OTD L2 Social structure: Integration mechanism Flashcards
What are integration mechanisms influenced by?
Bureaucracy
Contingency approach
Technology
(New) structure
What is integration?
Extent to which activities are coordinated across the organization using accountability, rules and procedures, liaison rules, cross-functional teams, or direct contact.
What does the organizational structure define?
- How tasks are allocated
- Areas of responsibility and accountability
- Reporting relationships and authority
- Formal coordinating mechanisms and interaction patterns between organizational members
Programmed coordination
- by rules and regulations
- by planning, time table setting, scheduling, standard operating procedures (technical solutions)
- by goals and targets
Individual coordination
- by hierarchy
- by person (project leader, boundary spanner)= liaison roles
boundary spanner
In social sciences research on commercial R&D laboratories, boundary spanning is a term to describe individuals within an innovation system who have, or adopt, the role of linking the organization’s internal networks with external sources of information.
informal coordination/ mutual adjustment
- by non-formalized contact
- by spontaneous contact
by task forces, cross functional teams, direct communication
Where does informal coordination take place?
Consultancies
What is bureaucracy characterized by?
- division of labor
- employment decisions based on merit (performance)
- distinct separation of members’ organizational and personal interests
- well-defined authority hierarchy
- impersonality
- career tracks for employees
- high formalization based on elaborate rules
Red tape
red tape represents bureaucracy’s tendency to follow procedures and rules to the letter –> makes it one of the most inefficient organizational forms
Goal displacement in bureaucray
The replacement of overall organizational goals by subunit goals as the rules and procedures become more important than the goal
Through was is integration achieved in a bureaucracy?
- Formalized rules and procedures
- hierarchy
Four dimensions of differentiation by Lawrence and Lorsch in contingency theory?
- Degree of formality
- Task orientation or relationship orientation
- Time orientation
- Type of goal orientation
Integration by L&L?
Anchored in the contingency theory:
- in stable environment: hierarchy and centralization
- in unstable environment direct communication and decentralization
What is technology in organizational theory?
The information, equipment, techniques and processes required to transform inputs into outputs
