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The purpose of this paper is to use de Sitter's design theory to show how organizational structures can be designed so as to attenuate organizational disturbances and amplify regulatory potential. It is argued that organizational structures with low values on so‐called design‐parameters are themselves no source of disturbances and have the required built‐in regulatory potential.

Key concepts from de Sitter's design theory are introduced and used to show how structures can attenuate disturbances and amplify regulatory potential.

The analysis in this paper deepens our understanding of the role of organizational structures for dealing with organizational complexity, and of the design parameters that should be manipulated to achieve structural attenuation and amplification.

Having a structure permitting organizations to attenuate and amplify is a crucial condition for organizational viability. This paper provides guidelines for the design of such structures.

This is one of a limited number of studies that makes apparent how general insights from (management) cybernetic (e.g. viability, attenuation and amplification) may be realized in organizations by their structural design.

Organizational studies of time tend to be done by academic researchers rather than practitioners. This chapter builds on academic research to provide a practitioner perspective by reviewing time situated in theory and constructing two phenotypes: timescapes of business and social time. These timescapes are defined by six dimensions, each with a social and business time parameter. Organizational business and social timescapes have different functions and applications. Timescapes, with their concomitant dimensions and sets of parameters, are used differently by senior managers, middle managers, and entry-level managers. Three multi-level approaches (self, dyadic, and social relationships), composition theory, and compilation theory confirm these three managerial timescape usages. After a review of the theoretical bases of the timescape constructs and a brief discussion of the grounded, anthropological, research methodology used in the study, this chapter applies timescape theory and models to an extended time case study of the Procter & Gamble Company that frames the company's timescape understanding and use from a practitioner's view.

Existing research on how professionals manage after-hours connectivity to work has been dominated by studies on the strategies/practices individuals develop. In these studies, mobile technology is perceived as a tool or an enabler that supports otherwise human-centric connectivity decisions. This view sees technology as separate or external to the organisation, missing out on its nuanced role in shaping connectivity decisions. Our study aims to bring technology back into the sociomaterially imbricated context of connectivity and to unpack its parameters.

Drawing on data collected from documents and semi-structured interviews, we adopt the framework of “sociomaterial imbrications” (Leonardi, 2011) to understand the social and material parameters that influence connectivity management practices at two different academic institutions in Saudi Arabia.

The study identifies a set of social and material parameters (organisational, individual, technological and situational) that imbricate to shape, collectively and not individually, professionals’ connectivity management practices. Connectivity decisions to change practice (such as decisions of where, when or why to connect) or technology (how to connect) are not as distinct as they appear but originate from, and are founded on, imbricated sociomaterial parameters. Our study further suggests that connectivity decisions are shaped by individuals’ perceptions of sociomaterial imbrications, but decisions are not solely idiosyncratic. The context within which connectivity decisions are taken influences the type of decisions made.

Connectivity management emerged from sociomaterial imbrications within a context constitutive of four interacting parameters: organisational, technological, situational and individual. Decisions around the “how” and the “what” of connectivity – i.e. the practice of connectivity and its underpinning technology – originate from how people perceive sociomaterial imbrications as enabling or constraining within a context. Individual perceptions account for changes in practice and in technology, but the context they find themselves in is also important. For instance, we show that professionals may perceive a certain technology as affording, but eventually they may use another technology for communications due to social norms.

Over the past few years, mathematical and computational models of organizations have attracted a great deal of interest in various fields of scientific research (see Lin & Carley, 1993 for review). The mathematical models have focused on the problem of quantifying the structural (mis)match between organizations and their tasks. The notion of structural congruence has been generalized from the problem of optimizing distributed decision-making in structured decision networks (Pete, Pattipati, Levchuk, & Kleinman, 1998) to the multi-objective optimization problem of designing optimal organizational structures to complete a mission, while minimizing a set of criteria (Levchuk, Pattipati, Curry, & Shakeri, 1996, 1997, 1998). As computational models of decision-making in organizations began to emerge (see Carley & Svoboda, 1996; Carley, 1998; Vincke, 1992), the study of social networks (SSN) continued to focus on examining a network structure and its impact on individual, group, and organizational behavior (Wellman & Berkowitz, 1988). Most models, developed under the SSN, combined formal and informal structures when representing organizations as architectures (e.g., see Levitt et al., 1994; Carley & Svoboda, 1996). In addition, a large number of measures of structure and of the individual positions within the structure have been developed (Roberts, 1979; Scott, 1981; Wasserman & Faust, 1994; Wellman, 1991).

The purpose of this paper is to show how the viable system model (VSM) and de Sitter's design theory can complement each other in the context of the diagnosis and design of viable organizations.

Key concepts from Beer's model and de Sitter's design theory are introduced and analyzed in order to show how they relate.

The VSM provides insight into the related systems necessary and sufficient for viability. As such, it specifies criteria supporting the diagnosis and design of organizational infrastructures, i.e. of organizational structures, HR systems, and technology. However, it does not explicitly conceptualize and provide a detailed heuristic for the design of organizational structures. De Sitter's theory fills in this gap.

