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The purpose of this study is to better understand the consequences of trust between personnel at different hierarchical levels for organizational effectiveness. The authors aim to explore the direct effects and the interaction effects of trust with organizational structure and processes. The study focuses on military organizations and expands on models and research from this context.

Survey data were collected from a Norwegian military exercise organization at two different hierarchical levels. The hypothesized relationships between the variables were tested using moderation and serial mediation analyses.

Trust between personnel at different hierarchical levels was found to positively influence organizational effectiveness in terms of higher shared awareness of tasks and responsibilities, better information sharing and, in turn, better decision-making. A perceived flat organizational structure and decentralized processes were found to increase flexibility, an increase that in turn improved decision-making. Moderation analyses further suggested that trust between hierarchical levels could attenuate the negative effects of personnel's perception of their organization as hierarchical and centralized.

The study’s results suggest that, at least in Norwegian military contexts, practitioners should be concerned with building trust between personnel at different hierarchical levels, flattening the organizational structure, and decentralizing processes to increase organizational flexibility and effectiveness.

The present study contributes to a better understanding of the role of trust between personnel at different hierarchical levels in the effort to achieve effective organizational structures and processes in military contexts.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on organizational flexibility and explore its antecedents, organizational structure, and processes, as proposed by network organization theories. The study also explores the possible moderating effects of power distance (Pd) and cultural diversity.

Using self-report data from three different multinational military exercises and one laboratory experiment, the paper explored the relationships between perceptions of flat organizational structure, decentralized processes, and flexibility. The data from each of these studies were analyzed both separately and together.

The analyses revealed that decentralization had the most consistent relationship to organizational flexibility across each of the four studies. Moreover, when the data were analyzed conjunctively, significant positive relationships between decentralization and flexibility and between flat structure and flexibility were observed. No moderating effects of Pd or cultural diversity were found.

The results suggest that decentralizing processes and creating flatter hierarchies may contribute to achieving higher levels of organizational flexibility in military organizations.

The paper contributes to empirical support for the central theoretical propositions of network organizational literature, including moderating factors that are essential in multinational organizational contexts.