The Network Structures of Organizations: Effects of Task Contingencies and Distributional Form

Abstract

The broad concern in this paper is a long-standing one in organizational sociology, the determinants of organizational structures. However, it is argued that internal structures are better conceived and operationalized in network terms than in the "distributional" terms of past organizational research. From a survey of 36 agencies, network data were obtained on the communication and client referral ties among practitioner staff. From these data, the following structural measures were computed for each organization, density, connectivity (cohesion), symmetry (hierarchy), and clustering. From such theories of organization as Burns and Stalker's distinction between mechanistic and organic forms, hypotheses were derived relating these network structural properties to the distributional properties of differentiation, formalization, and centralization, as well as the task contingency variables of size, age, technology, and professionalization. The regression analysis provides support for the general argument that organic organization is manifested in networks characterized by high density, connectivity, and multiplexity combined with low hierarchy and clustering.