Matching Organization Size to Organization Function and Other Organizational Behavior Ideas

An MBA thesis by Roger Bourke White Jr.

first finished in 1986, updated and copyrighted 2005 by Roger Bourke White Jr.

This paper will cover four areas I have investigated:

• How the technologies we have to deal with in our society and our society's goals affect the appropriate size of the organizations we should create to deal with them.
• A discussion of how organization size affects communications between its members. This is done by analogy with information flow in computers.
• How this dynamic of technology and goals has determined the proper size and function of a companies in the electronics field.
• How electronics companies deal with the dynamics of developing innovative products, and a description of the various personality types involved in product innovation.

And finally, it will have a discussion of employee compensation and how it affects motivation, and ways to improve motivation by changing ways people are compensated to match what they want rather than tie the compensation tightly to the job they are doing for the company.

The goal of this paper is to explain what these organizational structures are, and why they are the way they are. If we understand the underpinnings of our organizations well, then we can understand why some kinds of changes will work well, and others won't.