Showing papers by "Lex Donaldson published in 1975"

The Aston Group Findings on Centralization: Further Discussion

Abstract: Recently Child (1972) has argued that the results obtained from a number of studies of the dimensions of organizational structure indicate a general compensatory relationship between greater delegation of decision making and greater structuring through bureaucratic controls. This was manifested in the National study (of 82 manufacturing and service organizations in England and Scotland) by moderately high negative correlations between the variables comprising the two clusters of "structuring of activities" and "centralization." The "structuring of activities" cluster is composed of several variables the most important of which are "functional specialization," "overall role specialization," "overall standardizations" and "overall formalization" (Pugh et al. 1968). The second cluster will here be treated as consisting purely of "overall centralization" (Child 1972: 171). The results from the earlier Aston study of 52 organizations of diverse sorts (manufacturing, retail, government, utility) were broadly consistent in that the direction of the correlations were similar, but the magnitude of the negative correlation between the two clusters was lower (Child 1972: 170). In particular there were lower correlations between "overall centralization" and "standardization," and "formalization," and these were not improved when the manufacturing only organizations in the Aston sample were isolated. Since the Aston results were somewhat discrepant to those obtained both in the National and the Coventry studies (Hinings and Lee, 1971), this provided a puzzle which Child attempted to resolve by reference to the heterogeneity in organizational status in the Aston sample (Child 1972: 171).

Job Enlargement: A Multidimensional Process

Abstract: This paper reports the results of an evaluation study into the effects of a job enlargement exercise on female assemblers of electrical domestic appliances. Data on job satisfaction and perceptions of job attributes are analysed, and a comparison is made between the group with the enlarged job and another group of operatives who are performing tasks fairly similar to those which the enlarged group were performing prior to job enlargement. The results indicate that the expected increases in satisfaction associated with greater work variety, novelty and felt use of abilities were achieved. There were some dissatisfying outcomes related to decreased social interaction and somewhat increased effort of work. It is suggested that opportunities for social interaction could have been maintained by a different job redesign. The increased effort of work was hypothesized to relate to the presence of multiple motives for change among the management team. The need is stressed to conceptualize job enlargement as a phen...