TY - JOUR
T1 - The inevitability and irreversibility of organizational uncontrollability
AU - van der Mandele, Hugh
AU - van Witteloostuijn, Arjen
PY - 2015/8/13
Y1 - 2015/8/13
N2 - In this paper, a classic and seminal contribution of Williamson (J Polit Econ 75:123–138, 1967), “Hierarchical control and optimum firm size”, is revisited so as to remove two of its restrictive assumptions. The introduction of the dynamics of the quality of vertical communication into Williamson’s static model and the development of a simulation to analyze these dynamics provide the opportunity to demonstrate the plausibility of a new conjecture: in each and every hierarchically structured organization, irreversible organizational uncontrollability is ultimately bound to arise, even in a completely stable environment. This is our main contribution. Moreover, we demonstrate that this conjecture is also valid for non-hierarchically structured organizations.
AB - In this paper, a classic and seminal contribution of Williamson (J Polit Econ 75:123–138, 1967), “Hierarchical control and optimum firm size”, is revisited so as to remove two of its restrictive assumptions. The introduction of the dynamics of the quality of vertical communication into Williamson’s static model and the development of a simulation to analyze these dynamics provide the opportunity to demonstrate the plausibility of a new conjecture: in each and every hierarchically structured organization, irreversible organizational uncontrollability is ultimately bound to arise, even in a completely stable environment. This is our main contribution. Moreover, we demonstrate that this conjecture is also valid for non-hierarchically structured organizations.
KW - Control loss
KW - Organizational failure
KW - Serial reproduction
KW - Simulation
KW - Stochastic logistic equation
KW - Uncontrollability
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U2 - 10.1007/s10588-015-9190-0
DO - 10.1007/s10588-015-9190-0
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84946485516
SN - 1381-298X
VL - 21
SP - 380
EP - 405
JO - Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory
JF - Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory
IS - 4
ER -