Econ Papers Daily / 聚合源
稳健的组织设计
Robust Organization Design
摘要
This paper presents a model of how organizations develop complex products. Decentralizing the process into autonomous units increases the potential value of production but raises the risk of miscoordination. The organization coordinates the process through costly and imperfectly reliable coordination channels. It optimally creates redundancy in these channels, thereby determining the robustness of the process to miscoordination. The incentive to invest in robustness strengthens as long as returns to decentralization are increasing. Hence, organizations either centralize processes or decentralize them substantially to exploit increasing returns to decentralization. Small reductions in coordination costs can trigger substantial decentralization and, paradoxically, undermine process reliability. Larger reductions in coordination costs also enhance reliability.
中文摘要
本文构建了一个关于组织如何开发复杂产品的模型。将流程分散至自主单元，虽能提升生产的潜在价值，却增加了协调失误的风险。组织通过成本高昂且可靠性有限的协调渠道来统筹流程，并最优地在这些渠道中构建冗余，从而决定流程对协调失误的稳健性。只要分散化的回报递增，投资于稳健性的激励便会增强。因此，组织要么集中流程，要么大幅分散以充分利用分散化的递增回报。协调成本的小幅降低可能引发大幅分散化，并矛盾地削弱流程可靠性；而协调成本的大幅降低则同时增强可靠性。