and measures.

     Grade

     A multi-firm statistical study

     Design

     Reanalysis with census establishment-level data.

     Year

     2004

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     A U.S. sample that shows a discount on segment data.

     Limits

     Measures diversification, not structure.

     Later work

     A disagreement with Berger and Ofek (1995).

570. Vissa and colleagues 2010. Business group affiliation and firm search behavior in India: responsiveness and focus of attention, Organization Science 21(3), 696 to 712

     Group-affiliated firms were more externally oriented in setting aspiration levels, and group affiliation determined how firms responded to performance feedback in different search domains; the authors conclude that organizational form and governance belong in the theory of organizational search.

     Grade

     A multi-firm study of Indian companies

     Design

     Comparison of business-group-affiliated and unaffiliated Indian firms in how they set performance aspirations and adjust internal technology search and external market search after performance feedback.

     Year

     2010

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Indian firms, affiliated and unaffiliated (the abstract does not give the count or the years).

     Limits

     One country; the abstract does not describe the sample size or period.

     Later work

     A recent Organization Science test of how the group form changes member firms' behavior, beside the profitability evidence (Khanna and Palepu 2000a; Carney and colleagues 2011).

571. Volberda and colleagues 2012. Contingency Fit, Institutional Fit, and Firm Performance: A Metafit Approach to Organization-Environment Relationships, Organization Science 23(4), 1040-1054

     Contingency fit and institutional fit give complementary and interdependent explanations of firm performance. Firms in quasi fit, rather than perfect contingency fit or optimal institutional fit, perform better when they improve either. Firms with high contingency fit are less vulnerable to deviation from institutional fit, while firms with perfect institutional fit slightly lower their performance when they strive for contingency fit.

     Grade

     A survey of 3,259 respondents in 1,904 companies

     Design

     Survey-based test of how contingency fit (to task environmental demands) and institutional fit (to institutional demands on organizational design) interact to affect firm performance, a metafit approach.

     Year

     2012

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     3,259 respondents from 1,904 companies across a broad range of industries and firm size classes.

     Limits

     Survey data; only the abstract was read, so the country, the measures of fit, and the performance measures were not checked.

572. von Nordenflycht 2007. Is public ownership bad for professional service firms? Ad agency ownership, performance, and creativity, Academy of Management Journal 50(2), 429 to 445

     Public ownership was associated with inferior performance for small agencies but not for large ones, and ownership had no association with agency creativity, so public ownership did not stop agencies from competing on strategies that need highly skilled professionals. The results challenge existing theories about the ownership of professional service firms.

     Grade

     A panel study of many advertising agencies

     Design

     Panel study of ownership, performance, and creativity.

     Year

     2007

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     A panel of advertising agencies (the abstract does not give the numbers).

     Limits

     One industry; sample size not in the abstract.

     Later work

     Von Nordenflycht (2014) widened the question to five professional services from 1960 to 2003.

573. von Nordenflycht 2014. Does the emergence of publicly traded professional service firms undermine the theory of the professional partnership? A cross-industry historical analysis, Journal of Professions and Organization 1(2), 137 to 160

     Professional norms are the first-order factor: public corporations are absent from an industry mainly because of professional norms. The value of capital is second order: where norms do not bind, public corporations track the relative value of capital and firm size. The idea that public ownership is a mistake applies, if at all, only to small firms; public ownership appears viable for large professional service firms.

     Grade

     A historical comparison across five professional industries

     Design

     Cross-industry and cross-firm historical analysis of where and when publicly traded corporations emerged in professional services.

     Year

     2014

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Five professional services, 1960 to 2003.

     Limits

     Historical patterns, not a causal test of governance on performance.

     Later work

     Qualifies Greenwood and Empson's (2003) efficiency case for the partnership.

574. von Krogh and colleagues 2003. Community, joining, and specialization in open source software innovation: a case study, Research Policy 32(7), 1217 to 1241

     The study generated the constructs of joining script, specialization, contribution barriers, and feature gifts to explain how newcomers join a developer community and first contribute code.

