Task Environment and Decentralization: A Cross-National Replication

Abstract

A study of 19 Northeast Ohio manufacturing firms replicated the major result of a recent study of 30 industrial enterprises in India, in that management concern for task environmental agents was significantly related to the organizations' degree of decentralization. However, where this relationship had been linear in the Indian context, it was curvilinear in the shape of an inverted U in the U.S. setting. For relatively centralized firms a strong positive relationship between decentralization and management concern for task agents was observed, while this relationship actually was negative for the relatively decentralized firms. Some interesting differences between the Indian and American studies were also observed for relationships between decentralization and management concern for individual task agents (such as consumers, suppliers, or employees).

In spite of some differences in the measure of both management concern and decentralization between the two studies, the replication of the Indian results in the very different industrial climate of the United States was considered as very encouraging. It suggested that management concern for task environmental agents could be a useful variable for crossnational organization research, since the relationship of this variable to decentralization was found to be similar to that observed in India, but at the same time somewhat more complex in keeping with the more complex industrial environment of the United States.

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