Borge Obel

Aarhus University | AU · ICOA

Introduction The increasing elderly population has led to a growing demand for healthcare services. A hospital at home treatment model offers an alternative to standard hospital admission, with the potential to reduce readmission and healthcare consumption while improving patients’ quality of life. However, there is little evidence regarding hospit...

AI robot bosses are becoming increasingly prevalent in organizations, and they expand the traditional organizational design space. Organizations can benefit from utilizing both robots and humans as bosses, as they can substitute for each other and work together as complements across different organizational structures. This expanded design space in...

Background In 2007, a Danish national policy to future-proof emergency department (ED) performance was launched. The policy included several recommendations for the management and organisation of care that essentially introduced greater ED autonomy. In this study, we evaluate the effects of increased ED autonomy on readmission, mortality and episod...

Sustainability provides new opportunities where firms need to create a sustainable business model with the optimal fit between the rising demands of a sustainable economy and their business model, strategy, structure, incentives, human skills, IT systems, and all the other aspects of the organizational design of the firm. Sustainability creates an...

Purpose This study aims to describe how large corporations, facing digitalization and sustainability, can use established models and theories to find appropriate organizations design for these “new” challenges. Design/methodology/approach The information processing perspective presented by Jay Galbraith (Galbraith, 1974) can be an appropriate plat...

Background: Diagnostic discrepancy (DD) is a common phenomenon in healthcare, but little is known about its organisational determinants and consequences. Thus, the aim of the study was to evaluate this among selected emergency department (ED) patients. Method: We conducted an observational study including all consecutive ED patients (hip fractur...

Med udgangspunkt i de danske akutafdelinger belyses, hvordan organisationers design har betydning for organisationens målopfyldelse, herunder den kvalitet, organisationen leverer. Grundet få og ikke specifikke nationale retningslinjer er akutafdelingerne organiseret meget forskelligt. Nogle afdelinger ændrer også organisering i løbet af døgnet og u...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to address issues related to better identification of strategic orientation of the firm and the impact of strategic orientation on sustainable development of the firm. Design/methodology/approach The paper presents an overview of the existing literature on strategic orientation of the firm, reexamines the major...

The purpose of this paper is to address issues related to better identification of strategic orientation of the firm and show how it can be applied to sustainability. The paper presents an overview of the existing literature on strategic orientation of the firm, reexamines the major findings and fills the discovered gaps in theoretical constructs a...

Background Diagnostic discrepancy (DD) is a common phenomenon in healthcare, but little is known about its organisational determinants and consequences. Thus, the aim of the study was to evaluate this among selected emergency department (ED) patients. Method We conducted an observational study including all consecutive ED patients (hip fracture or...

Objective: The aim of this study is to investigate the association between emergency department (ED) organizational models and the risk of death within 7 days of ED discharge. Patients and methods: We included Danish ED discharges between 1 January 2011 and 24 December 2014 that led to death within 7 days of discharge. The inclusion criterion wa...

A collaborative community is an organizational form that is increasingly being used in knowledge-intensive industries to accelerate innovation via collaboration. This study examines key design issues faced by a bilateral broker collaborative community at the point of its formation: (1) whether a critical mass of members is required for community su...

Organization design is a major factor determining an organization’s performance and how the people work together in these organizations. In the paper, we argue that designing organizations should be scientific-based and forward-looking. This raises challenges in designing organizations in contexts and situations that are new and have not been seen...

Introduction: Twenty-one new Danish emergency departments (EDs) were established following a 2007 policy reform that included ED autonomy to self-organize. The aim of this study was to describe the organization of the 21 departments and their organizational challenges. Participants and methods: We used a qualitative design based on COREQ guideli...

Initiatives to redesign cities so that they are smarter and more sustainable are increasing worldwide. A smart city can be understood as a community in which citizens, business firms, knowledge institutions, and municipal agencies collaborate with one another to achieve systems integration and efficiency, citizen engagement, and a continually impro...

Self-interest vs. cooperation is a fundamental dilemma in animal behavior as well as in human and organizational behavior. In organizations, how to get people to cooperate despite or in conjunction with their self-interest is fundamental to the achievement of a common goal. While both organizational designs and social interactions have been found t...