The paper illustrates how, based on a rudimentary model of organizational viability, de Sitter's design theory positively addresses the question of how to diagnose and design organizational structures that add to the viability of organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to address issues related to organizational design and strategy fit by examining the “strategic stretch” that occurs when there exists a mismatch between an organization's structure and firm‐level strategy.

The paper contains a discussion of relevant issues and a presentation of research that considers the relationship between organizational design, strategy selection, and the competitive environment within which a firm operates. This research includes an analysis of a survey of top managers and an evaluation of organizational design and firm strategy to determine the existence of strategic misfit.

Misfits in strategy and structure exist because of Russian managerial proclivity to maintain direct control through centralization of all strategic formulations and because of high risk‐taking behaviors of Russian managers. While organizational inertia is a clear driver of organizational structure, cultural inertia also exists and, in the case of Russian organizational design, societal organizational culture drives strategy misfits.

An understanding of strategic misfits is crucial for managers so that they may recognize these disconnects early and make improvements as market or firm conditions changes. The results of the analysis of Russian firms suggest that in designing efficient organizations, greater attention should be placed on the specific impact of societal organizational culture. In addition, practitioners in organizational design consulting positions should make clear, whenever they attempt to eliminate misfits between existing structures and current strategies, the need to develop effective stretch for implementation of intended strategies.

The paper provides a unique application of the connection of strategy and organizational design under conditions of extreme uncertainty. This paper also extends the analysis of organizational design and strategy to firms operating in emerging markets. Rapid changes in dynamic, emerging markets provide fertile testing grounds for management theory and practices; this paper examines a unique set of empirical evidence.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate and identify the organizational drivers of sexual harassment (SH).

Drawing on data from a representative sample of workers in Spain, this paper sheds light on the likelihood of SH influenced by: organizational environment and climate, organizational forms and structure, and job design parameters.

The analysis reveals that organizational climates where negative behaviors are tolerated are particularly advantageous for harassers. Furthermore, the profile of the victims of SH is that they work in isolation, are contracted through employment agencies, are not given training opportunities, and have low status in the firm. Analysis also reveals, however, that firms can reduce the risk of SH by empowering jobs and improving time flexibility.

The use of secondary data implies some constrains: the type of measure and the failure to control for the role of SH perpetrators.

Managers should adopt some organizational policies, such as empower job or improve time flexibility, since they reduce the risk of SH.

This paper identifies some objective organizational settings where SH is more likely and provides some easy to apply solutions to prevent it.

This paper aims to bring together strategic orientation (SO) and organizational forms literatures by proposing refined SO typologies based on various combinations of entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and market orientation (MO); and postulating typical organizational forms (configurations) for proposed SO types relative to each other in terms of parameters identified from organizational forms literature.

This conceptual paper employs selective-intensive review of literature dealing with: both EO and MO to identify extant SO typologies, relevant strategic attributes, and relationships between EO, MO and strategic attributes; and organizational forms to identify parameters. Tabular frameworks are used to compare the proposed and extant SO types, posit strategic attributes for the proposed SO types, and compare ideal organizational profiles across SO types.

EO and MO are related constructs that capture distinct aspects of business philosophy. Relationships of EO and MO with each strategic attributes are summarized. To explain differences across all attributes simultaneously, using combinations of EO and MO, five SO types – prospector, analyzer, proactive defender, reactive defender, and reactor – are proposed. Relative organizational profiles are specified for proposed SO types, using parameters strategy, structure, resources, and environment.

This paper brings together sporadic attempts towards developing SO typology and explicitly integrates SO and organizational forms literatures. It offers ground work for developing testable propositions and tabular frameworks that may serve as heuristics into nature of firms' orientations and their performance implications.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the antecedents of demand-side search in service strategy of manufacturing firms. In particular, this study examines whether service-oriented human resource management (HRM) practices promote demand-side search by enhancing firms’ market capability as well as how top management service commitment and service organizing moderates this relationship in manufacturing firms.

To test this research model, this study obtains survey data from two distinct informants of 279 manufacturing firms in China. Data were collected applying a standard questionnaire in a five-point Likert scale. The hypotheses are tested using hierarchical regression analysis and partial least squares.

Results show that service-oriented HRM practices can promote demand-side search by enhancing firms’ market capability. Furthermore, it is found that top management service commitment negatively moderates the relationship between service-orientated HRM practices and demand-side search, while service organizing positively moderates this relationship.

Depending on cross-sectional subjective data for the core variables and the choice of Chinese manufacturing firms limit the capacity to generalize the findings.

This research suggests that service-oriented HRM practices are important drivers of demand-side search activities and to take advantage of service-oriented HRM practices, firms should commit to market capability development. In addition, it is better to match service-oriented HRM practices with other service-oriented organizational parameters such as top management service commitment and service organizing.

The study highlights the crucial role of service-oriented HRM practices in demand-side search, the mediating role of market capability and the moderating role of other service-oriented organizational parameters such as top management service commitment and service organizing. This study advances research on knowledge search, servitization and strategic HRM.