Thomas A. Mahoney

A Model of Corporate Performance as a Function of Environmental, Organizational, and Leadership Influences

In a model of corporate performance incorporating environmental, organizational, and leadership variables, three performance dimensions—profit, profitability, and stock price—are examined for a sam...

University Budgets and Organizational Decision Making.

September 1978, volume 23 This paper seeks to determine the nature of budget decision making in a university. Using a research design employing cross-sectional and longitudinal data, the analysis explores whether budgeting conforms more closely to a bureaucratic model of organization or to a coalitional model of organization. The data suggest that coalitional behavior is most easily discernible in budget decision making when resources are relatively scarce. Thus, decisions about resource allocation tend to conform more with behavior predicted by coalitional theory, at least during periods of relative scarcity of resources.

Managerial Models of Organizational Effectiveness.

Studies of organizational characteristics predictive of managerial judgments of overall effectiveness of subordinate organizational units are reported.3 The findings are interpreted within the framework of a hierarchical model of criteria of effectiveness. Measurable organizational characteristics serve as operational, short-run substitutes for the more subjective, long-run ultimate criterion of organizational effectiveness. The general business and research and development models of criteria of organizational effectiveness show differences in ways consistent with the analyses of Woodward (1965) and Thompson (1967).

Organizational Hierarchy and Position Worth

Evidence on organizational hierarchy is reviewed and employed in the formulation of hypothesized relations between level in the managerial hierarchy and compensation judged appropriate for manageri...

THE ROLE OF TECHNOLOGY IN MODELS OF ORGANIZATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS.

Abstract Technology has been depicted, in recent years, as an important causal variable in some theoretical formulations of organizational structure and behavior. Studies conducted to investigate the relationships between technology and other organizational variables have not provided, thus far, a conclusive picture of the role of technology in a parsimonious model of organizational behavior. Much of the difficulty in studying technology can be traced to the problem of obtaining a satisfactory operational definition of technology. A related problem is that of establishing the appropriate unit of analysis within which to study technology variance. An operational definition of technology is developed and applied in this study, building from a typology of technologies proposed by J. D. Thompson. Analysis was conducted on 297 organization units (departments, devisions) from within a diverse sample of 17 business and industrial firms. The organization units were classified among three varieties of technology, specified as long-linked, mediating and intensive technology respectively (following the J. D. Thompson typology). The organization units were also described in terms of several dimensions of organizational behavior developed in earlier research. Direct and indirect relationships involving technology, 14 dimensions of organizational behavior, and organization unit effectiveness, were investigated in several analyses. The findings from these analyses support the hypothesis that the criteria of effectiveness of an organization unit vary with the nature of the technology of the unit. The nature of the intra-technology models of organizational effectiveness are generally supportive of the variation expected from the Thompson theoretical analysis. No direct technology—organizational effectiveness relationship was observed, a finding which is in keeping with the expectations of the researchers. The models of organizational effectiveness observed within each of the three technology categories are described and the implications of their differences and similarities are discussed.

Goal setting and the task process: I. An interactive influence on individual performance

Abstract Goal—performance relationships investigated in this laboratory study were based on a model of individual performance as influenced by the specificity and difficulty of goals assigned and by the frequency of performance intervals allocated for task completion. The form of these relationships was considered to be shaped by the prescriptiveness of the task process involved. Task process was found to differentiate the form of some goal-performance characteristics: Pacing the individual improved performance on a repetitive task (fixed process), but had no significant effect on a problem solving task (nonprescribed, variable process); focusing effort through a specific goal improved performance on a problem solving task, but had no significant influence on repetitive task performance. A post hoc separation of the 240 subjects in the experimental group into low and high task interest categories showed on analysis that high interest subjects outperformed low interest subjects on each task. The findings suggest a differential locus of interest, being externally induced in a repetitive task and intrinsic to a problem solving task.

The Expectancy Model in the Analysis of Occupational Preference and Occupational Choice.

Abstract The differences between the factors related to occupational preference and occupational choice were explored for upper-division college students from business and psychology classes. The results strongly supported a valance-instrumentality-expectancy model in the context of occupational choice. Occupational preference was primarily a function of occupational valence, the multiplicative relation between the outcome valences and the instrumentalities of the occupations for these outcomes. Occupational choice was primarily a function of the force to choose an occupation, the multiplicative relaitonship between occupational valence and the expectancy of attaining an occupation and the expected costs of attaining an occupation.

The Conditioning Influence of Organization Size Upon Managerial Practice.

Abstract Organization size is a frequently discussed, less often studied, characteristic of organization units. Two size dimensions, unit size and size of parent organization, are analyzed for independent and joint relationships with various dimensions of organizational behavior and managerial practice. Results suggest that managerial practices of delegation, staffing and direction vary with size and moderate expected size influences upon coordination and performance.

The Rearranged Work Week: Evaluations of Different Work Schedules

The five-day forty-hour per week work schedule has been the norm in much of industry for many years. In recent years, however, many firms have adopted flex-time and four-day per week schedules. Employees working traditional five-day schedules, flex-time, and four-day schedules report their reactions to these work schedules and perceptions of change experienced or anticipated with a different schedule. Most employees react favorably to a change to flex-time or the four-forty schedule. Preference for one or the other schedule appears to be a function of leisure time orientation, which is related to the age and sex of the worker.

A Supervisory View of Unit Effectiveness.

Abstract : First level supervisors (N = 53) from a cross-section of business and industrial organizations in metropolitan Minneapolis - St. Paul provided evaluative and descriptive information about the immediate work group which each supervised. From this information a model was built depicting first level supervisory perceptions of behaviors which lead to work unit effectiveness. This model was compared with a model based upon higher level managers perceptions of what leads to first level unit effectiveness. The overwhelming importance of production emphasis by both groups and the use of human relations behaviors in an instrumental fashion by first level supervisors is discussed in connection with managerial philosophy. Other similarities and differences between the models from the two organizational levels are considered. (Author)