     Grade

     One case study

     Design

     Inductive case study from multiple data sources.

     Year

     2003

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Freenet, a project developing a decentralized peer-to-peer file sharing network.

     Limits

     One project; theory building.

     Later work

     Dahlander and O'Mahony (2011) followed progression after joining, to lateral authority.

575. Wagner 1994. Participation's effects on performance and satisfaction: a reconsideration of research evidence, Academy of Management Review 19(2), 312 to 330

     Despite apparent differences among the eleven reviews' initial findings, all support the same conclusion: participation can have statistically significant effects on performance and satisfaction, but the average size of the effects is small enough to raise concerns about practical significance.

     Grade

     A meta-analytic reanalysis that compares eleven reviews

     Design

     Reanalysis of a recent review of research on participation and its relation to performance and satisfaction, compared with the findings of ten other reviews.

     Year

     1994

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Eleven reviews of research on participation and its relation to performance or satisfaction: one reanalyzed, ten compared with it.

     Limits

     Participation in decisions, not the overlapping-group structure itself; the abstract does not give the effect sizes or say how the primary studies measured participation.

     Later work

     Bears on the participative claims of Likert's System 4, whose support came largely from his own institute's surveys; it is the strongest test of participation as such in the ledger.

576. Wagner 2021. Dimensional research on organization structure: meta-analysis and conceptual redirection, Journal of Management & Organization 31(4), 1854 to 1871 (published online December 2021; issue of July 2025)

     Many of the interrelationships among five structural dimensions (formalization, standardization, specialization, vertical differentiation, and decentralization) have weakened since the earlier meta-analysis, which had found them significantly intercorrelated. The author reads this as failing to give consistent support to a central tenet of the bureaucratic structural model, that these dimensions go together, and concludes that dimensional structural research now lacks a viable theoretical foundation.

     Grade

     A meta-analysis of 346 correlations from 155 published articles

     Design

     Meta-analysis of the correlations among structural dimensions reported in dimensional structure research, set against an earlier meta-analysis of late twentieth-century studies.

     Year

     2021

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     346 correlations from 155 published articles.

     Limits

     The abstract does not say which relationships weakened or by how much. It tests whether the dimensions of bureaucracy cohere, not whether bureaucratic structure performs well. The full text was not read.

     Later work

     Four of the eleven dimensions in this series' dimensions layer (specialization, formalization, centralization, and layers and span) draw on the Aston measures (Pugh and others 1968), and two of them (specialization and formalization) also cite this study; it bears on reading a structure dimension by dimension rather than as a type.

577. Wald and colleagues 2025. Ten years after: the evolution of projectification in Germany, Norway, and Iceland, International Journal of Project Management 43(2), article 102696

     Projectification in 2022 was 34.5 percent in Germany, 41.9 percent in Norway, and 34.4 percent in Iceland: high in all three and converging, but plateauing. External projects had increased in Iceland and Germany. The structures had not kept pace: 47.9 percent of German organizations had a central project organization in 2022, down from 65.0 percent in 2013, and 33 percent of Icelandic organizations had one, while dedicated project careers lagged behind the share of project work (a project career index of 42.4 in Germany and 40.3 in Iceland on a scale of 1 to 100). The central project organization is, in the paper's words, a centralized project organization 'which in most organizations is called project management office (PMO)': a unit that facilitates the management, coordination, and control of projects and portfolios, not the project-based form itself.

     Grade

     A repeated survey of many organizations in three countries

     Design

     Replication of the 2013 to 2014 projectification surveys in Germany, Norway, and Iceland with a similar measure and sampling approach, adding the countries' project landscapes and whether project careers and central project organizations had grown with project work.

     Year

     2025

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     730 German companies and public organizations interviewed by telephone in 2022, 287 Norwegian organizations answering an online survey in 2022, and an Icelandic telephone survey drawn from a stratified sample of 504 organizations (the paper reports 98 fully completed interviews and an n of 106).

