Annals of Business Administrative Science
Online ISSN : 1347-4456
Print ISSN : 1347-4464
ISSN-L : 1347-4456
Strategy and Structure Follow Technology
A Spinout Proposition of J. D. Thompson's Organizations in Action
Nobuo TAKAHASHI
Author information
JOURNAL OPEN ACCESS

2016 Volume 15 Issue 1 Pages 15-27

Details
Abstract

This study reconfigures part one of Thompson (1967) as a theoretical restatement of Chandler's (1962) historical evidence. When organizations grow, their growth orientations and strategies emerge from their technical rationality, according to Thompson's first criteria of technology instrumentality. Regarding instrumentally reasonable/rational organizations, according to his second criteria of economy, organizational structures such as horizontal departmentalization, vertical hierarchies, and multidivisional forms become necessary to minimize coordination costs. In other words, when discussing growth strategies and multidivisional forms, Chandler claimed that “structure follows strategy,” but Thompson rightfully claimed that “strategy and structure follow technology.”

Content from these authors
© 2016 Global Business Research Center. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons [Attribution 4.0 International] license.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Previous article Next article
feedback
Top