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New research on organizational structure from Harvard Business School faculty on issues including organizing to spark creativity, effectiveness of various organizational hierarchies, and how IT shapes top-down and bottom-up decision making.
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The Middle Manager of the Future: More Coaching, Less Commanding

by Ben Rand

Skilled middle managers foster collaboration, inspire employees, and link important functions at companies. An analysis of more than 35 million job postings by Letian Zhang paints a counterintuitive picture of today's midlevel manager. Could these roles provide an innovation edge?

Navigating the ‘Bermuda Triangle’ in Professional Services

by Ashish Nanda

Not all companies need to scale. Ashish Nanda explores a crucial choice that leaders of professional services firms face as their organizations grow. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

‘Organizing’, ‘Innovating’, and ‘Managing’ in Complexity Space

by Michael C. Moldoveanu

This paper explores organizational complexity by proposing a two-dimensional framework to help us understand organizational coping mechanisms and failure modes. The framework makes it possible to ask new questions about organizational adaptations to complexity that investigate its underlying structure and dynamics.

Is Your Org Chart Stuck in a Rut? Try a Scientific Experiment

by Carmen Nobel

Harvard Business School’s Organizational Lab helps businesses solve operational problems by changing the way their company is organized. Ethan Bernstein and Clayton Christensen explain how academics and business leaders can work together to create a better org chart. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

These Management Practices, Like Certain Technologies, Boost Company Performance

by Michael Blanding

Management practice acts exactly as a new technology might in giving companies competitive advantage—and there is a right way and a wrong way to do things, says a new study by Raffaella Sadun and colleagues. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

‘Does 'What We Do' Make Us 'Who We Are'? Organizational Design and Identity Change at the Federal Bureau of Investigation

by Ranjay Gulati, Ryan Raffaelli, and Jan Rivkin

Both the design and identity of the FBI changed greatly in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. This study tracing the co-evolution of the Bureau’s organizational design and identity before the 9/11 attacks and through three subsequent phases finds that successful changes to organizational identity are likely to be delayed after a radical external shock: Management is likely to be constrained, appropriate design is probably unclear, or both.

What to Do When Your Organization Has Dueling Missions

by Carmen Nobel

It’s no easy feat to manage hybrid organizations, which combine the social mission of a nonprofit with the revenue model of a for-profit business. Julie Battilana and colleagues explain how hybrids can find success with a business model dubbed “spaces of negotiation.” Open for comment; 0 Comments.

Why Business IT Innovation is so Difficult

by Maggie Starvish

If done right, IT has the potential to completely transform business by flattening hierarchies, shrinking supply chains, and speeding communications, says professor Kristina Steffenson McElheran. Why, then, do so many companies get it wrong? Closed for comment; 0 Comments.

The Power of Conversational Leadership

by Carmen Nobel

Communication is always a challenge, especially in multinational corporations. Boris Groysberg and Michael Slind discuss why it makes sense to adopt the principles of face-to-face conversation in organizational communication. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.

The Inner Workings of Corporate Headquarters

by Michael Blanding

Analyzing the e-mails of some 30,000 workers, Professor Toby E. Stuart and colleague Adam M. Kleinbaum dissected the communication networks of HQ staffers at a large, multidivisional company to get a better understanding of what a corporate headquarters does, and why it does it. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.

Crowded at the Top: The Rise of the Functional Manager

by Carmen Nobel

It's not lonely at the top anymore—today's CEO has an average of 10 direct reports, according to new research by Julie M. Wulf, Maria Guadalupe, and Hongyi Li. Thank a dramatic increase in the number of "functional" managers for crowding in the C-suite. Key concepts include: The number of managers reporting directly to the CEO has doubled, from an average of 5 direct reports in 1986 to an average of 10 today. In 2008, companies averaged 2.9 general managers, compared with 1.6 in 1986, according to data from several surveys. The average number of functional managers reporting directly to the CEO increased much more dramatically, from 3.1 in the late 1980s to 6.7 in 2008. Two main factors have driven the C-suite sea change: an overall increase in IT investments and an overall decrease in firm diversification. As hierarchical flattening occurs, companies are pushing some decisions toward the top, casting doubt on the common idea that firms flatten in order to push ideas down the organization. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.

