Organisatie struktuur en technologie: een methodologische kanttekening

Samenvatting

An examination of the relationship between organizational structure & organizational technology takes issue with the prevailing assumption that the perception of task characteristics, as reported by members, can be aggregated to arrive at a technology score on the organizational level. Studied is the structural effect of technological uncertainty on a number of dimensions of organizational structure, including centralization & formalization. The structural effect is isolated from the individual effect; this latter pertains to the strength of the regression weight of technology on the level of the individual member, while controlling for interorganizational differences. Results show that the individual effects are stronger than the structural effects. The structural effects are stronger when the departments are the unit of analysis; large systems such as organizations may be too heterogeneous to be considered meaningful sociological entities. Implications are discussed. 3 Tables, 1 Figure. AA.