Organisation Theory (Fach) / Behavioral Theory of the Firm (Lektion)
In dieser Lektion befinden sich 13 Karteikarten
Fragen
Diese Lektion wurde von moxaachen erstellt.
- Basic idea Focus on decision making within the firm Process models informed by actual practice
- Intellectual roots To understand the realities of organizational decision making processes and tp predict decision outcomes
- Research questions How are goals defined within organizations How is goal attainment evaluated in organizations How do organizations react to failed goal attainment? How do organizations search for innovation and alternatives to the status quo? What biases in search and decision making exist within organizations How are organizations influenced by the experience made by themselves as well as by others? How do organizations learn?
- Key assumptions organizations as complex coalitions rather than single unitary actors Intended and bounded rationality Search for information instead of perfect information Satisficing instead of maximizing
- Research approach Focus on small number of key economic decisions made by the firm Development of processoriented models of the firm Close linkages between models of the firm and empirical observations Develop theory with generality beyond the specific firms studied
- Bounded rationality Actors strive for rational decisions Managerial attention (rather then information) is the true bottleneck in decision-making Managerial attention is selective and situated Actors use simplifiying heuristics Past behavior guides current behavior
- Statisficing Organizations to not seek to maximize Instead, they seek to satisfize, to achieve outcomes that are not optimal but judged acceptable by decision makers Response to complexity and uncertainty and need to balance mutliple, conflicting goals Goals: Production goals, inventory goal, sales goals, market-share goal, profit goal
- Coalitions View of organizations of coalitions (Managers, workers, shareholder etc.) different interests leading to goal conflicts Room for negotiation and other means of organizational politics
- Standardized Operating Procedures (Routines) Rule-based behavior Exploits the wisdom of experience and gives stability to the organization Reduces the need for foresight and perceived uncertainty Increases the efficiency of decision making processes Economizes on decision makers' time an attention
- Idea of aspiration Step 1: Identifying meaningful goal variables (profit, market share etc.) Step 2: Defining aspiration level with regards to goal variable Historical aspiration: set based on past outcomes achieved by organisation Social aspiration: set based on past outcomes achieved by other comparable organizations Satisficing requires achieving the aspiration level for all goal variables
- The Notion of organizational search Search for new products and processes new organizational structures better CEOs or optimal alliance partners Search activities can be performed by different actors - Organizational search yields information about alternatives and triggers organizational adaption
- Four Key relational concepts from the behavioral theory Quasi-resolution of Conflict Simple resolution of goal conflicts difficult given the important trade-ioff among goals Specialisation as a means to allocate conflicting goals to different subunits Sequential attention to conflicting goals Uncertainty avoidance Preference of decision-makers to avoid uncertainty Reliance on short-run feedback rather than long-run foresight Reliance on industry-wide best practices and internal planning Problemistic search Search is motivated: stimulated by a problem and directed towards finding a solution Simple-minded: occurs in immediate proximity of problems symptom, broadened only when local search failed biased: shaped by prior experience Organizational Learning Learning as adaptive behavior Adaption of goals: triggered by past goals attention rules: long-run shift towards goal variables and reference groups that produce satisfactory results search rules: more distal when proximal search fails
- Predictions regarding innovative search Problemistic search: Organisations intensify their innovative search efforts when their performance relative to aspirations decrease Slack search: Organisations intensify their innovative search efforts when levels of slack increase Threat-rigidity Hypothesis: Organisations engange in innovative search in response to performance shortfalls, onl when their immediate survival in not threatened