Search results

The mechanistic-organic assumptions of SF address those organizational factors related to structural arrangements, contextual factors, job-task work activities, and human resources management policies. Organizations adopt structures and procedures in search of legitimacy and institutionalization (Riebero & Scapens, 2006, p. 96). Structures manifest themselves in centralized (mechanistic) and/or decentralized (organic) forms. These structures can be loose or tightly controlled; they can involve independent or interdependent tasks. These conditions have a direct impact on the operation of management information and control systems that will, in turn, impact organizational learning and process innovations, which, ultimately, affects organizational performance.

Accounting for quality and improved organizational performance has recently received attention in management control research. However, the extent to which process innovation changes have been integrated into management control research is limited. This paper contributes to that integration by drawing from institutional adaptive theory of organizational change and process innovation strategies. The paper utilizes a 2 by 2 contingency table that uses two factors: environmental conditions and organizational change/learning strategies, to build a process innovation framework. A combination of these two factors yields four process innovation strategies: mechanistic, organic, organizational development (OD) and organizational transformation (OT).

The four process innovation typologies are applied to characterize innovations in accounting such as activity based costing (ABC). ABC has been discussed as a multi-phased innovation process that provides an environment where both the initiation and the implementation of accounting change can occur. Technical innovation can be successfully initiated as organic innovation that unfolds in a decentralized organization and requires radical change and double loop learning. Implementation occurs best as a mechanistic innovation in a hierarchical organization and involving incremental change and single loop learning. The paper concludes that if ABC is integrated into an OD or OT intervention strategy, the technical and administrative innovation aspects of ABC can be utilized to manage the organization’s operating activities.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of competitive strategies and organizational structure on hotel performance and to explore whether organizational structure has a moderating effect on the relationship between competitive strategies and hotel performance.

This study employed a causal and descriptive research design to determine the cause‐and‐effect relationships among competitive strategies, organizational structure, and hotel performance based on previous studies. A 28‐question self‐administered questionnaire comprising three sections was employed. The target population for this study was US hotel owners and general and executive managers whose e‐mail addresses were listed on a publicly available database. A census survey was carried out and e‐mails were sent to all of the hoteliers listed in the database.

The results show a competitive human resources (HR) strategy to have a direct impact on a hotel's behavioral performance, and a competitive IT strategy to have a direct impact on a hotel's financial performance. Organizational structure is found to have a moderating effect on the relationship between both of these strategies and behavioral performance, a result similar to those reported by Jogaratnam and Tse and by Tarigan. However, the results of the current study show that organizational structure has no influence on the relationship between a brand image strategy and a hotel's behavioral performance, nor does it have any moderating effect on the relationship between a hotel's financial performance and its competitive brand image, HR or IT strategy.

When hoteliers face an uncertain environment, they need to select which form of organizational structure to adopt with care. Hotels that adopt an organic structure allow greater flexibility in the workplace, meaning that they may lose control of their employees and productivity. A mechanistic organizational structure, in contrast, gives hoteliers the power to monitor employee behavior and productivity, which may help them to achieve goals and boost financial performance.

The paper provides further evidence of how competitive HR and IT strategies help to explain hotel performance, whereas a brand image strategy and organizational structure are not good explanatory factors in this regard. Hotels with a mechanistic such structure enjoy a greater relationship between a competitive HR strategy and behavioral performance than their organically structured counterparts. With regard to IT strategic implementation, in contrast, hotels with an organic structure enjoy superior behavioral performance to those with a mechanistic structure.

The purpose of this study, which consists of two parts, is to bring together literature on organizational design and learning of individuals in organizational settings. The literature suggests that learning takes place in organic and less-structured organizational designs, whereas empirical research provides conflicting evidence. This first part theorizes about the influence of mechanistic vs organic designs on three different aspects of employees’ learning behavior: knowledge sourcing, learning styles and learning loops.

This paper is built on previous research on the impact of structure on learning and theorizes about the relationship between mechanistic/organic design and specific learning behavior at work.

