Samuel B. Bacharach

The Organizational Transformation Process: The Micropolitics of Dissonance Reduction and the Alignment of Logics of Action

Arguing that current theories of organizational change fail to pay adequate attention to how organizations move from one stable state to another, a model is generated of the organizational transformation process. It is argued that to the degree that organizations are systems of exchange, they may be said to be transformed through a process by which the logics of action that parties bring to the exchange are aligned, misaligned, and realigned. Developing the concept of logic of action and drawing on cognitive dissonance theory, examination is made of how, in the face of a massive environmental shift (in this case, airline deregulation), changes at the institutional level were transformed into changes at the core level. The model is generated from an analysis of qualitative data on the impact of deregulation on labor and managements approach to employee emotional well-being in the airline industry.

Organizational Structure, Work Process, and Proposal Making in Administrative Bureaucracies

This paper examines the effect of organizational structures and processes on the reported proposals of innovation by middle and lower echelon officials in 44 Belgian bureaucracies. Technical and ad...

Abusive supervision and subordinate problem drinking: Taking resistance, stress and subordinate personality into account

We test hypotheses derived from two alternative perspectives regarding the association between supervisory abuse and subordinate problem drinking. Drawing from the employee resistance literature, we examine the degree to which such an association may be sensitive to variation in subordinate personality. Drawing from the stress literature, we examine the degree to which this association may be mediated by somatic stress. Multi-source data from 1473 blue-collar workers employed in 55 work units, indicates that while the main effect of abusive supervision on problem drinking is attenuated under conditions of high subordinate conscientiousness and agreeableness (consistent with a resistance-based explanation), the main effect is not mediated by somatic stress.

Structural and Process Constraints on Influence in Organizations: A Level-Specific Analysis

The authors wish to acknowledge the contribution of Hugo van Hassel and Roger Depre, Vervolmakingscentrum Voor Bedrijfsleiding en Administratie, Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, in the design and execution of this study. Computer funds were provided by the Western Societies Program of the Center for International Studies, Cornell University. We want to express our appreciation to Howard Aldrich and Howard Schwartz for helpful comments on earlier versions. The comments of Jonathan Reader and Lawrence French were especially helpful. Finally we want to thank Pam Kline for typing this manuscript.

Work Processes, Role Conflict, and Role Overload The Case of Nurses and Engineers in the Public Sector

This study examined five sets of work process variables with respect to their relationship with role conflict and role overload among samples of public sector nurses and engineers. The findings suggest that managerial strategies appropriate for minimizing role conflict are not necessarily appropriate for minimizing role overload. The findings also suggest that, in the context of public sector employment, some work process predictors of role conflict and overload may be similar across professions. Finally, in contrast with some of the assumptions of recent job design theory, the findings indicate that for public sector professionals, managerial strategies that reflect professional ethos may not reduce role conflict and role overload.

The Dimensionality of Decision Participation in Educational Organizations: The Value of a Multi-Domain Evaluative Approach

While the literature on education reform has called for increased teacher participation in decision making, little is known about the decision participation construct itself Previous research in this area may be categorized according to the approach taken with respect to the conceptualization and operationalization of participation in decision making. We argue that an approach which views the construct as both evaluation-based and multi-dimensional in nature has advantages over three other common approaches taken in such studies. A sample of 842 elementary and 689 secondary teachers is used to (a) show the utility of a multi-domain evaluative approach to examine participation in decision making and (b) empirically identify four decision domains.

Firefighters, critical incidents, and drinking to cope: the adequacy of unit-level performance resources as a source of vulnerability and protection.

The authors investigated the moderating role of unit-level performance resources on the distress-mediated relationship between the intensity of involvement in workplace critical incidents and problematic drinking behavior (i.e., drinking to cope). Building on recent developments in hierarchical linear modeling, the authors tested a cross-level, moderated-mediation model using data from 1,481 firefighters in 144 companies. The findings indicate that (a) there is a significant, distress-mediated association between intensity of involvement in such incidents and drinking to cope, which varies by company (i.e., unit), and (b) the adequacy of unit-level performance resources explains much of this cross-unit variance and attenuates both individual-level mediation stages (i.e., intensity of involvement in critical incidents 3 distress, and distress 3 drinking to cope). Implications regarding the role of unit resources adequacy as a vulnerability factor in stressor-strain relations are discussed.

Alcohol consumption and workplace absenteeism: The moderating effect of social support

Although it is commonly assumed that alcohol consumption has a significant impact on employee absenteeism, the nature of the alcohol-absence relationship remains poorly understood. Proposing that alcohol impairment likely serves as a key mechanism linking drinking and work absence, we posit that this relationship is likely governed less by the amount of alcohol consumed and more by the way it is consumed. Using a prospective study design and a random sample of urban transit workers, we found that the frequency of heavy episodic drinking over the previous month is positively associated with the number of days of absence recorded in the subsequent 12-month period, whereas modal consumption (a metric capturing the typical amount of alcohol consumed in a given period of time) is not. In addition, consistent with both volitional treatments of absenteeism and social exchange theory, perceived coworker support was found to attenuate, and supervisory support to amplify, the link between the frequency of heavy episodic drinking and absenteeism.

Communication in Administrative Bureaucracies1

This paper examines the structural constraints on the frequency of both department head and subordinate communication within 44 local government bureaucracies. The effect of organizational size, sh...

Power and Tactics in Bargaining

This paper develops and tests an analytical framework for analyzing the selection of tactics in bargaining. Using a variant of power-dependence theory, the authors propose that bargainers will use different dimensions of dependence, such as the availability of alternative outcomes from other sources and the value of the outcomes at stake, to select among different tactics. To test this model, the authors conducted two simulation experiments that portrayed an employee-employer conflict over a pay raise, manipulating four dimensions of dependence: employees outcome alternatives, employees outcome value, employers outcome alternatives, and employers outcome value. Within this context, respondents estimated the likelihood of each actor (employee, employer) adopting four tactics: self-enhancement, coalition, threat to leave, and conflict avoidance. The results of one experiment show that an actors own dependence, rather than his opponents dependence on him, is the primary basis for his evaluation and selection of tactics, and also that decisions regarding different tactics are determined by different dimensions of dependence. The results of the other experiment indicate that the opponents initial tactic affects the links between dimensions of dependence and an actors tactics, and the dimensions of dependence affect the propensity toward “tactic matching.”