     Limits

     Shares of work are respondents' estimates, and the Norwegian and Icelandic samples were smaller than in the first wave. The central project organization and career questions were asked in Germany and Iceland only, so the structural side has no Norwegian figures and, for Iceland, no earlier wave to compare.

578. Walker and Lorsch 1968. Organizational choice: product vs. function, Harvard Business Review (November 1968)

     Both managements aimed at the same two objectives. Plant F met the first, maximizing current output within existing capabilities, with greater efficiency and at less cost; Plant P was clearly superior on the second, improving those capabilities, its productivity having risen 23 percent from 1963 to 1966. The authors conclude that the functional organization seems to lead to better results where stable performance of a routine task is desired, and the product organization where the task is less routine.

     Grade

     A comparison of two matched plants

     Design

     Comparative field study of two plants, one organized by function and one by product, on differentiation, integration, and results.

     Year

     1968

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Two plants closely matched in several ways, making the same product with similar markets and technology: Plant F, organized by function, and Plant P, organized by product.

     Limits

     Two plants; read through full-text search snippets of a 1978 reprint, not in full.

579. Wall and colleagues 1986. Outcomes of autonomous workgroups: a long-term field experiment, Academy of Management Journal 29(2), 280 to 304

     Autonomous workgroups had a substantial and lasting effect on intrinsic job satisfaction, a more temporary effect on extrinsic satisfaction, and no effect on work motivation or performance. At the organizational level productivity improved through the elimination of supervisory positions, and, contrary to prediction, labor turnover increased.

     Grade

     A long-term quasi-experiment in one company

     Design

     Long-term quasi-experiment on the implementation of autonomous workgroups.

     Year

     1986

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     One manufacturing environment (the abstract does not name the company).

     Limits

     One site; not randomized.

     Later work

     A key qualifier of the sociotechnical record: the gains came through removed supervision, not through greater individual effort. Cordery, Mueller, and Smith (1991) ran a parallel longitudinal study in minerals processing.

580. Weatherburn 2020. Human Relations' invented traditions: sociotechnical research and worker motivation at the interwar Rowntree Cocoa Works, Human Relations 73(7), 899 to 923

     The Rowntree research found financial incentives more important than social incentives, in contrast to the Hawthorne studies; the supposedly unique status of the Hawthorne studies is an invented tradition that shaped the Tavistock founders' outlook in 1947.

     Grade

     A historical archival study

     Design

     Historical study of archival sources on the Rowntree Cocoa Works incentive studies (from 1929) and the founding of the Tavistock Institute and Human Relations.

     Year

     2020

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Previously unstudied historical sources on the Incentives and Contentment studies (1938) by Clarence Northcott at the Rowntree Cocoa Works in York.

     Limits

     Historical; bears on the intellectual origins of the tradition, not on the effectiveness of work groups.

     Later work

     Adds a historical dissent to Kelly's (1978) argument that the tradition underrated pay.

581. Whitford and Zirpoli 2016. The network firm as a political coalition, Organization Studies 37(9), 1227 to 1248

     Strategic decisions at Fiat and its key suppliers shaped, and were shaped by, an interplay of frames and relational embedding within and across organizational boundaries; the network firm is best read as a political coalition whose politics shape and are shaped by the shifting boundaries of the firm.

     Grade

     One longitudinal case study

     Design

     Qualitative case study of fifteen years in one production network.

     Year

     2016

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     The production network around Fiat Auto, from its radical outsourcing in the 1990s through the alliance with General Motors (2001), near-bankruptcy (2004), return to profit (2007), and control of Chrysler (2009).

     Limits

     One network; an interpretive reconstruction rather than a test.

     Later work

     Extends the Carnegie model of the firm (March) to networks; it is one of the few recent major-journal studies of a hub firm that outsourced radically.

582. Whittington and colleagues 1999a. Chandlerism in post-war Europe: strategic and structural change in France, Germany and the UK, 1950 to 1993, Industrial and Corporate Change 8(3), 519 to 551

     Conglomerate strategies continued to spread but were typically less stable than related diversification; the divisional structure came to predominate in Europe, suppressing more indigenous forms; Chandler's model proved remarkably robust over time and across countries.

