The Mirroring Hypothesis: Theory and Evidence on the Correspondence between the Structure of Products and Organizations

Abstract

The relationship between product architecture and organizational structure is a topic of great interest in contemporary practice and research. Much of the literature that examines this relationship posits a “mirroring hypothesis”—that is, the claim that the structure of a product development organization must necessarily “mirror” the architecture of the product it develops. In this paper, I explain the theoretical underpinnings of this hypothesis and review the empirical evidence for and against it. The relevant literature includes works in engineering, organizational design, new product development, strategy, and economics. Notwithstanding this broad scope, the research falls into two broad classes: (1) a largely normative stream that aims to prescribe how best to organize and manage the internal development efforts of a single firm and (2) a more descriptive stream that seeks instead to explain when and why some firms choose to rely (or not to rely) on the development efforts of external suppliers. I review both streams and find support for the mirroring hypothesis in some settings but not others. This result indicates that conventional views on mirroring are too simplistic: rather than asking whether the mirroring hypothesis holds as a general proposition, a contingent theory is needed to explain when it holds, as well as when and why it may not hold.

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