Four propositions are developed in this paper, regarding how a different structure leads to a different learning behavior. Mechanistic structure is associated with internal learning, independent learning and single-loop learning, whereas organic design leads to external learning, collaborative learning and double-loop learning.

Because the paper is conceptual in nature, the propositions are in need of empirical validation. Some directions for empirical testing are proposed.

For an organization design practice, managers should be aware of the distinct impact different structures have on individual learning at work. Furthermore, the appropriate organizational structure for learning must be considered in the broader context of contingencies.

This paper contributes to the organizational design literature and to the organizational learning theory by conceptualizing the relationship between structure and learning of individuals at work.

The significant performance implications of individual-focused and group-focused transformational leadership have been documented for established firms, but the issue of whether they are complementary or substitutive still remains a puzzle, and whether their relationship differs in new firms remains unanswered. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between individual-focused and group-focused transformational leadership in different organizational structures in new firms.

The study draws on survey data of 209 questionnaires from 63 teams in 63 new firms in China.

The results suggest that individual-focused and group-focused transformational leadership are substitutive when the organizational structure is mechanistic, and are complementary when the structure is organic.

The study contributes to the debate on the relationship between individual-focused and group-focused transformational leadership by comparing organizational structure characteristics and offering a comprehensive understanding of the issue.

With a few exceptions, the extant literature lacks substantive analysis of the ways downsizing and outsourcing impact on organizational structure and the roles and behaviors of organizational members. This is especially true of research focussing on organizational buying behavior. Provides an important step toward increasing our understanding in these areas by proposing a model of some of the conceptual linkages between current organizational downsizing and outsourcing initiatives and organizational structure and buying behavior. Develops theoretical arguments along with a set of propositions concerning the likely effects of downsizing and outsourcing on organizational structure, as well as on buying centre structure, membership, and shared authority, and on purchase participant role conflict, motivation, and risk aversion. Aims to encourage future conceptual and empirical analyses of these important relationships and linkages.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a contingency framework that allows researchers to classify and study management accounting innovation within the context of the literature on the sociology of diffusion and adoption.

The process of innovation in organizations involves two stages: the stages of diffusion and adoption along two dimensions of extent: technical and administrative, and scope: autonomous and systemic. A combination of these two dimensions yields four types of accounting innovations: mechanistic, organic, organizational development, and organizational transformation. Management accounting innovations has been studied using these four innovation typologies.

The paper suggests that management accounting researchers pay particular attention to an organization's approach to diffusion and adoption strategies of innovation, particularly, the extent and scope dimensions when designing and implementing process innovation programs.

The innovation contingency framework developed in this paper facilitates the analysis of two important research questions. First, why have some innovations been readily accepted while other, apparently similar proposed innovations have not? Second, why has a particular innovation succeeded in some firms and failed in others?

The subject of accounting innovations and change are important to managers. Accounting innovations as administrative and technical innovations are intertwined in performance evaluation as well as compensation systems. Accordingly, they are resisted.

The paper's contribution is in the advancement of sociological theories in behavioral managerial accounting. The paper develops a process innovation framework that integrates organizational sociological research in process innovations, particularly in diffusion research.

This paper aims to provide instructors with a hands-on engaging and experiential class activity designed to teach undergraduate and graduate students about different organizational structures in management courses. Through this exercise, students will be able to self-identify the challenges and strengths of working under contrasting organizational structures.

Split into two (or four) teams, students construct origami animals based on their team’s organizational structure, using both mechanistic and organic structures to create a zoo based on a set of instructions and boundary conditions. Materials required include origami paper, markers, printed instructions, origami animal instructions, and role title cards for each student. The exercise takes approximately 30–45 min, including debriefing discussion. All materials/instructions needed are included with this paper (except origami paper and markers).

Through this exercise, students internalize the challenges and strengths of working in organizations with contrasting structures. The debrief discussion will help solidify student understanding of what the day to day experience of working in different organizational structures might look like, the pros and cons of different structures, and what type of employees or industries might thrive under different structures.