     Grade

     A multi-country study of large firms over four decades

     Design

     Longitudinal classification of the strategies and structures of large firms.

     Year

     1999

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Large firms in France, Germany, and the U.K., 1950 to 1993.

     Limits

     Three countries; classification by the researchers.

     Later work

     Kay (2002) read the same data as showing the conglomerate to be more persistent than the authors allowed; Whittington replied in the same issue. Mayer and Whittington (1999) drew the institutional implications.

583. Whittington and colleagues 1999b. Change and complementarities in the new competitive landscape: a European panel study, 1992 to 1996, Organization Science 10(5), 583 to 600

     Change in structure, processes, and boundaries was widespread but not revolutionary. High-performing firms innovated more and differently; piecemeal changes, IT excepted, delivered little performance benefit, while exploiting the full set of innovations was associated with high performance. Few firms exploited the complementarities, but those that did enjoyed high-performance premia.

     Grade

     A panel survey of European firms

     Design

     Large-scale survey panel of organizational innovation in European firms, 1992 to 1996, analyzed for complementarities.

     Year

     1999

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     European firms in the INNFORM survey (the abstract does not give the number).

     Limits

     Survey self-report; associational.

     Later work

     It is evidence that firms combine practices; the complementarity finding cuts against piecemeal mixing.

584. Wilkin 2013. I can't get no job satisfaction: meta-analysis comparing permanent and contingent workers, Journal of Organizational Behavior 34(1), 47 to 64

     Contingent workers report lower job satisfaction than permanent employees (d = -0.21), but with outlying studies removed the difference is small though significant (d = -0.06). Contingent workers are not one group: agency workers report lower satisfaction than permanent employees, while contractors report about the same.

     Grade

     A meta-analysis of 72 studies

     Design

     Meta-analysis of mean differences in job satisfaction between contingent workers and permanent employees, with moderator analyses by type of contingent work.

     Year

     2013

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     72 primary studies (N = 237,856).

     Limits

     Measures the attitudes of the workers in each tier, not the performance of firms built on a core and a periphery.

     Later work

     On our reading, it bears on the shamrock's distinction between its contractual fringe and its flexible labor force: the two tiers differ in how their members experience the work, as Handy's tiers predict.

585. Wolf and Egelhoff 2002. A reexamination and extension of international strategy-structure theory, Strategic Management Journal 23(2), 181 to 189

     The study found general support for the traditional fits of international strategy-structure theory, and extended the theory to cover strategy-structure fit for several types of matrix structure, adding the level of international transfers and the level of foreign R&D as elements of international strategy.

     Grade

     A statistical study of 95 German firms

     Design

     Test of international strategy-structure fit in a sample of firms, extended to the different types of matrix structure using an information-processing perspective.

     Year

     2002

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     95 German firms.

     Limits

     German firms only; cross-sectional; fit is shown as association, not as a performance effect.

     Later work

     Extended by the same authors with 57 matrix firms (Egelhoff and colleagues 2013) and 82 firms on conflict (Wolf and Egelhoff 2013), and gathered in their 2017 book (Egelhoff and Wolf 2017).

586. Wolf and Egelhoff 2013. An empirical evaluation of conflict in MNC matrix structure firms, International Business Review 22(3), 591 to 601

     The claim did not hold in general. Only firms with a matrix of product divisions crossed with geographic regions supported the hypothesis of higher conflict; matrices that include a functional dimension tended to have conflict levels similar to elementary structures. The authors offer two propositions about which matrix types generate conflict.

     Grade

     A survey of 82 German multinationals

     Design

     Test of the claim that matrix firms have more internal conflict than firms with elementary (single-dimension) structures.

     Year

     2013

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     82 German multinational corporations.

     Limits

     German MNCs only; how conflict was measured is not stated on the page read.

     Later work

     A partial null result against the standard warning that the matrix breeds conflict (Davis and Lawrence 1978 discuss its 'pathologies'). Folded into Egelhoff and Wolf (2017).

