William G. Ouchi

Markets, Bureaucracies, and Clans.

Evaluating organizations according to an efficiency criterion would make it possible to predict the form organizations will take under certain conditions. Organization theory has not developed such a criterion because it has lacked a conceptual scheme capable of describing organizational efficiency in sufficiently microsopic terms. The transactions cost approach provides such a framework because it allows us to identify the conditions which give rise to the costs of mediating exchanges between individuals: goal incongruence and performance ambiguity. Different combinations of these causes distinguish three basic mechanisms of mediation or control: markets, which are efficient when performance ambiguity is low and goal incongruence is high; bureaucracies, which are efficient when both goal incongruence and performance ambiguity are moderately high; and clans, which are efficient when goal incongruence is low and performance ambiguity is high.

Efficient Cultures: Exploring the Relationship between Culture and Organizational Performance.

We gratefully acknowledge the helpful comments of our colleagues, Kerry Patterson and Keith Warner, as well as the thoughtful comments of the editors of this special issue. This research was supported through grants from the Office of Naval Research, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, IBM, The General Electric Foundation, AMP, Inc., Westinghouse Corporation, and the Sperry Corporation. Contrary to currently popular notions of organizational culture, we claim that the existence of local organizational cultures that are distinct from more generally shared background cultures occurs relatively infrequently atthe level of the whole organization. We also argue that, with respect to organizational performance, particular properties of local organizational culture are more important than others and that local organizational culture will be more critical to performance in one range of organizations than in others. We conclude by applying our point of viewto the problem of changing organizational cultures and argue that they are more adaptive than is currently thought.

Organizational Control: Two Functions.

William G. Ouchi and Mary Ann Maguire A distinction is drawn between two modes of organizational control, one based on personal surveillance, behavior control, and the other based on the measurement of outputs, output control. A study of employees over five levels of hierarchy shows that the two modes of control are not substitutes for each other, but are independent of each other, The evidence suggests that output control occurs in response to a managers need to provide legitimate evidence of performance, while behavior control is exerted when means-ends relations are known and thus appropriate instruction possible.

Types of Organizational Control and Their Relationship to Emotional Well Being.

This research is one report of a project being conducted by a team whose other members are: David Gibson, Alfred Jaeger, Raymond Price, and Alan Wilkins. This research is made possible through grants from the Alcoa Foundation and from E.l. Dupont de Nemours and Company, for which we are grateful. Our colleagues, Harold J. Leavitt, Jeffrey Pfeffer, Jerry I. Porras, W. Richard Scott, and Eugene J. Webb, have provided helpful criticisms and suggestions which we appreciate.

Defining the Span of Control

The authors thank Professor Howard Aldrich for comments on an earlier draft. This work was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation, sociology section, which is gratefully acknowledged. The concept span of control has been interpreted so widely over the past years that in its present form its use as a means of communicating information among scholars has become severely impaired. This article argues that it is a useful concept for measuring the closeness of contact between a superior and his subordinates. Data are presented which demonstrate that different operational definitions of the term will produce not only greatly different mean values of the span of control, but also different correlation coefficients with other important structural variables. A new operational measure is proposed in order to develop a common language of measurement that will facilitate an understanding of organizational structure.

Power to the Principals: Decentralization in Three Large School Districts

School districts have made several attempts at decentralizing. However, decentralization in school districts can mean so many different things that the term has nearly lost its meaning. This paper reports a study of three large urban school districts that, over almost 30 years, adopted nearly identical approaches to decentralizing, granting control to principals and expanding freedom of choice for families. In all three cases, the goal of improving student achievement was achieved, although with a very small sample. These three districts are compared to the three largest public districts in North America. The comparisons reveal that the three decentralized districts attained a high level of principal control over school budgets, staffing, schedule, and teaching methods.

Academy Of Management Journal Editors’ Forum Making Public Schools Work: Management Reform as the Key

The article presents a transcript of a forum held by the publication on the subject of management reform in U.S. public schools. Professor Lyman Porter believes public education has not traditionally received much attention from management scholars, despite it being a matter of great concern to policy makers and the general public. Professor William Ouchi discusses the importance of autonomy and describes action taken by the business community in Seattle, Washington to promote change-oriented candidates for the local school board. Hawaii Governor Linda Lingle discusses reforms in public education her state has embraced.

Theory Z: How American Business Can Meet the Japanese Challenge.

Proposes a new form of business management that focuses on long-range planning, strong corporate philosophy, and concensus decision-making to help American corporations meet the challenge of Japan.