Articles

The design of emergence in organizations

Authors: M. Eisenman, S. Paruchuri and P. Puranam

Why crowdsourcing fails

Crowdsourcing—asking an undefined group of external contributors to work on tasks—allows organizations to tap into the expertise of people around the world. Crowdsourcing is known to increase innovation and lo...

Authors: Linus Dahlander and Henning Piezunka

GitLab: work where you want, when you want

GitLab is a software company that works “all remote” at the scale of more than 1000 employees located in more than 60 countries. GitLab has no physical office and its employees can work from anywhere they choo...

Authors: Prithwiraj Choudhury, Kevin Crowston, Linus Dahlander, Marco S. Minervini and Sumita Raghuram

Corporate headquarters in the twenty-first century: an organization design perspective

The corporate headquarters (CHQ) of the multi-business enterprise, which emerged as the dominant organizational form for the conduct of business in the twentieth century, has attracted considerable scholarly a...

Authors: Sven Kunisch, Markus Menz and David Collis

Design as an interactive boundary object

What is it about the term ‘design’ that facilitates the emergence of interdisciplinary interactions even though the term may hold different meanings for those involved? To address this question, we analyzed th...

Authors: Thinley Tharchen, Raghu Garud and Rebecca L. Henn

Networks in the balance: an agent-based model of optimal exploitation

Using an agent-based simulation, we illustrate how goal-seeking behavior affects network formation, learning, and performance. Our organization has one manager, who decides where to invest financial capital; i...

Authors: Fernando Anjos and Ray Reagans

The population ecology of undesigned systems: an analysis of the Arizona charter school system

The application of ecological concepts and principles to the study of organization design and system development is now commonplace. Population ecology is one biological perspective that has been especially in...

Authors: Matthew M. Mars and Judith L. Bronstein

Disaggregating the headquarters: implications for overseas R&D subsidiaries’ reporting and the subsidiaries’ knowledge-sharing patterns

This study explores the relations between the different parts of headquarters (HQ) to which subsidiaries report and the knowledge-sharing patterns of subsidiaries in multinational corporations (MNCs). Despite ...

Authors: Kazuhiro Asakawa

When three’s a crowd: how relational structure and social history shape organizational codes in triads

When members of an organization share communication codes, coordination across subunits is easier. But if groups interact separately, they will each develop a specialized code. This paper asks: Can organizatio...

Authors: Özgecan Koçak and Massimo Warglien

On innovating: an interview with Gautam Ahuja

At the 2016 SMS Foundations Session interview with Professor Gautam Ahuja, we explored the key insights of his research trajectory, with a special focus on how organizations successfully innovate. We discussed...

Authors: Arzi Adbi, Andrea Contigiani, Gabriel Szulanski and Gautam Ahuja

Reflections on the design of corporate headquarters

The design of corporate headquarters (CHQ) is a specialist and important area of organization design. It is important because of the influence that a CHQ has over the portfolio of businesses it owns. A good CH...

Authors: Andrew Campbell

Fit, misfit, and design: JOD studies that touch reality

Authors: Richard M. Burton

On the “missing link” between formal organization and informal social structure

Over the last 40 years, organizational scholars have repeatedly called for more research to reconcile formalist and social network approaches to the intra-organizational structure. The former has primarily bee...

Authors: Starling David Hunter III, Henrik Bentzen and Jan Taug

Performance of trust-based governance

Trust is crucial for the success of interorganizational relationships, yet we lack a clear understanding of when trust-based governance is likely to succeed or fail. This paper explores that topic via a closed...

Authors: Bart S. Vanneste and Onesun Steve Yoo

Latent organizing for responding to emergencies: foundations for research

Time and again, many organizations and their staff members must respond to unexpected catastrophes like hurricanes (e.g., Katrina), virus pandemics (e.g., COVID-19), or other major emergencies. As a result, so...

Authors: Paul C. van Fenema and A. Georges L. Romme

Digital ecosystems and their implications for competitive strategy

This paper discusses some implications for competitive strategy when business environments are framed as digital ecosystems. Digital ecosystems are ecosystems shaped by interdependencies initiated through data...

