Technology and the Structure of Organizations

Abstract

Data on 43 industrial organizations point to the existence of relationships between an organization's technology and aspects of its internal structure, including the number oJ specialized sub-units, the number of levels of authority, the ratio of managers and supervisors to total personnel, and the degree of program specification within the organization. A primary finding is that the less changeful an organization's technology, the more likely the foregoing aspects of structure are to increase. The findings hold with size and a number of other organizational variables controlled. The importance of considering technology in the comparative analysis of formal organizations is emphasized. It is also suggested that the technology variable, in connection with other aspects of organizational structure, serves to establish a rudimentary typology of sociotechnical organization and that the use of the typology may provide a useful analytic tool for the investigation of a number of organizational processes, including those of decision-making and patterns of intra-organizational conflict.

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