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Modern construction projects are increasingly complex and rely heavily on multi-discipline collaboration, and this leads to a more and more decentralized project-based structure widely adopted in the construction industry. While job satisfaction (JS) and job performance (JP) have been heavily studied previously, few considered the impact of organizational structure and none investigated the relationship between the organizational decentralization degree with JS and JP. This research aims to fill this research gap and investigate the impacts of organizational decentralization degree on JS and JP and facilitate a better project management practice for large-scale construction projects.

This research firstly establishes four hypotheses based on the literature review on general project-based organizations, then the hypotheses are tested by a survey covering 25 large complex construction projects in China. A hierarchical linear model analysis was carried out to analyze the survey data and to study the relationships between organizational decentralization degree, job satisfaction and job performance.

Analysis results show that projects' employees' JS and JP are positively correlated with the construction project organizations' decentralization degree, respectively. The decentralization degree has a higher impact on JS than on JP. Employees' JP is positively correlated with their JS, and a higher decentralization degree leads to a more significant positive impact that JS puts on JP.

The findings are new evidence of how construction organization structure and its decentralization degree can affect project employees' JS and JP. This research provides valuable guidance for the industry's management practice and is particularly important for large, complex and highly decentralized construction projects.

This research attempts to explain the decentralization of investment decision. To do so, it highlights the role of the internal capital market in the allocation of decision rights and control as a factor explaining the effectiveness of investment management. The authors aim to apply the theory of the organizational architecture to the investment decision to understand its complexity and its efficiency.

An empirical test was realized on a sample of 63 Tunisian firms using the methods of canonical correlation and cross tabulations.

Even if organizational complexity has a linear and negative impact (opposite sign to what is expected) on the investment decision decentralization, which creates value, it appears that there is a positive association with the uncertainty of the environment, and a negative one with the scarcity and sharing of financial resources between units on the internal capital market.

The authors show that the role played by the internal capital market in the value creating requires the setting of a centralized organizational structure.

This study investigates the effects of fiscal decentralization on global competitiveness through the level of corruption. This study aims to clarify the causal impacts of fiscal decentralization policy on the achievement of competitiveness rank considering the degree of corruption in a country.

The paper uses an empirical study using both cross-country arithmetic mean and panel data, covering ten-year period (2005-2014). The analysis uses both linear and non-linear specification in search of actual intermediating effects of corruption with controlling the possible endogeneity.

The paper provides empirical insights about corruption effects of fiscal decentralization on global competitiveness. It suggests that increasing level of fiscal decentralization has a positive contribution to competitiveness for the less-corrupt countries. The adverse effects appear for corrupt countries where the delegation of fiscal authority should endanger the country competitiveness.

This research exploits the well-known measurement of fiscal decentralization, the degree of corruption and competitiveness. Therefore, this measurement might be challenged for representing the real concept of decentralization, corruption and competitiveness, furthermore its relationship. Despite the limitation, this research explores the entanglement of fiscal decentralization, corruption and competitiveness.

The paper provides the implications for the national policymakers about decentralizing the fiscal authority to achieve higher competitiveness level, through assessing their state of corruption.

The research provides additional comments for Oates’ (1972) decentralization theorem in connection to competitiveness, by adding corruption level as pre-requisite condition.

Notwithstanding a number of studies that led to the development of different performance measurement systems incorporating contingency factors, very scarce research on the variety of balanced scorecards (BSCs) indicators used in performance management were carried out in France. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to investigate if there is a significant relationship between contingency factors and the content of balanced scorecards in terms of the degree of use and a variety of performance indicators.

In total, 2,580 French intermediate-sized enterprises (ISE) were identified through the Diane Database (Bureau Van Dijck) then contacted by the means of a survey questionnaire that was built online using LimeSurvey software. This study receives 156 complete and usable responses. The research model was tested through multiple regressions and multi-group analyses.

The results show that ISEs financial managers do not use, to the same extent, all the indicators constituting the four dimensions of BSCs. Therefore, BSCs implemented by French ISEs can be described as “unbalanced”. Furthermore, three contingency factors (computerization, decentralization and market listing) were found to be significantly associated with the variety and degree of use of performance indicators in balanced scorecards. The remaining contingency and control factors did not seem to influence the degree of use and variety of BSCs content.

The findings highlight the importance of developing tools that have the potential to evolve in line with organizational, environmental and technological changes. Furthermore, this paper provides food for thought for financial directors and management controllers as to how to better meet senior management, managers and operational staff information needs.

While there is scarce academic work on BSCs in ISEs, the present research is, to the best of the knowledge, one of the rarest to apply and test a contingency approach on a sample of ISEs.

Decentralization has been a continual focus of attention of both scholars and practitioners for more than half a century. Even though there is a general agreement on what decentralization is, there is no consensus about how it should be measured. This article builds on the existing body of literature that specifies three major dimensions of decentralization: political, administrative, and economic. The article offers a measurement model that unifies these dimensions in a meaningful manner that allows for comparison across countries. The proposed model is then empirically tested using confirmatory factor analysis of a data set of 37 countries over the period 2000-2009. This factor analysis reveals that there are, in fact, only two dimensions of the decentralization process. The newly developed modelʼs index illustrates that the conceptually challenging processes of decentralization can be accurately measured and analyzed. The index can be used for hypothesis testing of the causality role of decentralization.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between the use of open innovation (OI) practices and firm performance, and the role of organizational mechanisms (OMs) (formalization and decentralization) as moderator variables.

