Case Study: Organizational Structure And Strategies Of Control

Review: The Research Paper in focus “Organization Structure and Strategies of Control: A Replication of the Aston Study” written by John Child talks about research carried by Aston team. The paper provides the findings of two studies, Aston Study and National Study which explains the relationship between the structural variables and centralization in the study of organization structure management by taking reference from Max Weber’s analysis of bureaucracy so as to analyse and validate Weber’s model of bureaucracy. Max Weber, a German sociologist explained about bureaucratic form as the most efficient way to counter the issues of state administrations. Weber theory states the need of formal hierarchical structure with

He is a Fellow of the Academy of Management, the Academy of International Business and the British Academy of Management. He worked as a Research Fellow in the Aston Programme of Organization Studies before moving to the London Business School and then again returning to Aston in 1973 as Professor of Organizational Behaviour. The audience to this paper by John Child would be those involved in structuring a new organisation or restructuring an established organisation. This paper would be useful to many organizations as analysis on different industries is carried out based on structuring of an organisation. Also the organisations which are looking at centralization or decentralization as a way forward in structuring their firms and how the various techniques and assumptions used in this study would help them to make an appropriate

A sample of 52 organizations was taken to establish a relationship between centralization and other four factors of each organization in Aston Study. Also the organizations in sample study were differentiated by their size and organizations were selected to cluster around certain size levels. Aston study finds out the number of persons working in organizations with a mean of 3,370, (standard deviation 5,313) i.e. it considered relatively bigger organization while the National sample Mean size levels are 1,542 (standard deviation 2,115) so it cannot draw an exactly fair contrast between the two different studies. 2) Moreover the data was collected from a single point of contact i.e. CEO and does not provide a complete representation of the organizational data. The findings by Aston study do not have strong evidence to a fair data as the sample also consisted of smaller sub-units and divisions, which could change the expected numerical outcome as the heads of sub units tend to give more score to their respective organizations and due to the heterogeneity of sample. National sample is considerably more homogeneous in respect to the ownership status and the function of its organizations. Also a negative correlation arises between centralization and