587. Wong 2012. Internal Affairs: How the Structure of NGOs Transforms Human Rights, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York, 2012 (xiv, 251 pages in the Library of Congress record); a 2014 edition (ISBN 9780801479793) is listed at 272 pages

     NGOs that centralize agenda-setting and decentralize the implementation of that agenda gain more traction in international politics than others. The book argues that internal structure, more than choosing the right cause or having the most resources, explains an NGO's influence.

     Grade

     A comparative study of seven international NGOs by one scholar

     Design

     Comparative study of the internal structures and campaigns of international human rights NGOs, drawing on network theory and organizational sociology.

     Year

     2012

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Seven organizations: the International Committee of the Red Cross, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Médecins sans Frontières, Oxfam International, Anti-Slavery International, and the International League of Human Rights.

     Limits

     Only the publisher's abstract and the contents were read. The outcome is political influence in one field of advocacy, not internal efficiency. Wong does not use Handy's term federal; calling the split between a center that sets the agenda and units that carry it out the federal move is this series' reading.

     Later work

     It is the only study since 2010 in the ledger that compares several multi-unit nonprofits on how authority is split between the center and the units; Young, Koenig, Najam, and Fisher (1999) found the federation generally effective among fifteen global NGOs.

588. Wood and colleagues 2019. Good gig, bad gig: autonomy and algorithmic control in the global gig economy, Work, Employment and Society 33(1), 56 to 75

     Algorithmic control is central to how online labor platforms operate. Algorithmic management tends to give workers high flexibility, autonomy, task variety, and complexity, but the same mechanisms can also bring low pay, social isolation, unsocial and irregular hours, overwork, sleep deprivation, and exhaustion.

     Grade

     Interviews in six countries and a survey of 679 workers

     Design

     Mixed methods: semi-structured interviews and a cross-regional survey of remote gig workers.

     Year

     2019

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     107 interviewees in six countries of Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, and 679 survey respondents.

     Limits

     Remote digital work only (not location-based gigs); two regions; cross-sectional.

     Later work

     Its mixed verdict, autonomy alongside strain, is echoed in Cameron (2024), who found workers who like the work under conditions the author judges structurally poor; Kellogg, Valentine, and Christin (2020) read the field through labor process theory, which stresses the control side.

589. Woodward 1965. Industrial organization: theory and practice, Oxford University Press, London and New York

     Organizational characteristics varied with the production system. Commercially successful firms seemed to be those in which function and form were complementary: the organizational characteristics of the successful firms in each production category tended to cluster around the medians for that category.

     Grade

     A survey of a hundred manufacturing firms with case studies

     Design

     A broad survey of the organization of manufacturing firms in one area, analyzed by production system (spans of control, levels of management, and line-staff organization among the characteristics), supplemented by more detailed case studies.

     Year

     1965

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     A hundred manufacturing firms in South Essex, 91 percent of the firms in the catchment area, with more detailed case studies of some of them.

     Limits

     One area of England; the classification of production systems and the success ratings are the author's; read through full-text snippets only.

     Later work

     Hickson, Pugh, and Pheysey (1969), comparing their English Midlands sample with Woodward's findings, found that operations technology bears only on the structure close to the workflow, more so in smaller organizations, and is not related to the wider administrative and hierarchical structure of larger ones.

590. Worren 2017. The matrix as a transitory form: the evolution of FMC Technologies 2001 to 2016, Journal of Organization Design 6(1), article 13

     The division began organized by geography, added global product units in 2011, which created dual reporting lines for some regional managers, and in 2015 separated the product lines from the regional units, removing the need for dual reporting. The author argues that the matrix can be a transitory form that gives way to a simpler but still multidimensional structure.

     Grade

     One case study

     Design

     Longitudinal single case of a division's structure from 2001 to 2016.

     Year

     2017

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     FMC Subsea, a division of FMC Technologies (now TechnipFMC).

     Limits

     One division of one firm; the data are interviews with four key executives, including the division's leader, who commented on a draft, plus organization charts, annual reports, the company magazine, a doctoral dissertation on the industry, and the company history book.