Authors: Mohan Subramaniam

New trends in organization design

Authors: Richard Burton, Dorthe Døjbak Håkonsson, Erik Reimer Larsen and Børge Obel

Transforming corporate headquarters: a case study of a collaborative journey

Transforming the organizational structure of a headquarters in order to decentralize authority and decrease its size remains a huge challenge for international corporations looking for agility. One of the main...

Authors: Stephanie Chasserio and Sophie Botte

Headquarter resource allocation strategies and subsidiary competitive or cooperative behavior: achieving a fit for value creation

Integrating insights from the literature on the multinational corporation into current perspectives on resource allocation, we argue that the ability of headquarters to create value through resource allocation...

Authors: Henrik Dellestrand, Philip Kappen and Olof Lindahl

Using an algorithmic approach for grouping roles and sub-units

A key task in organization design is to group elements (e.g., roles) into sub-units (e.g., teams or departments). This task is computationally challenging as one must take into consideration a potentially larg...

Authors: Nicolay Worren, Tore Christiansen and Kim Verner Soldal

Connectivity knowledge and the degree of structural formalization: a contribution to a contingency theory of organizational capability

The objective of this study is to develop a contingency theory of organizational capability based on the identification of decision variables relevant to the design of firms. The paper supports a model in whic...

Authors: Rogerio S. Victer

Designing social networks: joint tasks and the formation and endurance of network ties

Can managers influence the formation of organizational networks? In this article, we evaluate the effect of joint tasks on the creation of network ties with data from a novel field experiment with 112 aspiring...

Authors: Sharique Hasan and Rembrand Koning

Gaps in the structuring of organizations in the graduate employment context in Uganda

The complexity of global challenges requires that organizations collaborate with one another. To do this, stakeholders need flexible structures that are designed in a way that allows organizations to collabora...

Authors: Peter Dithan Ntale, Jude Ssempebwa, Badiru Musisi, Genza Gyaviira Musoke, Kimoga Joseph, C. B. Mugimu, Ngoma Muhammed and Joseph Ntayi

The tyranny of the head office? Revisiting corporate headquarters’ (CHQs) role in MNE subsidiary initiatives

What roles should corporate headquarters (CHQs) of multinational enterprises (MNEs) play in foreign subsidiary initiatives? Rather than viewing the MNE’s CHQ as a single, internally homogenous unit, we call fo...

Authors: Alain Verbeke and Wenlong Yuan

Editorial Vol. 9

Authors: John Joseph and Metin Sengul

Organization design as a competitive choice: an application to the study of innovation

This commentary reflects on how a perspective that concentrates on the role of competitive context and sees organization design as a competitive choice may inform the research stream on the link between organi...

Authors: Metin Sengul

What makes self-managing organizations novel? Comparing how Weberian bureaucracy, Mintzberg’s adhocracy, and self-organizing solve six fundamental problems of organizing

The bureaucratic organizational structure has been recently challenged by a number of organizations that claim to offer employee emancipation and autonomy through self-management, self-organizing, or “holacrac...

Authors: Frank Martela

Use hierarchy for “liberating servant leadership” instead of controlling employees

Since the Industrial Revolution, management has relied on hierarchy to control assets and employees. The negative impact of that hierarchical control on employee performance has long been recognized, yet in sp...

Authors: Bill Nobles

Climbing up and down the hierarchy of accountability: implications for organization design

The notion of organizational hierarchy is disputed, also in view of the rise of new organizational forms claimed to have “hierarchies without bosses.” To better understand the contested nature of hierarchy, th...

Authors: A. Georges L. Romme

Setting the stage for corporate headquarters: a technological explanation for the rise of modern industrial corporations

This paper combines theories of organizational design with theories of production to provide a novel perspective, which helps explain the technological forces that led to the rise of vertically integrated “mod...

Authors: Carliss Y. Baldwin

Designing the microstructure of routines

Coordinating organizational routines is a strategic challenge in contexts ranging from healthcare to software development. Yet, we have few theories of the design of routines. This paper compares field data on...

Authors: Tom Steinberger and Ju Yeon Jung

Fading hierarchies and the emergence of new forms of organization

Authors: Stephan Billinger and Maciej Workiewicz

Dynamic attention-based view of corporate headquarters in MNCs

While the usefulness of the attention-based view in understanding the role of headquarters-subsidiary relationships in multinational companies (MNC) is well established, recent research on corporate headquarte...

