Search results

The chapter aims to bring out the dynamic nature or hierarchy in organizations and presents a conceptual framework for making sense of hierarchy in contemporary work. We describe hierarchy as the result of a contradictory dynamic that incorporates both vertical and horizontal practices of organizing. The vertical practice, verticalization, draws on and reproduces the formal organization, whereas the horizontal practice, horizontalization, orders people on the basis of their knowledge and initiatives. The dynamic between these two practices varies, we argue, depending on the social and epistemic distance of formal managers' from the operative work process. Three different dynamics between verticalization and horizontalization – loose coupling, translation, and integration – are identified and illustrated, drawing on three ethnographically inspired studies of knowledge work. Through these three dynamics, the chapter casts light on and provides nuances to the current discussion in the literature on postbureaucracy.

In this chapter we develop a conceptual model describing how global teams do more than accomplish discrete tasks, and create “spillover coordination” effects by influencing the amount of work-related direct contact among team members outside the task boundaries of the team. We theorize that spillover coordination is the result of relational and cognitive social capital developed through team interaction. We also propose that the design of the team and the context in which it operates influence the degree to which social capital develops.

We develop a conceptual model including propositions that can be tested empirically. We suggest avenues for future research.

Our model proposes that teams are a more powerful cross-border integration mechanism than originally thought in existing literature in international management and organizational behavior, since they affect social capital that can benefit the broader MNE beyond scope of the task and after the team disbands. Our approach suggests that MNE managers should be mindful of global team spillover effects and intentional in the way they design global teams if those benefits are to be achieved.

Most research on global teams, and teams in general, does not look past the task and time boundary of the team. We expand the view of team effectiveness to encompass those dimensions.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the personal challenges of a change agent, namely, a catalyst, attempting to promote organizational change in a hybrid and complex educational organization. The study mirrors subjective experiences with classic bureaucracy research and the theory of collaborative community. It analyzes the lack of work developmental scaffolds in the transition from a bureaucracy to a collaborative community.

The study uses autoethnographic methods.

A hybrid and complex context does not offer firm scaffolds for a change agent. Classic bureaucracy research and the theory of collaborative community have difficulties to explain the personal challenges of the change agent.

Research on weak or missing organizational scaffolding and transitional challenges should be studied using a multidisciplinary approach. The concepts of the zone of proximal development and scaffolding in a complex context should be revised.

Hybrid and complex organizations should develop new ways to scaffold and manage their work development.

This paper shows and analyzes the personal challenges of a change agent on a hybrid and complex organization. The autoethnographic approach gives important knowledge about the lack of theoretical explanation of the problematics of organizational transition.

This article aims to better understand how empowered middle manager engage in change translation? Relying on the notions of building and dwelling strategizing, the authors analyze the micro-practices of middle managers during organizational change, when middle managers are freed from time-consuming administrative activities.

This empirical study relies on a qualitative embedded case study approach that involves comparing two banking units belonging to a large French bank. The qualitative data were collected from three different sources: exploratory and semi-structured interviews, observations and secondary data. The coding analysis enables to distinguish middle managers' dwelling and building strategizing during organizational change.

The study’s findings show how managers translate organizational change relying on both building and dwelling strategizing. By doing so, managers enable to adapt the prescribed strategy to local circumstances and foster front-line empowerment.

Even though the findings are based on the analysis of a single organization, the authors provide several theoretical insights. First, the authors contribute to the recent academic debate in strategy-as-practice literature by showing the recursive relation between building and dwelling strategizing. The authors also shed a new light on middle managers' strategizing by emphasizing the idea that middle managers are not only passive change “translators” but that middle managers enact a real agency in the organizational change process.

From a managerial perspective, the study’s findings enable to enlight what empowering middle managers means in practice. Indeed, the authors show clear empirical illustrations of how middle managers can be empowered by both organizational structure and top-management support. The results also reveal how empowering middle managers enable to empower their team by three different activities: (1) federate the team spirit to facilitate collaboration; (2) develop employees' capabilities and (3) adjust managers' activity according to employees' needs.

While multiple current new ways of organizing encourage to transform organizations from inefficient bureaucracies into flatter and more dynamic project-based teams, calling into question the importance of middle managers' strategic role, this study provides an original case study of an organization that chose to run against the tide and created an additional middle management level.

The purpose of the paper is to demonstrate that organizational task interdependence has an impact on the performance of home teams in sport.

The paper uses a cross‐sectional research design. It tests the authors' hypothesis using a probit analysis of nine years of data from Major League Baseball and eight years of data from the National Hockey League.

The paper determines that the underlying task interdependence of a sport has a significant impact on the performance of a sport team.

The paper argues that sport managers need to consider organizational structure when accounting for team performance. Moreover, the structure of the sport(s) needs to be considered when making adjustments to the league(s) that might affect the competitive balance.

Complex clinical situations, involving multiple medical specialists, create potential for tension or lack of clarity over leadership roles and may result in miscommunication, errors and poor patient outcomes. Even though copresence has been shown to overcome some differences among team members, the coordination literature provides little guidance on the relationship between coordination and leadership in highly specialized health settings. The purpose of this paper is to determine how different specialties involved in critical medical situations perceive the role of a leader and its contribution to effective crisis management, to better define leadership and improve interdisciplinary leadership and education.