Many organizations, both public and private, are changing their structure to a complex matrix in order to meet the growing complexity in the world in which they operate. Often, those organizations struggle to obtain the benefits of a matrix organization. In this article, we discuss how to get a matrix to work, taking a multi-contingency perspective...

Cambridge Core - Organisation Studies - Organizational Design - by Richard M. Burton

In consequence of a major administrative reform in 2007, the Danish emergency care system is undergoing the largest reorganization in decades (MHP, 2008; Vrangbaek, 2013). The number of acute hospitals has been reduced from more than 40 to 21 and the new emergency departments (EDs) have been established (MHP, 2008; Wen et al., 2013, Mattsson, Matts...

As a result of major administrative reform in 2007, the Danish emergency care system is undergoing the largest reorganization in decades (MHP, 2008; Vrangbaek, 2013). The number of acute hospitals has been reduced from more than 40 to 21 and new emergency departments (EDs) have been established (MHP, 2008; Wen et al., 2013, Mattsson, Mattsson & Jør...

Jay R. Galbraith passed away on April 8, 2014. Jay was a leading authority on organization design, a founding member of the Organizational Design Community, and a valued contributor to the Journal of Organization Design. We invited Jay’s colleagues from around the world to offer their comments on his work. The specific question we asked was: What i...

We analyze performance and emotions as antecedents and consequences of team strategic decisions to explore a new routine versus exploit an existing routine. In a laboratory study, we examine team decision making over time and draw causal inferences about the relationships among team emotions, team performance, and explore-exploit decisions. We use...

Program value proposition, content, organization, and strategy are elaborated herein. This elaboration is the result of careful study of business and social trends, along with careful listening to collaborating enterprises. It is in this latter sense that the Enterprise-Wide Process & Performance Excellence certificate program is a product of a co-...

Miles-Snow strategic typology has been successfully used in research, in strategy, and in organizational design. The key dimension underlying Miles-Snow typology is the organizational response to changing environmental conditions. In this paper, a new model is proposed with an extended definition of environmental conditions that includes not only t...

In today's volatile business environment, it is more important than ever that managers, whether of a global multinational or a small team, should understand the fundamentals of organizational design. Written specifically for executives and executive MBA students, the edition of this successful book provides a step-by-step 'how to' guide for designi...

In this essay, we examine what-is, what-might-be, and what-should-be computational models where the purpose is to explore new concepts, ideas, boundaries, and limitations going beyond what we know at the moment. Computational models complement well with other approaches: ethnographies, field studies, human subject lab studies, and surveys in novel...

In today's volatile business environment, it is more important than ever that managers, whether of a global multinational or a small team, should understand the fundamentals of organizational design. Written specifically for executives and executive MBA students, the edition of this successful book provides a step-by-step 'how to' guide for designi...

In today's volatile business environment, it is more important than ever that managers, whether of a global multinational or a small team, should understand the fundamentals of organizational design. Written specifically for executives and executive MBA students, the edition of this successful book provides a step-by-step 'how to' guide for designi...

Does virtuality in organizations require centralization or decentralization? We specify the coordination and information processing requirements for virtual organizing in order to examine how these requirements are met by centralized and decentralized structural designs, respectively. We use the agent based SimVision computational discrete event s...

I bestraebelse på at forstå hvordan og hvorfor et organisatorisk klima påvirker medarbejdernes informationsbehandling og dermed deres beslutningstagen, gives der i denne artikel en bedre forståelse af begrebet gruppefølelser. Ved at se på or-ganisatorisk klima i relation til aff ektive begivenheder, der påvirker gruppefølelser, opnås en ny indsigt...

What is virtuality in organizational design? In this chapter we argue for the importance of understanding the nature and effect of the characteristics of virtual organizations, rather than simply focusing on how these characteristics are different from co-located organizations. Through a review of literature relating to virtual organizations we ide...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate how misalignments between the organizational climate (measured as information‐processing demand) and the leadership style (measured as information‐processing capability) may result in negative performance consequences. Design/methodology/approach The empirical part of the paper is based on questi...