Authors: Tomi Laamanen

Extending the role of headquarters beyond the firm boundary: entrepreneurial alliance innovation

Prior research on corporate headquarters (CHQ) characteristics identifies the impact of CHQ location and composition on the innovation outcomes of internal subsidiaries. However, given that external strategic ...

Authors: Jaeho Kim and Andy Wu

The Platform Review Alliance Board: designing an organizational model to bring together producers and consumers in the review and commissioning of platform software

Digital networking technology has helped to bring about the platform economy, in which online networking sites mediate between individual freelance workers and their temporary employers. However, the digital p...

Authors: Justin Larner and Åke Walldius

Organization design challenges: results from a practitioner survey

We conducted a survey to identify the most important challenges faced by consultants who support managers in re-designing their organizations. The results indicate that the most frequently encountered challeng...

Authors: Nicolay Worren, Jeroen van Bree and William Zybach

Dealing with headquarters in the multinational corporation: a subsidiary perspective on organizing costs

This study examines how subsidiaries in multinational corporations (MNCs) experience interactions with corporate headquarters. We conceptualize such interactions in terms of organizing costs, focusing on two k...

Authors: Randi Lunnan, Sverre Tomassen, Ulf Andersson and Gabriel R. G. Benito

Primer on artificial intelligence and robotics

This article provides an introduction to artificial intelligence, robotics, and research streams that examine the economic and organizational consequences of these and related technologies. We describe the nas...

Authors: Manav Raj and Robert Seamans

Curating creative communities of practice: the role of ambiguity

Communities of Practice (CoPs), it is argued, are loci for creativity, innovation and problem-solving. Instigating a CoP and harnessing this creative energy from an external position (be it institutional or in...

Authors: Michael Kaethler

How corporate headquarters add value in the digital age

How will digitalization influence the role of corporate headquarters (CHQs) and their relationships with their operating units? We recently asked 67 senior CHQ managers this question. The results suggest that ...

Authors: Jan Schmitt, Benoit Decreton and Phillip C. Nell

The corporate headquarters in organization design theory: an organizational economics perspective

The corporate headquarters (CHQ) is an important part of the organization of large firms; yet, it is neglected in organization design theory. In this brief essay, I argue that we need a better understanding of...

Authors: Nicolai J. Foss

Navigating in a Hierarchy: How Middle Managers Adapt Macro Design

With the emergence of new organizational forms promoting de-layering, downscoping, and self-management, middle managers have been under attack in recent years. Organizational design has traditionally been conc...

Authors: Marianne Livijn

The organizational implications of Brexit

This point-of-view article examines the organizational implications of the UK’s exit from the European Union (Brexit). We identify the effects of Brexit on firms’ transaction costs in cross-border trade within...

Authors: Caterina Moschieri and Daniel J. Blake

Headquarters as hardware and software

The article proposes a framework for thinking about the role and elements of a corporate headquarters. The concept is that headquarters is both a physical place with implications for the culture and work proce...

Authors: Kevin Sharer

Additive manufacturing (“3D printing”) and the future of organizational design: some early notes from the field

Authors: John M. Jordan

Correction to: Bitcoin and the rise of decentralized autonomous organizations

Following the publication of this article [1], it was noted that the author list was incomplete and was missing the following three authors.

Authors: Ying-Ying Hsieh, Jean-Philippe Vergne, Philip Anderson, Karim Lakhani and Markus Reitzig

Exploring reasons for the weekend effect in a hospital emergency department: an information processing perspective

This study examines fits and misfits between information processing requirements and capacities in a hospital emergency department in order to identify possible explanations for the “weekend effect.” Previous ...

Authors: Iben Duvald

Editorial Vol. 8

Authors: John Joseph and Metin Sengul

Implementing design thinking in organizations: an exploratory study

Design thinking has been adopted by organizations in all sectors of the economy. In this qualitative study, I explore organizations’ goals in adopting design thinking, the challenges such programs encounter, a...

Authors: David Dunne

A note on how NK landscapes work

The NK landscape methodology has been used by much research in strategy and organizations, and the concept of “landscape” has become a popular business idea. Despite such popularity, exactly what NK landscapes...

Authors: Felipe A. Csaszar