     Later work

     No later test of the transitory-form claim was found.

591. Wulf 2012. The flattened firm: not as advertised, California Management Review 55(1), 5 to 23

     Firms removed layers and widened the chief executive's span of control, and changed pay in ways suggesting some decisions were delegated to division managers, but flattened firms showed more control and decision making at the top: more functional managers reported directly to the chief executive, division managers were paid less when functional managers joined the top team, chief executives said they had flattened to get closer to the businesses, and chief executives of flattened firms spent more time on internal interactions.

     Grade

     A summary for managers of the author's multi-firm panel studies, with interviews and time-use data

     Design

     An article for managers that brings together the author's research with co-authors: a large-sample panel of reporting relationships, job descriptions, and pay, exploratory interviews with chief executives, and data on chief executives' time use.

     Year

     2012

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     More than 300 large established United States firms, 1986 to 1999, from a Hewitt Associates compensation survey (extended to 2006 for the positions reporting to the chief executive in a subset of firms, from Conference Board organization charts); interviews with seven chief executives of Fortune 500 companies, January to June 2011; time-use data on 65 chief executives attending a Harvard Business School executive course in January 2010.

     Limits

     Summarizes estimates published elsewhere (Rajan and Wulf 2006; Guadalupe and Wulf 2010) rather than reporting them in full; the interviews cover seven firms, the time-use firms are much smaller than the panel firms, and the time-use survey records no decisions.

     Later work

     Builds on Rajan and Wulf (2006) and Guadalupe and Wulf (2010), the panel studies it summarizes, and adds the interview and time-use evidence that flattening went with more involvement at the top.

592. Yang and colleagues 2022. The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers, Nature Human Behaviour 6(1), 43 to 54

     Firm-wide remote work made collaboration networks more static and siloed, with fewer bridges between parts, and shifted communication from synchronous to asynchronous media, which may make it harder to acquire and share new information across the network.

     Grade

     An analysis of 61,182 employees in one firm

     Design

     Causal analysis treating the 2020 shift to firm-wide remote work as a natural experiment, comparing workers already remote before the pandemic.

     Year

     2022

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Emails, calendars, instant messages, calls, and workweek hours of 61,182 U.S. Microsoft employees in the first six months of 2020.

     Limits

     One firm; the pandemic period; communication patterns, not performance.

     Later work

     Contrasts with the productivity gains in Bloom and colleagues (2015) and Choudhury, Foroughi, and Larson (2021), which measured individual output rather than network structure; consistent with the coworker-relationship cost in Gajendran and Harrison (2007).

593. Young and colleagues 1996. Structure and accountability: a study of national nonprofit associations, Nonprofit Management and Leadership 6(4), 347 to 365

     Associations with different structures differ in how they hold local affiliates and national organizations responsible for performance; structure is an avenue of self-regulation for nonprofits.

     Grade

     A study of many national nonprofit associations

     Design

     Study of the organizational structures of national nonprofit associations and their checks and balances between national organizations and local affiliates.

     Year

     1996

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     National nonprofit associations in the United States (the abstract does not give the number).

     Limits

     Sample size and measures not in the abstract; accountability is studied rather than performance.

     Later work

     Young (2001) went on to two in-depth cases of umbrella associations; Grossman and Rangan (2001) mapped the tension between unit autonomy and affiliation in five multisite nonprofits.

594. Young and colleagues 1999. Strategy and structure in managing global associations, Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations 10(4), 323 to 343

     Three principal structures are used: corporate partnerships, federations, and membership associations. Management challenges are met in various creative ways within each, and the federation form appears to be generally effective and to avoid some of the risks of the other forms.

     Grade

     Fifteen case studies by scholars

     Design

     Comparative case studies of the organizational structures and management strategies of globally oriented nongovernmental organizations, with the advantages and disadvantages of each structure.

     Year

     1999

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     15 global nongovernmental organizations involved in the development of civil society.

