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SSRN Research Paper Series
The Social Science Research Network’s Research Paper Series includes working papers produced by Stanford GSB the Rock Center.
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An Organizational Failures Framework
The paper begins with an explication of Oliver Williamsons market failures framework, which describes the conditions under which market transactions will be replaced by formal organizations. It then applies the central ideas of that framework to…
Hierarchies and Clans: A New Perspective on Organizational Development
Some recent articles suggest that current approaches to organizational development are less successful than expected. These approaches are based on theories of the psychology of healthy organizations. In this paper, we present a compatible but…
Local Control in Organizations: Implications for the Paradigm
Studies of organizational control currently reflect a paradigm which contains the assumption that mechanisms of control are homogeneously distributed throughout the subunits of a whole company or other organization. This paper presents the…
Control in Organizational Hierarchies: Coupled Versus Uncoupled
Abstract not available.
Organizational Entitativity: The Problem of Boundaries, Units, and Loose Coupling
Before we can apply organizational theories to social aggregates, their status as entities must be evaluated. The degree to which a social aggregate is a system may be assessed using common fate, similarity and proximity as variables which…
The Transmission of Control Through Organizational Hierarchy
This paper addresses the problem of control loss in hierarchies. Data on 215 departments(aggregated from 2,363 individual questionnaires) show that Behavior Control and Output Control differ sharply in transmission. Behavior Control shows almost…
Types of Organizational Control and Their Relationship to Emotional Well-Being
Two ideal type representations of organizational control are presented. The Type A is derived from the prototypical American work organization and is characterized by highly specialized tasks, relatively high turnover, and by contractual…
Organizational Control and Work Satisfaction
Data from 2,398 employees of two retail companies indicate that the relationship between control and job satisfaction is complex. Control does not produce low job satisfaction unless the supervisor using the control is seen as unfair or as…
The Relationship Between Organizational Structure and Organizational Control
This paper reports on the nature of control in 78 retail department store companies. It begins with the argument that control and structure have not been clearly distinguished in the literature on organizations. Control is not the same thing as…
An Evaluation of Alternative Strategies for Expanding the Number of Black-Owned Businesses
Alternative strategies for Black economic development have been debated with great vigor and little rigor. The qualitative, nonanalytic nature of the existing Black economic development literature partially stems from the lack of comprehensive…
Made in America (Under Japanese Management)
In Atlanta, Georgia, a U. S. electronics manufacturer utilizes an assembly line in which thirty five women assemble transister panels in a prescribed set of steps. Six thousand miles away, an identical assembly line belonging to the same company…
Organizational Control: Two Functions
A distinction is drawn between two modes of organizational control, one based on personal surveillance (behavior control), and the other based on the measurement of outputs (output control). A study of employees over five levels of hierarchy…
Output Control: An Organizational Response to Large Size
Organizations can achieve control either through the evaluation of behavior or through the evaluation of outputs. This “behavior-output” dimension is not the same as the familiar “personal-impersonal control dimension. Data collected in 78 retail…
Defining the Span of Control
The uses of the concept, “Span of Control,” have become so varied over the past years that in its present form it is no longer useful as a means of communicating information between scholars. This paper argues that the span of control is a useful…
Minority Financial Institutions, Inner City Consumers, and The Hunt Commission Report
Abstract not available.