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Shedding new light on the organization : an empirical analysis of some key aspects of business organizations
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Delmastro, Marco (1999) Shedding new light on the organization : an empirical analysis of some key aspects of business organizations. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.
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Official URL: http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b1659629~S1
Abstract
There is a striking difference between the large number of theoretical
papers on firm organization and the lack of quantitative empirical
evidence. If on the one side economists are increasingly concerned
with organization of firms, on the other side organization still remains
an ambiguous concept, hardly analyzed empirically.
In this thesis I develop a new empirical methodology based upon
business history (see Chapter 1) and previous theoretical work which
allows me to describe (some aspects of) the organization of firms in
quantitative terms. This approach is instrumental to analyzing the
hierarchical structure and the allocation of decision-making activities
in a sample composed of 438 Italian metalworking plants. I also
study the dynamics of firm organization in the 1980s and 1990s. The
results of Chapter 2 show that the (static) choice of the organizational
form crucially relies upon the "loss of control phenomenon". They
also illustrate that the dynamics of hierarchical structure follows an
inertial process, characterized by incremental adjustments. Lastly,
both the organization and, more interestingly, its evolution differ from
one category of plant to another depending crucially on plant size.
Moreover, I test (some of) the predictions of economic theory on the
size of the management hierarchy (Chapter 3), the allocation of real
and formal authority (Chapter 4), and structural inertia (Chapter 6)
through the estimates of econometric models (i. e., multinomial logit, ordered logit, and survival). The findings of Chapter 3 show that the
plant size, the characteristics (i. e., vintage and extent of use) of the
production and communication technology in use, the plant's
ownership status (i. e., State versus private ownership, and
differences in the nationality of firms to which plants belong) are key
in explaining the complexity of a plant's management hierarchy.
In addition, in accordance with theoretical work, the findings of
Chapter 4 show that the size of a plant's organization, the
characteristics of the production and communication technologies in
use, the urgency of decisions, and the presence of monetary incentive
schemes aligning plant manager's objectives with those of the firm as
a whole figure prominently in explaining whether authority is
delegated to the plant manager or not. The structural and
organizational characteristics of a plant's parent firm do also play a
role, with the likelihood of decentralization of decision-making
increasing with parent firm's size and decreasing with the adoption
by the parent firm of a M-form type of organization. Lastly, the nature
of the decision turns out to affect the allocation of formal authority,
with decisions concerning the labor force being more frequently
delegated to plant managers than those related to investments in
capital equipment. On the contrary, it does not influence the
allocation of real authority when the formal right to decide remains
with the corporate superior. Finally in Chapter 61 find that both influence activities and
technology adoptions are key in explaining the evolution of business
organizations. Influence activities tend to inhibit organizational
change causing structural inertia, whilst the technology adoptions
increase the likelihood of changing the structure of the management
hierarchy.
Item Type: | Thesis (PhD) | ||||
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Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HF Commerce | ||||
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Business enterprises, Quantitative research, Qualitative research, Organization -- Research | ||||
Official Date: | October 1999 | ||||
Dates: |
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Institution: | University of Warwick | ||||
Theses Department: | Department of Economics | ||||
Thesis Type: | PhD | ||||
Publication Status: | Unpublished | ||||
Supervisor(s)/Advisor: | Cowling, Keith; Waterson, Michael, 1950- | ||||
Sponsors: | Università di Pavia | ||||
Extent: | xv, 243 leaves | ||||
Language: | eng |
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