The authors build a theoretical framework to define a set of hypotheses that are then verified in an empirical study. These theoretical propositions are tested by using the data gathered from a survey addressed to 244 firms in Spanish low- and medium-technology industries.

With regard to inbound practices, the practices oriented to cooperate with partners in a R&D context have a positive influence. The results show that outbound practices, either by direct generation of revenues from licensing payments or, more indirectly, through the indirect marketing and technical benefits that can stem from revealing have a positive effect on firm performance. Coupled practices, which are related to participation in clusters and innovation networks, have the highest impact on firm performance. In the industrial context examined, decentralization exerts a positive effect which enhances the effect of outbound practices meanwhile formalization reduces their positive effect.

This study helps practitioners in low- and medium-technology firms to determine which OI practices are most beneficial to firm performance and how formalization and decentralization can influence the relationship between OI and firm performance.

This study helps determine the influence of OI practices in terms of inbound, outbound and coupled types through an analysis of low- and medium-technology firms. The OI literature is enriched by the types herein of the role of OMs, which includes an analysis of how formalization and decentralization moderate the influence of OI practices on firm performance.

Fiscal fund is the key support of carbon emissions control for local governments. This paper aims to analyze the impact of fiscal decentralization on carbon emissions by spatial Durbin model (SDM), and verify the existence of “free-riding” phenomenon to reveal the behavior of local governments in carbon emissions control.

Based on the provincial data of carbon emissions from 2005 to 2016 in China, this paper uses spatial exploratory data analysis technology to analyze the spatial correlation characteristics and constructs SDM to test the impact of fiscal decentralization on carbon emissions.

The results show that carbon emissions exhibits significant spatial autocorrelation in China, and the increasing of fiscal decentralization in the region will increase carbon emissions in surrounding areas and on the whole. Then, by comparing the impact of fiscal decentralization on carbon emissions and industrial solid waste, it is found that “free-riding” phenomenon of carbon emissions control exists in China.

Based on the spatial cluster characteristics of China’s provincial carbon emissions, carbon emissions control regions can be divided into regions and different carbon emission control policies can be formulated for different cluster regions. Carbon emissions indicators should be included in the government performance appraisal policy, and carbon emissions producer survey should be increased in environmental policies to avoid “free-riding” behaviors of local government in carbon emissions control in China.

This paper contributes to fill this gap and fully considers the spatial spillover characteristics of carbon emissions by introducing spatial exploratory data analysis technology, constructs SDM to test the impact of fiscal decentralization on carbon emissions in the perspective of space econometrics, and tests the existence of “free-riding” phenomenon in carbon emissions control for local governments in China.

Internal control mechanisms are fundamental to organizational governance; particularly, to the agency relationship associated with decentralization of decision rights. Management accounting and organizational literatures provide conflicting predictions on the association between decentralization and internal controls, with some research arguing that internal controls be tightened to mitigate the risks associated with greater decentralization of decision rights while other work avers that tighter internal controls defeat the purposes of decentralization. In this chapter, we argue that managers choose these two organizational design variables jointly. Capitalizing on a unique database of control practices in the purchasing and payment process within the procurement function, this chapter examines the relationship between control tightness – a critical characteristic of internal controls – and decentralization. Using a simultaneous equation model, the study finds that decentralization and internal control design are endogenously determined. Tight control is negatively associated with the level of decentralization, while decentralization has a positive effect on the tightness of control. These results reconcile the apparently contradictory results relating these two variables. The chapter also finds that decentralization and tight control mechanisms operate both independently and synergistically to improve performance.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the optimal allocation of authority within “chain” organizations and to show when partial centralization becomes dominant in the sense of organizational performance.

This paper takes an incomplete contract approach and uses an information transmission framework to investigate the optimal governance structure, in which non-contractible decisions must be adapted to local operating conditions, and also coordinated with the upstream and downstream divisions. We also use simulation analysis to numerically show the theoretical mapping between the underlying parameters (i.e. coordination need) and the dominant organizational structures.

Partial decentralization will arise as the optimal governance structure only when the information in the middle branch is relatively concentrated or dispersive, so as to exploit the underlying information structure in the “chain” organizations. Specifically, when information is highly concentrated, direct control of the middle branch can improve coordination within firms. When the information is highly dispersive, to delegate authority to the middle branch only can improve communication.

This paper characterizes the optimal governance structure in “chain” organizations. The findings may give some enlightenment on real authority driven by ex ante asymmetric information structures and have implications on asymmetric delegation within firms.

The purpose of this paper is to review and re-examine the role of the organization-level determinants from the perspectives of competence-based views.

Regression analysis was used to test the hypotheses in a sample of 80 cases drawn from a population of the top 5,000 Taiwanese firms listed in the yearbook published by the China Credit Information Service Incorporation.

The empirical results indicate that formalization is positively related to new product performance while decentralization has an inverse U-shaped curvilinear effect on new product performance. Furthermore, the regression findings also indicate that market-oriented strategy negatively moderates the relationship between formalization and new product performance, while technology-oriented strategy positively moderates the curvilinear relationship between decentralization and new product performance.

Extant literatures have paid attention to investigating the determinants to the performance of the new product development, but some of the results, such as in the organizational levels, are confusing and mixed. Contrary to previous works, the purpose of this paper is to review and re-examine the role of the organization levels determinants from the perspectives of competence-based view.