Larry E. Greiner

Larry E. Greiner (born December 6, 1933 ) is an American economist. He is Professor Emeritus of Management and Organization at the University of Southern California .

The Greiner model

Greiner developed an evolutionary five- (1972) or six-phase (1994) model of organizational growth (the so-called Greiner Curve ), which dispenses with any temporal fixation, and which explains immediately how growth crises can be overcome. The respective solution strategies form the basis for new crises.

• Phase 1 Creativity: Everyone does everything and also knows everything, there are many discussions and mutual information. With a certain growth, an overload of those involved sets in.

• Phase 2 instruction: certain tasks are delegated to others, whereby control of the execution is still centralized. With further growth, the decision-makers are overloaded due to the need for control and the lack of self-management by employees (from approx. 7 employees).

• Phase 3 delegation: Sub-areas or tasks are given in their entirety (task, responsibility and competence) and carried out by others. The individual areas and departments begin to develop a life of their own (from around 15–20 employees), which leads to coordination problems.

• Phase 4 coordination: Projects and tasks in the individual company areas are coordinated and coordinated with one another. However, the coordination leads to a high bureaucratic effort (from approx. 50 employees).

• Phase 5 cooperation: The friction losses decrease, e.g. B. by implementing effective IT systems.

This phase model implies that a company that grows from 10 to 50 employees in one year has to go through three phases during this time, which is an enormous organizational challenge.

A later added phase 6 is characterized by the transition from the individual organization to the cross-organizational network , which allows new growth.

The Greiner model, which has become almost classic, allows the possible divergence between rapid economic company growth and slow organizational maturity, e.g. In the case of start-ups, for example, or to describe the unintended effects of measures to increase and secure growth (e.g. bureaucratisation as a consequence of only technically supported coordination in the absence of real cooperation).

Publications

• Evolution and Revolution as Organizations Grow , in: Mainiero, L. and Tromley, C. Developing Managerial Skills in Organizational Behavior: Exercises, Cases, and Readings (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall) (2nd ed. 1994), p. 322 –329 (first in Harvard Business Review 1972, July - August, pp. 37–46)
• (with Virginia E. Schein), Power and Organization Development: Mobilizing Power to Implement Change . Prentice Hall Organizational Development Series, FT Press 1988

Web links

• Literature by and about Larry E. Greiner in the bibliographic database WorldCat
• Vita - Larry E. Greiner