This chapter discusses the notions of affective events and employee emotions, and integrates these concepts into previous work on psychological climate, as represented in the multicontingency model (Burton et al., 2006; Burton and Obel, 2004). Furthermore, this chapter discusses the effect of organizational emotions on organizational information pr...

A leader's job is often to attempt achieving organizational alignment. Many theories propose climate as an effective means to help leaders carry out this task. Nevertheless, our understanding of which exact actions are needed to manage climate remains somewhat diffuse. We present a new cognitiveoriented view on climate, which enables us to discuss...

In this paper, we look at the internal supply chain of an internationally operating firm characterized by a multi-location and multi-stage operations structure. We address problems at three levels, namely the strategic, tactical, and operational levels. Our approach goes beyond the operational literature, and focuses primarily on the tactical level...

This paper analyses the impact of different organizational structures on the coordination problem of the multilevel organization. The two basic structures analysed is the U-form and the M-form within the framework of a price-directive coordination mechanism. Issues such as vertical and horizontal decomposition, the length of the planning period, th...

What is a good measure for an action-oriented leadership style to employ in the Multi-contingency Model? We develop leadership dimensions of delegation and uncertainty avoidance using factor analysis and test its implications, here on strategic implementation. An explore-exploit view of strategy is similarly confirmed using factor analysis. Using t...

In today's volatile business environment, organizational design is a serious challenge for any manager, whether of a multinational enterprise or a small team. This book sets out a step-by-step approach to designing an organization. All the key aspects of organizational design are covered, including goals, strategy, structure, process, people, coord...

A firm's organizational climate—its degree of trust, morale, conflict, rewards equity, leader credibility, resistance to change, and scapegoating—helps determine its success. Likewise, organizational strategy—the firm's commitment to capital investment, innovation, quality, and the like—has also been found to be an important determinant of firm per...

When you examine the design of an organization for evaluating its efficiency and effectiveness, you can look at it in a number of ways. You may gather information about what the organization actually does - the goods and services it provides. You may be told who the boss is and who makes the decisions. You may be shown an organizational chart. Many...

The Institute of Applied Computer Science (introduced in Chapter 3) was negotiating a contract with a European Union research agency. This contract would be the single largest contract in the history of the company. The contract required Applied Computer Science to employ about forty people and to be the coordinating unit for a number of research t...

Strategic diagnosis is an assessment of the organization’s strategic factors, structure and performance. Diagnosis identifies misfits - situations which yield diminished performance; design is devising structures that fit the strategic situation and result in good performance. Strategic organizational diagnosis is the assessment within the multi-co...

The Institute of Applied Computer Science, in Odense, Denmark, is a small research-oriented organization located at Science Park. Its main activities are related to high technology applications of computer science in various organizations and projects. It has been involved in technology transfer projects for a number of European companies. The basi...

The objective of strategic organizational design is to obtain total design fit: strategic fit, contingency fit, and design parameter fit. These criteria were developed in Chapter 1. Briefly, strategic fit is fit among the input factors: leadership style, climate, size, environment, technology, and strategy. Contingency fit ensures that the continge...

Growth at Applied Computer Science, Inc., created a conflict for the design of the organization. As a small organization, a simple configuration would be appropriate. However, management’s preference for delegation, low uncertainty avoidance, and a producer leadership style suggested more decentralization. Further, the company’s increased size indi...

“Navy retirees recruited by tech firms fit discipline, flexibility to new tasks.” This was one of the headlines in the San Jose Mercury News, Sunday, February 15, 1998. The story tells how Silicon Valley corporations have started hiring retired and former military personnel. The story focuses on the similarities and differences in working in the mi...

On Monday, January 13, 1992, the Danish business newspaper Børsen published a story about Samsonite’s new distribution system for its European market. Samsonite produces luggage in Belgium for the European market. In each European country it had sold its products through a national company that had exclusive rights to import Samsonite’s products. T...