How IT Shapes Top-Down and Bottom-Up Decision Making

by Carmen Nobel

What determines whether decisions happen on the bottom, middle, or top rung of the corporate ladder? New research from professor Raffaella Sadun finds that the answer often lies in the technology that a company deploys. Key concepts include: Enterprise Resource Planning software is a decentralizing technology: It provides information that enables lower-level managers to make more decisions without consulting their superiors. By the same token, Computer-Assisted Design and Computer-Assisted Manufacturing software creates a situation in which the plant worker needs less access to superiors in order to make a decision. The better the data network, the easier it is for workers to lean on superiors and rely on them to make decisions. It's also easier for executives to micromanage and keep all the decisions in the corporate office. Trust is also a key factor in determining whether decisions are centralized at headquarters or decentralized at the local level. Research finds that the average level of trust of a multinational's home country tends to influence the level of decentralization in that company. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

The Distinct Effects of Information Technology and Communication Technology on Firm Organization

by Nicholas Bloom, Luis Garicano, Raffaella Sadun & John Van Reenen

At what point in the corporate food chain are big decisions made? It depends on technology, according to new research, which finds that information-based software will help to push decisions further down the corporate ladder, whereas communication technologies will push decisions up to the top. Research was conducted by Nicholas Bloom of Stanford University; Assistant Professor Raffaella Sadun of Harvard Business School; and Luis Garicano and John Van Reenen of the London School of Economics. Key concepts include: Enterprise Resource Planning software is a decentralizing technology: It provides information that enables lower-level managers to make more decisions without consulting their superiors. By the same token, Computer Assisted Design software creates a situation in which the worker needs less access to superiors in order to make a decision. On the other hand, the better the data network, the easier it is for workers to communicate with their superiors and to rely on them to make decisions. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.

The Silo Lives! Analyzing Coordination and Communication in Multiunit Companies

by Sarah Jane Gilbert

A new Harvard Business School working paper looks inside the communications "black box" of a large company to understand who talks to whom, and finds the corporate silo as impenetrable as ever. Q&A with professor Toby E. Stuart. Key concepts include: Inside the studied company, practically speaking, little interaction occurred across three major corporate boundaries: business units, organizational functions, and office locations. Communication patterns were extremely hierarchical: Executives, middle managers, and rank-and-file employees communicated extensively within their own levels, but there were far fewer cross-pay-grade interactions in the firm. Junior executives, women, and members of the salesforce were the key actors in bridging the silos. Relative to men, women participate in a greater volume of electronic and face-to-face interactions and do so with a larger and more diverse set of communication partners. Server logs can provide valuable information to managers on communication flows within their own organizations. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.

Communication (and Coordination?) in a Modern, Complex Organization

by Adam M. Kleinbaum, Toby E. Stuart & Michael L. Tushman

Coordination, and the communication it implies, is central to the very existence of organizations. Despite their fundamental role in the purpose of organizations, scholars have little understanding of actual interaction patterns in modern, complex, multiunit firms. To open the proverbial "black box" and begin to reveal the internal wiring of the firm, this paper presents a detailed, descriptive analysis of the network of communications among members of a large, structurally, functionally, geographically, and strategically diverse firm. The full data set comprises more than 100 million electronic mail messages and over 60 million electronic calendar entries for a sample of more 30,000 employees over a three-month period in 2006. Key concepts include: Communication is heavily constrained by formal organizational structure: the vast majority of communication occurs within business unit and functional boundaries, not across them. This points to the importance of drawing the right organizational boundaries. Women, mid- to high-level executives, and members of the executive management, sales, and marketing functions are most likely to participate in cross-group communications. These individuals provide a bridge for distant groups in a company's social structure. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.

What Is Management’s Role in Innovation?

by Jim Heskett

Online forum closed. It's an open question whether management, as it is currently practiced, contributes much to creativity and innovation, says HBS professor Jim Heskett. What changes will allow managers, particularly in larger organizations, to add value to the creative process? What do you think? Closed for comment; 0 Comments.