     Limits

     Fifteen cases in one field of nongovernmental work; only the abstract was read, so how the three structures are defined is not reported here.

595. Young 2001. Organizational identity and the structure of nonprofit umbrella associations, Nonprofit Management and Leadership 11(3), 289 to 304

     Umbrella associations grapple with several possible self-concepts, including goal-seeking systems, economies, and polities; consensus around a clear identity is a key factor in resolving their structural dilemmas.

     Grade

     Two case studies by a scholar

     Design

     In-depth case studies applying the concept of organizational identity to the structure of umbrella associations.

     Year

     2001

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Two associations: CIVICUS and Girls Incorporated.

     Limits

     Two cases; only the abstract was read.

     Later work

     Links the federal design question to identity rather than to efficiency alone.

596. Zarzaur and colleagues 2020. Blueprint for restructuring a department of surgery in concert with the health care system during a pandemic: the University of Wisconsin experience, JAMA Surgery 155(7), 628 to 635

     The authors describe an administrative restructuring that leveraged a team-of-teams approach and a framework for deploying the workforce needed to deliver all urgent health care and critical care to the system's patients, and consider its implications for the future.

     Grade

     A practitioner's report from one academic department

     Design

     A practitioner's road map drawn from lessons learned in one department, based on past experience with incident command structures in military combat operations and FEMA responses.

     Year

     2020

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     The Department of Surgery at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health and UW Health, early in the COVID-19 pandemic.

     Limits

     An account by the department's own leaders, written early in the pandemic, with no outcome measure in the abstract; it combines the team-of-teams idea with incident command, a variant under machine-bureaucracy.

597. Zenger and Hesterly 1997. The disaggregation of corporations: selective intervention, high-powered incentives, and molecular units, Organization Science 8(3), 209 to 222

     Large firms are disaggregating internally into smaller, more autonomous units treated much like external subcontractors, so exchange converges on networks of small units inside or between firms; the authors explain this by the high-powered incentives of small size and by advances in information technology, design, and measurement that permit selective intervention of market elements in hierarchy.

     Grade

     A conceptual article

     Design

     Conceptual article drawing on reported trends in US corporations.

     Year

     1997

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     No sample; examples of downsizing, refocusing, vertical disaggregation, and internal disaggregation.

     Limits

     Conceptual; the trends are asserted from examples, not measured.

598. Zenger 2015. Valve corporation: composing internal markets, Journal of Organization Design 4(2), from page 20

     Zenger reads Valve's design as composed internal markets, and says whether its boss-less design causes its high revenue per employee or results from it cannot be answered from the evidence; he assumes the design is efficient in its setting and comments on that basis.

     Grade

     A commentary on one company

     Design

     Commentary on Valve Corporation's organizational design.

     Year

     2015

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     One company, Valve Corporation.

     Limits

     Commentary; the author states that the efficiency question is empirically unanswerable here.

599. Zhang and colleagues 2018. An analysis of organizational structure in process variation, Organization Science 29(4), 722 to 738

     Organizational structures stay stable to a degree while processes change continuously, and the same structures can fit several processes in a cycle of continuous improvement; the authors give guidelines for restructuring when processes vary.

     Grade

     A formal model compared with industry data

     Design

     A systemic framework (formal model) in which structure varies by departmentalization and assignment and the process environment by information dependency and complexity, with results compared against industrial data and extended to static and dynamic process environments with varying communication costs.

     Year

     2018

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Industrial data from the global automotive industry (the abstract does not say how many firms or processes).

     Limits

     A model, not a test of the process (horizontal) organization against another form; the abstract does not say how the industrial data were used.

600. Zhang and colleagues 2022. The dynamics of coordination patterns in multiteam systems response to emergency: case study from a pharmaceutical enterprise, Frontiers in Psychology 13, article 957531

     In the two crisis stages coordination was centralized: information ran through the leadership team's meetings, whose network centrality was 80 and 85.71 percent, and the authors propose that this supported performance during the outbreak. After the crisis, component teams coordinated directly and the leadership team's centrality fell to 11.11 percent; the authors propose that this horizontal coordination supported performance then. They conclude that managers should change coordination patterns as conditions change.

