AN INVESTIGATION OF THE RELATIONSHIPS AMONG ORGANIZATION CONTEXT, STRUCTURE, AND INTERNAL NETWORK PROPERTIES.

摘要

The purpose of this research was to examine the effects of organization context and organization structure on intraorganizational network properties. The independent context variables were organization size, age, and technology. The independent organization structure variables were centralization of decision making, formalization, professionalism, and structural differentiation. The dependent network variables were connectedness, clustering, hierarchy, density, and multiplexity.;Two types of network transactional content were studied for each agency. Transactional content refers to the type of network relation. The transactional content studied were client exchanges and communication ties.;A set of seventeen research hypotheses relating context, structure, and intraorganizational network properties was developed from the literature. These hypotheses were tested using multiple regression and a model was tested using path-analysis. It was generally found that large organizational size and differentiated organizational structure were associated with highly connected, highly clustered networks that were hierarchically complex and not very dense. Nonroutine technology and high professionalism were found with high connectedness, low clustering, and low hierarchy. None of the context or structure measures were associated with multiplexity.;It was concluded that network properties such as connectedness, clustering, hierarchy, and density provide organization theorists with measures of structure which complement traditional structure measures. Organizations can be conceptualized and analyzed as relational networks, and future organization structure research should examine relational networks along with distributional structure characteristics.;A network is a set of individuals linked by a certain type of relation. Each organization in the study was treated as a separate intraorganizational network. The sample was a 52 organization network of agencies which delivered services to youth in the Indianapolis area. Thus the study was an examination of the intraorganizational networks of a large interorganizational network. The intraorganizational network properties were derived for each network from Burt's (1977) "Structure" program and from Marsden's (1976) "Digraph" program. The context, structure, and network variables were obtained from 52 agency director interviews and 450 employee questionnaires.