When Bon Goût faced its problem with Samsonite, described in Chapter 6, it had a number of ways to deal with the situation. It could fight the decision made by Samsonite, or it could decide to stay in its normal business and find a new supplier to replace Samsonite. One of its major competitive strengths - its ability to deal with manufacturers and...

Med Electronic, Inc. is a medium-size company that specializes in electronic apparatus that is used in the treatment of pain and in other electronic devices used by hospitals. The machines have been custom made to the particular needs of the user department or physician. Some basic components are used in all its devices, but no two machines are sim...

On Saturday, January 30, 1993, the Herald Sun, the local newspaper in Durham, North Carolina, reported that IBM was facing problems. IBM had in the previous week announced a cut in dividends and planned to replace its chairman, John Akers. IBM’s profit went from a $6 billion profit in 1990 to $2.8 billion and $4.9 billion losses in 1991 and 1992 re...

In this paper, we analyze demand postponement as a strategy to handle potential demand surges. Under demand postponement, a fraction of the demands from the "regular" period are postponed and satisfied during a "postponement" period. This permits capacity ...

We develop a rule-based contingency misfit model and related hypotheses to test empirically the Burton and Obel (1998) multi contingency model for strategic organizational design. The model is a set of "if-then" misfit rules, in which misfits lead to a loss in performance; they are complements to the strategy and organizational contingency theory f...

We discuss how to measure allocative efficiency without presuming technical efficiency. This is relevant when it is easier to introduce reallocations than improvements of technical efficiency. We compare the approach to the traditional one of assuming technical efficiency before measuring allocative efficiency. In particular, we develop necessary a...

Med Electronic, Inc. is a medium-size company that specializes in electronic apparatus that is used in the treatment of pain and in other electronic devices used by hospitals. The machines have been custom made to the particular needs of the user department or physician. Some basic components are used in all its devices, but no two machines are sim...

The Institute of Applied Computer Science, in Odense, Denmark, is a small research-oriented organization located at Science Park. Its main activities are related to high technology applications of computer science in various organizations and projects. It has been involved in technology-transfer projects for a number of European companies. The basi...

This chapter provides sample cases written by executive MBA students of the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University and by Civil Engineering students at Stanford University. These cases illustrate how to use the Organizational Consultant program to analyze organizations as well as how to use the Organizational Consultant’s output to create writ...

When Bon Goût faced its problem with Samsonite, described in Chapter 6, it had a number of ways to deal with the situation. It could fight the decision made by Samsonite, or it could decide to stay in its normal business and find a new supplier to replace Samsonite. One of its major competitive strengths-its ability to deal with manufacturers and r...

In a recent report the Danish Ministry of Industrial Affairs stressed that the introduction of new technology may even be harmful to the corporation, if it is not accompanied by the appropriate organizational alignment. This is a practical statement that “fit” is necessary for organizational success-the main theme of this book.

“Design is concerned with how things ought to be, with devising artifacts to attain goals” (Simon, 1981, p. 133). A number of concepts are important here. “Ought to be” is a normative; it is a statement of the ideal and what we would like to see. It does not necessarily exist anywhere in reality, but it could be and it is desired; it is a creation...

When you examine an organization that you do not know, you can look at it in a number of ways. You may gather information about what the organization actually does-the goods and services it provides. You may be told who the boss is and who makes the decisions. You may be shown an organizational chart. Many companies also have explicitly stated obje...

“Navy retirees recruited by tech firms fit discipline, flexibility to new tasks.” This was one of the headlines in the San Jose Mercury News, Sunday, February 15,1998. The story tells how Silicon Valley corporations have started hiring retired and former military personnel. The story focuses on the similarities and differences in working in the mil...

On Monday, January 13, 1992, the Danish business newspaper Børsen published a story about Samsonite’s new distribution system for its European market. Samsonite produces luggage in Belgium for the European market. In each European country it has sold its products through a national company that had exclusive rights to import Samsonite’s products. T...

Organization theory is a positive science; organizational design is a normative science “concerned with how things ought to be, with devising structures to attain goals.” The Organizational Consultant is a knowledge base expert system to help design organizations. That is, it takes facts about the environment, size, strategy, technology, ownership,...