Social Structure and Bureaucracy: A Comparison of Organizations in the United States and Prerevolutionary Iran

Abstract

This article evaluates a causal model of organizational structure using heterogeneous samples of organizations from the US and Iran. The results indicate that theoretical models of organizational structure are clearly relevant to the Third World, and the remarkable similarity of the causal estimates obtained suggests that organizational structure may well be 'culture free'. The most important differences in these data concern the effects of technology and the results suggest that technology may prove to be an essential determinant of organizational structure in many non-Western countries.