A qualitative study was conducted featuring purposively sampled, semi-structured interviews with 27 physicians, from three different specialties involved in crisis resource management in pediatric centers across Canada: Pediatric Emergency Medicine, Otolaryngology and Anesthesia. A total of three researchers independently organized participant responses into categories. The categories were further refined into conceptual themes through iterative negotiation among the researchers.

Relatively “structured” (predictable) cases were amenable to concrete distributed leadership – the performance by micro-teams of specialized tasks with relative independence from each other. In contrast, relatively “unstructured” (unpredictable) cases required higher-level coordinative leadership – the overall management of the context and allocations of priorities by a designated individual.

Crisis medicine relies on designated leadership over highly differentiated personnel and unpredictable events. This challenges the notion of organic coordination and upholds the validity of a concept of leadership for crisis medicine that is not reducible to simple coordination. The intersection of predictability of cases with types of leadership can be incorporated into medical simulation training to develop non-technical skills crisis management and adaptive leaderships skills.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the impact of leadership on culture and on the structure of learning, and of these two constructs on the innovation capacity.

A quantitative study utilising a survey was carried out. By means of an ad hoc questionnaire, educational administrators were asked about some characteristics of their organisations. The authors have proven the model of research through a model of structural equations, that is, by means of the partial least squares technique.

The hypothesis is confirmed that leadership affects culture and learning structure, and both impact on the innovation capacity of schools.

This work addresses the role of three critical aspects in the management of educational organisations—leadership, culture and structure—in the development of innovation that is essential in improving organisational development.

The role of leadership in the development of favourable conditions for innovation is verified, as is the impact of these conditions on the innovation capacity of educational organisations.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a re‐examination of the Weberian corpus.

Discusses the Weberian corpus and the discrepancies and lacunae in Weber's accounts. Outlines “Weberian” bureacracy in the post‐bureacracy literature, the use and utility of ideal types and the problems of ideal typifications.

The so‐called “Weberian ideal type” which is the standard reference point in bureaucracy versus post‐bureaucracy discussion is only ambiguously related to what Weber himself wrote. Usually “Weberian” bureaucracy is equated with rule‐governed hierarchy. This is a gross over‐simplification of Weber's thought, but his “ideal type” demands radical re‐tooling in order to be usable. The components he itemized and the importance he attached to them are inconsistent, they are abstracted from exemplars which Weber privileged without explanation, and he gave no unambiguous criteria for deciding which components this ideal type should include or exclude. Moreover, he equated bureaucratic organization with modernity, when on his own account there were fully bureaucratic organizations centuries before “modernity”. His ideal type thus cannot yield a clear distinction between bureaucratic and “post”‐bureaucratic organizations, unless “bureaucracy” is flattened into “hierarchy”, and “post”‐bureaucratic into “non‐hierarchical”. But hierarchy cannot be eliminated from complex organizations, and bureaucracy can be re‐theorized to include any non‐contradictory attributes. Therefore, there can be adaptations of bureaucracy, but ex hypothesi there cannot be a “post‐bureaucratic era”.

The paper shows that Weber's ideal type can be re‐theorized to include any “non‐contradictory attributes”.

Centralization, mergers and cost reductions have generally led to increasing levels of span of control (SOC), and thus potentially to lower leadership capacity. The purpose of this paper is to explore how a large SOC impacts hospital staff and their leaders.

The study is based on a qualitative explorative case study of three large inpatient wards.

The study finds that the nursing staff and their frontline leaders experience challenges in regard to visibility and role of the leader, e.g., in creating overview, coordination, setting-up clear goals, following up and being in touch. However, large wards also provide flexibility and development possibilities.

The authors discuss the implications of these findings for decision makers in deciding future SOC and for future SOC research.

Only few studies have qualitatively explored the consequences of large SOC in hospitals.

This article addresses why movements towards less-hierarchical organizing may be unsustainable within organizations.

Eschewing hierarchy may prove sustainable if alternative forms of management are acceptable to both employees and managers accountable for those employees’ performance. Developing alternatives means dealing with the fundamentally contradictory functions of coordination and control. Through a qualitative case study of a manufacturing company that removed first-line supervisors, this article analyses how issues of control and coordination were dealt with formally and informally.

Removal of the formal supervisor was followed by workers’ and middle managers’ efforts to informally reconstruct hierarchical supervision. Their efforts to deal pragmatically with control and coordination were frustrated by formal prescriptions for less hierarchy, leading to contested outcomes. The article identifies upward and downward pressures for the hierarchy’s reconstruction, undermining the sustainability of less-hierarchical organizing.

This study is limited by the use of cross-sectional data and employees’ retrospective narratives. Future research on the sustainability of less-hierarchical organizing should preferably be longitudinal to overcome these limitations.

Unless organizational changes towards less hierarchy engage with issues of managerial control and upward accountability, they are likely to induce pressures for hierarchy’s reconstruction.

The article offers an original approach to the classical problem of eschewing hierarchy in organizations. The approach allows us to explore the interrelated challenges facing such restructuring, some of which are currently unacknowledged or underestimated within the literature.