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Organization Design and Firm Heterogeneity: Towards an Integrated Research Agenda for Strategy

Florian Englmaier
Nicolai J. Foss
Thorbjørn Knudsen
Tobias Kretschmer

Organization Design

ISBN: 978-1-78756-330-8, eISBN: 978-1-78756-329-2

ISSN: 0742-3322

Publication date: 10 December 2018

Abstract

The authors argue that organization design needs to play a more active role in the explanation of differential performance and outline a set of ideas for achieving this both in theoretical and empirical research. Firms are heterogeneous in terms of (1) how well they do things, capturing persistent productivity differences, and (2) how they do things – and both reflect firms’ organization design choices. Both types of heterogeneity can be persistent, and are interdependent, although they have typically been studied separately. The authors propose a simple formal framework – the “aggregation function framework” – that aligns organization design thinking with the emphasis on performance heterogeneity among firms that is characteristic of the strategy field. This framework allows for a more precise identification of how exactly organization design may contribute to persistent performance differences, and therefore what exactly are the assumptions that strategy and organization design scholars need to be attentive to.

Keywords

  • Strategic organization design
  • Competitive heterogeneity
  • Aggregation function
  • Persistent performance differences
  • Design inertia
  • Design heterogeneity

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to John Joseph, two anonymous referees, and Michael Christensen (Strategic Organization Design Unit, University of Southern Denmark) for helpful comments and suggestions.

Citation

Englmaier, F., Foss, N.J., Knudsen, T. and Kretschmer, T. (2018), "Organization Design and Firm Heterogeneity: Towards an Integrated Research Agenda for Strategy", Organization Design (Advances in Strategic Management, Vol. 40), Emerald Publishing Limited, pp. 229-252. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0742-332220180000040008

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