Issues of Organizational Design (PDF)

Issues of Organizational Design: A Mathematical Programming View of Organizations analyzes the view that organizations can be represented satisfactorily by a mathematical programming model and relates it to other theories of organizational behavior. The potential of this approach to organizational analysis is evaluated.

Comprised of seven chapters, this book begins with an overview of the three major schools of organizational theory: the classical/structural school, the human relations school, and the contingency school. It then defines what an organization is and outlines the relationship between organizational elements. The example of the two-product firm is used to illustrate the basic model framework, and how coordination, diversification, and incentives can be treated in this framework.Subsequent chapters explore the relationship between the contingency approach and the mathematical programming approach to organizational design; the coordination problem and the process of decision making in a decentralized organization; the decomposition of the organization into a number of smaller units; and types of evaluation and incentive schemes for addressing cheating in a multi-level organization. The book also presents a series of empirical studies where a mathematical programming view of organizations has been assumed before concluding with a discussion on the process of designing organizations.

This monograph will be useful for students of organizational design and for practitioners who use models in connection with decision making.