Marshall W. Meyer

The Two Authority Structures of Bureaucratic Organization

This study attempts to link the formal structure of bureaucratic organizations to decision-making processes, and in particular to centralization or decentralization of authority. Interview data were obtained from 254 city, county, and state departments of finance. These data show that, controlling for an organizations size, decision-making authority is more highly centralized as the number of subunits in an organization increases; but as the number of levels of supervision grows, there is greater decentralization and at the same time proliferation of rules that specify criteria to guide decisions. Marshall W. Meyer is lecturer on sociology in the department of social relations at Harvard University.

Can Performance Studies Create Actionable Knowledge if We Can’t Measure the Performance of the Firm?

The modern conception of the performance of the firm—future cash flows—makes performance difficult to measure and most performance measures inherently flawed. Moreover, the reliability of inferences about the performance of the firm declines as performance measures are used. The balanced scorecard does not improve the quality of performance measurement and can add further complications. Reducing the firm to its activities, their costs, and their revenue consequences may offer a partial solution to endemic problems of measuring performance. Long-term organizational adaptation, however, may require a conception of performance that makes all performance measures problematic and hence avoids lock-in to particular measures.

Is it Capitalism

I introduce the three articles in the MOR Editors Forum on Chinese Capitalism. I then ask whether Chinas recent economic growth has been driven by a vibrant capitalism or instead has become an end in itself, supported by government policies promoting high rates of fixed asset investment. There are two key observations. First, gross domestic product (GDP), measured and reported at four levels of government, has much greater salience than corporate profits, often undisclosed. Second, fixed asset investment accounted for more than 60 percent of Chinas 2009 GDP and nearly two-thirds of 2008-2009 GDP growth, levels unprecedented for a major economy. Rather than capitalism, I argue that institutionalized GDP growth today accounts for Chinas rapid economic development.

Structures of power and constraint: papers in honor of Peter M. Blau

Preface Introduction Craig Calhoun and W. Richard Scott Epistolary notes Robert K. Merton Part I. Exchange, Power and Inequality: 1. Rational-choice theory and behavioral psychology George C. Homans 2. Rational action, social networks and the emergence of norms James S. Coleman 3. Linking actors and structures: an exchange network perspective Karen Cook 4. Models of social and market exchange: toward a sociological theory of games and social behavior Tom R. Burns 5. Family and birth-order effects on educational attainment Otis Dudley Duncan Part II. Formal Organization: 6. The Weberian tradition in organizational research Marshall W. Meyer 7. Structural inconsistency and management strategy in organizations Stanley H. Udy Jr 8. Organizational demography and structural change in the Roman Catholic church Richard Schoenherr and Lawrence A. Young 9. The technocratic organization of academic work Wolf Heydebrand 10. The organizational and structural context of employee assistance programs Terry C. Blum Part III. 11. Penetrating differentiation: linking macro and micro phenomena Joseph E. Schwartz 12. Social structure and intermarriage: a reanalysis John Svoretz 13. Network diversity, substructures and opportunities for contact Peter v. Marsden 14. Kinds of relations in American discussion networks Ronald S. Burt 15. Social control and social networks: a model from Georg Simmel Ronald L. Breiger Bibliography of the writings of Peter M. Blau Index.

What Happened to Middle Management

This chapter concerns what has happened to the ranks of middle management and managerial work since the 1950s. Middle management consists of managers reporting to other managers—in other words, middle management encompasses the great majority of managers. Chief executives are not middle managers, nor are they sole proprietors. Otherwise, the definition of middle management is quite elastic, as we will see.

Editor's Introduction – No Free Lunch: Dilemmas of Product Quality in China

This Editors Forum Made in China: Implications of Chinese Product Recalls presents four perspectives on Chinese product recalls: supply chain management, moral degradation or the decline of traditional business ethics, evidence based management and free riding on the Made in China brand. Extended supply chains and uncertain ethical standards almost certainly contribute to lapses in product quality as do cost pressures facing most Chinese firms. Product quality issues, moreover, will be most significant for goods posing hidden risks to health and safety, such as food and toys, and less significant for goods like computers and consumer electronics whose conformity to specifications can be readily monitored.

Decentralized Enterprise Reform: Notes on the Transformation of State-Owned Enterprises

This chapter compares three models of enterprise reform: shock therapy, incrementalism, and decentralized reform, whereby local governments and enterprises themselves largely control the reform process. Decentralized reform leads to abrupt and inconsistent changes in enterprise management since the reform process is largely unguided—it is reform without a rule book. We argue that China is illustrative of decentralized enterprise reform and that the decentralized nature of China’s reform process has resulted in vast differences in forms of state ownership structure and capabilities among Chinese state-owned enterprises.

Bureaucracy and Bureaucratization

Bureaucracy is an epithet, but it is also rationalization of administration. In contrast to pre-bureaucratic forms of organization, bureaucracy rationalizes reporting relationships, procedures, careers, and compensation. Even so, bureaucracy is fraught with dysfunctions, among them resistance to change, endemic power struggles, and the tendency to elaborate structure and process. Today, large firms and government agencies retain many of the elements of bureaucracy, anti-bureaucratic rhetoric notwithstanding. Conventional indexes show that the level of bureaucratization in Western societies to have remained essentially flat over the last decade. However, there has been a proliferation of new organizational forms, for example entrepreneurial organizations, network organizations, and virtual organizations, which attempt to achieve the benefits of rationalization without incurring the costs associated with bureaucratic administration.

Combining Financial and Organizational Incentives to Better Align Individual Behaviour with Organizational Goals

Much of the existing literature has focused on financial incentives to align individual behaviour with organizational goals, based on the assumption that individual behaviour is largely motivated by expected pecuniary payoffs. However, past and more recent economic developments show that financial incentives can induce myopic behaviour, and thereby financial incentives alone appear to be aligning individual behaviour with organizational goals too myopically. In this paper, we embrace the idea that individual behaviour is also socially embedded and motivated in order to explore incentives that are geared towards producing long-term oriented behaviour. Specifically, we focus on incentives stem from an individual’s social embeddedness in an organization. We define such ‘organizational incentives’ and discuss their theoretical foundations. However, as we show, organizational incentives alone motivate individual behaviour that is too hyperopic (overly concerned with the long-term survival of the organization). Therefore, we argue that the organization is best served by combining individualistic financial incentives with the socially embedded organizational incentives to motivate individual behaviour which is neither myopic nor hyperopic and which is more in line with organizational goals. We discuss how firms can adjust their financial and organizational incentives accordingly and combine them effectively, and what factors foster an effective combination of financial and organizational incentives.

Permanently Failing Organizations.

Foreword - Paul DiMaggio Introduction Four Cases of Permanent Failure Performance and Persistence in Organizational Theory Performance and Persistence The Results of Research Toward a Theory of Permanent Failure Organizational Responses to Permanent Failure Permanent Failure and the Sociology of Organizations