Yue Maggie Zhou

Designing for Complexity: Using Divisions and Hierarchy to Manage Complex Tasks

This paper studies the impact of task complexity and decomposability on the degree of organizational divisionalization and hierarchy within firms. Drawing upon the team theory and modularity literature, it argues that the degree of divisionalization is predicated not only on the extent of interdependence complexity among tasks but also on the extent to which those interdependent relationships are decomposable. As such, the feasibility and benefits of modularization in organizational design may be overstated when the underlying tasks are not decomposable. In addition, this paper argues that organizational hierarchy serves to mitigate the tension between complexity and decomposability by facilitating a higher degree of divisionalization. These arguments are tested using data on the business activities and organization structures of U.S. equipment manufacturers in 1993-2003. Results show that divisionalization increases with task complexity, suggesting that complex task systems encourage more division of managerial responsibilities. However, divisionalization decreases as task systems become less decomposable. Meanwhile, organizational hierarchy increases with task complexity, and it increases as task systems become less decomposable. These findings highlight the constraints firms face in designing modular organization structures and the role of hierarchy in coordinating complex task systems that are not fully decomposable.

PRIVATE PARTICIPATION IN INFRASTRUCTURE IN CHINA: ISSUES AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE ROAD, WATER, AND POWER SECTORS

Infrastructure has played a major role in Chinas rapid development. Over the past decade the road network expanded by more than 40 percent, water production grew by more than 50 percent, and China has become the worlds second largest energy producer. However, foreign direct investment in infrastructure accounts for a small share of foreign direct investment flows and for only 10 percent of total investment in infrastructure. Meeting the demand for cheaper, more reliable, and more efficient infrastructure services will require more than US

Supervising Across Borders: The Case of Multinational Hierarchies

75 billion a year over the next decade. Increasing the participation of the private sector, domestic and foreign is an obvious policy option. Public-private partnerships can reduce the fiscal subsidies on public agencies and improve the targeting of subsidies to poor people, students, the elderly and other disadvantaged groups. This report reviews Chinas current framework for private participation in infrastructure. It also compares Chinas experiences with those of other countries, providing legal, regulatory, and financial framework recommendations as well as sector-specific suggestions.

Offshoring Pollution While Offshoring Production

This paper examines how multinational corporations (MNCs) selectively assign supervisory responsibilities to units in countries with varying levels of institutional quality. Arbitraging across institutional contexts is an important function of MNCs, but it also creates coordination challenges. The choice of organization structure, such as the differential assignment of supervisory responsibilities, is an important tool for managing these coordination challenges. Using data on the business activities and supervision relationships within U.S. multinational manufacturers in 1996–2008, I find that frontline subsidiaries in countries with weaker institutions are more likely to be supervised by foreign rather than domestic supervisory units. Foreign supervision is even more likely when subsidiaries in weak-institution countries conduct activities that are more central to or interdependent with their parents’ global operations. These findings confirm that MNCs use differential supervision to enhance global coordination. The paper highlights one of the most unique features of MNCs: a multinational hierarchy that resides within a firm’s boundary but across national borders. It also connects MNCs’ hierarchical structure with institutional imperfections that give rise to the emergence of the firm in the first place.

Product Variety, Sourcing Complexity, and the Bottleneck of Coordination

We examine the role of firm strategy in the global effort to combat pollution. We find that U.S. plants release less toxic emissions when their parent firm imports more from low-wage countries (LWCs). Consistent with the Pollution Haven Hypothesis, goods imported by U.S. firms from LWCs are in more pollution-intensive industries. U.S. plants shift production to less pollution-intensive industries, produce less waste, and spend less on pollution abatement when their parent imports more from LWCs. The negative impact of LWC imports on emissions is stronger for U.S. plants located in counties with greater institutional pressure for environmental performance, but weaker for more-capable U.S. plants and firms. These results highlight the role of local institutions and firm capability in explaining firms’ offshoring and environmental strategy.

STRUCTURAL COMPLEXITY AND DIVERSIFICATION.

This paper studies the coordination burden for firms that pursue variety as their main product strategy. We propose that product variety magnifies the tension between scale economies in production and scope economies in distribution, giving rise to complex sourcing relationships. Sourcing complexity worsens performance and poses a dilemma for organization design: A hierarchical structure with intermediate coordinating units such as sourcing hubs reduces sourcing complexity for downstream distribution but creates bottlenecks at the hubs, hurting performance for both the hubs and downstream distribution. We empirically examine operations data for about 300 distribution centers within a major soft drink bottling company in 2010-2011. Results support our hypotheses, illuminating the source of complexity in multi-product firms and the challenge for organization design in managing complexity.

Origin Matters: The Differential Impact of Import Competition on Innovation?

Prior research suggests related diversification is more beneficial than unrelated diversification. This paper proposes that coordination costs arising from interdependencies among a firms existing...

Synergy, Coordination Costs and Diversification Choices

We examine the impact of import competition on firms’ innovation input and output. We conjecture that U.S. firms view import competition from high-wage countries (HWCs) as “neck-and-neck�? competition and will respond by intensifying innovation. In contrast, U.S. firms will reduce innovation in response to import competition from low-wage countries (LWCs), because such competition does not always increase the potential benefits from innovation. Our empirical results are supportive. We find that, when confronting HWC import competition, U.S. firms increase R&D spending while intensifying and improving innovation output (file more patents, receive more citations to their patents, and produce more breakthrough patents). Moreover, U.S. firms closest to the technological frontier — largest firms, firms with the largest stocks of knowledge, and most profitable firms — increase and improve their innovation the most in response to HWC competition. These results shed light on the relationship between product market competition and innovation, and point to the origin of import competition as a determent of innovation decisions made by U.S. companies.