This paper is being submitted for the “Special Issue Call for Papers: Modern Day Experiential Exercises.”

This activity allows students to draw their own conclusions about organizational structure and to engage in a fruitful discussion about what working at different types of organizations looks like on a day-to-day basis.

This activity allows students to strengthen their skills in communication, teamwork, and leadership by having them work in teams to complete a challenging, competitive task.

While teaching organizational structure in management courses has traditionally been limited to traditional forms of instruction such as lecturing and reviewing different organizational charts, this activity gives students a fun competitive in-class activity in which they practice working as a part of contrasting organizational structures to see what type of structure they might thrive in.

The paper extends the organizational learning framework: Structural-Functional (SF)-single-loop or Conflictual-Radical (CR)-double-loop learning to the management accounting literature. The sociological approach of organizational learning is utilized to understand those contingent factors that can explain why management accounting innovations succeed or fail in organizations.

We view learning as enhancing an organization’s strategic competitive advantage by making it better able to adopt and diffuse innovation in respond to changes in its environment in order to manage improved performance. The success of management accounting innovations is contingent upon whether its learning process involves SF-single-loop or CR-double-loop learning to adopt and diffuse process innovation.

The paper suggests that the learning strategy that the organization chooses is the reason why some management accounting innovations are more successfully adopted than others and why some innovations are easily diffused in some organizations but not in others. We propose that the sociological approaches to learning provide an alternative framework with which to better understand the adoption and diffusion of process innovations in management accounting systems.

It has become evident that management accounting researchers need to pay particular attention to an organization’s approach to adoption and diffusion of innovation strategies, particularly when they are designing and implementing process innovation programs for an organization. According to Schulz (2001), there are two interrelated stages of the learning that can shape the outcome of the innovation process in an organization. The first stage is related to the acquisition/production (adoption) of knowledge that results in gathering information, codification, and exploration. This is followed by the second stage which is the distribution or dissemination (diffusion) processes. When these two stages – adoption and diffusion – are applied within an accounting context, they address issues that are commonly associated with the successes and/or failures of management accounting innovations.

Although innovation involves learning, the nature of the learning process does not completely describe the manner in which an innovation affects the organization. Accordingly, we suggest that the two interrelated organizational sociological dimensions of innovations processes, namely, (1) the adoption and diffusion theories of Rogers (1971 and 1995), to approach organizational learning, and (2) the SF (single loop) and CR (double loop) approaches to learning be used simultaneously to describe management accounting innovations.

When an innovation is implemented, it initially can be introduced as an incremental change, one that can be limited in both in its scope and its breadth of administrative changes. This means that situations which are most likely to benefit from its initiation can serve as the prototype for its adoption by the organization. If successful, this can be followed by systemic accounting innovations to instituting broader administrative changes within the existing accounting reporting and control systems.

This research sought to propose a theoretical model that analyzes the factors associated with unlearning (individual and organizational) and contributes to generating and realizing ideas among young people at the beginning of their careers based on the predominant type of structure.

The study had a sample (n = 971) and used the multivariate data analysis partial least squares - Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM regular) and multigroup analysis (PLS-MGA) to identify significant differences between the estimates of the specific parameters of each group (a- Organic/b- Mechanistic).

All the direct relationships and formulated mediations were found to be supported, except for H6 (ET→EO) within the group that had a primarily mechanistic organizational structure. Thus, the more turbulent the environmental, the more initiative-taking, innovative and risk-taking a company tends to be. However, it remains to be seen whether the organizational structure plays a role in facilitating or hindering this relationship. H1 (IG→IR) indicates that predominantly organic organizations have a stronger and more consistent relationship with the knowledge developed through individual and organizational unlearning process. This knowledge contributes to the idea-generation process and ultimately leads to realizing those ideas.

The article contributes to literature by proposing an original and integrated theoretical model incorporating individual and organizational approaches to unlearning to understand the effect on idea generation and realization.