     Grade

     One longitudinal case study

     Design

     Longitudinal single case study of one company's multiteam system during an emergency, using semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and documents, with social network analysis of in-degree and out-degree centrality across three stages.

     Year

     2022

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Zhejiang Huisong Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd., in China, from January 20 to March 30, 2020 (an emergency production task at the start of COVID-19); 16 interviews with the general manager, department managers, and staff.

     Limits

     One firm over ten weeks; the links to performance are propositions drawn from the case, not tests.

601. Zhou 2013. Designing for complexity: using divisions and hierarchy to manage complex tasks, Organization Science 24(2), 339 to 355

     Divisionalization increased with task complexity but decreased as task systems became less decomposable; hierarchy increased with task complexity and as task systems became less decomposable. The author argues that the benefits of modularization in design may be overstated when tasks are not decomposable.

     Grade

     An archival study of many US manufacturers over 11 years

     Design

     Panel analysis of task complexity, decomposability, divisionalization, and hierarchy.

     Year

     2013

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     US equipment manufacturers, 1993 to 2003.

     Limits

     One industry; divisionalization is measured as degree, not as a typology of forms.

     Later work

     On our reading, it bears on how far a firm divides itself into units and how much hierarchy holds them together.

602. Zhou 2015. Supervising across borders: the case of multinational hierarchies, Organization Science 26(1), 277 to 292

     Frontline subsidiaries in countries with weaker institutions were more likely to be supervised by foreign rather than domestic supervisory units, and even more so when their activities were more central to or interdependent with the parent's global operations. MNCs use differential supervision to improve global coordination.

     Grade

     An archival study of many US multinationals over 13 years

     Design

     Archival analysis of supervision relationships inside US multinationals.

     Year

     2015

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     US multinational manufacturers, 1996 to 2008.

     Limits

     US manufacturers only; supervision lines, not the full structure.

     Later work

     Recent evidence that MNC hierarchies are differentiated by subsidiary, consistent with the differentiated network idea (Ghoshal and Nohria 1989).

603. Ziegert and colleagues 2022. Addressing performance tensions in multiteam systems: balancing informal mechanisms of coordination within and between teams, Academy of Management Journal 65(1), 158 to 185

     As interteam interactions came to exceed intrateam interactions, team conflict arose and detracted from component team performance. At the system level, a balance between intrateam and interteam interactions enhanced system success.

     Grade

     A multimethod study of 44 multiteam systems

     Design

     Multimethod study of how the balance between members' interactions with their own component team (intrateam) and with members of other teams in the system (interteam) works as an informal coordination mechanism in multiteam systems.

     Year

     2022

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     44 multiteam systems made up of 295 teams and 930 members; the university's news release describes them as teams of engineering students who built team-level and system-level Rube Goldberg machines over 11 weeks.

     Limits

     Only the abstract and the university's news release were read; the setting comes from the news release. Student project systems, not standing organizations. It tests informal coordination in multiteam systems, a variant of the team of teams entry, not McChrystal's design as such.

     Later work

     It sits between Davison and colleagues (2012), who found that coordination across team boundaries at the component-team level can hurt performance, and Campbell and colleagues (2022), whose failing systems concentrated on within-team alignment: here the system did best when the two were in balance.

604. Zimmermann and colleagues 2015. How is ambidexterity initiated? The emergent charter definition process, Organization Science 26(4), 1119 to 1139

     Besides the mandated, top-down charter definition the literature assumes, an emergent, bottom-up charter definition process lets frontline managers take the initiative to adopt an ambidextrous orientation in their part of the organization, responding to changing requirements senior executives do not yet see.

     Grade

     Four case studies by scholars

     Design

     Inductive multilevel case study of how an ambidextrous orientation is adopted.

     Year

     2015

     Sample, limits, and later work

     Sample

     Four alliances.

     Limits

     Four alliances.

     Later work

     Qualifies the view that the senior team designs the ambidextrous structure from the top.