Lex Donaldson

Lex Donaldson (born February 3, 1947 in Liverpool ) is a British sociologist and organizational theorist. He teaches organizational design and management at the Australian Graduate School of Management at the University of New South Wales in Sydney .

Life

After a Bachelor of Sociology from Aston University (1968) and a Ph.D. (1974) in organizational sociology from the London Business School followed academic positions at the universities of Aston, Iowa, London, Maryland, Northwestern and Stanford. He received a D.Sc. from the University of New South Wales. honored where he has taught since 1977, the first year of running the university.

Work and research

Donaldson's research interests include organizational theory , particularly structures and corporate governance . Donaldson's writings made him one of the most important representatives of organizational positivism. He presented a carefully crafted theory of change cycles that could explain why high performance is not necessarily good. He defends his positions robustly and criticizes alternative approaches with detailed arguments.

His position is made clear by the SARFIT model he presented. SARFIT stands for Structural Adaptation to Regain Fit , according to which the structural characteristics of an organization must be constantly adapted to the main influencing factors so that the organization can perform well. If the organization suffers from an inefficiency, then the characteristics must be adapted to the factors. Donaldson limited the factors he considered to just two structural features and three contingent situations that go back to earlier work by the Aston group :

• bureaucracy
• differentiation

and the contingencies are

• Size of the organization
• Indeterminacy of the task
• mutual dependence of activities

According to this idea, the bureaucracy has three dimensions, namely specialization of the description of tasks, formalization (set of rules) and centralization or decentralization of power. According to Donaldson, differentiation refers to the differences between functional and divisional organization.

One influencing variable are the factors that interact with the first two characteristics and thus change the overall picture. On the one hand, these are the size of the organization, the tasks distributed among more people, the vagueness of the task, which makes it increasingly unclear who is performing which task, and the mutual dependency, according to which some tasks can only be carried out after others have been completed or independently are.

If one of these three contingencies changes without the task environment changing at the same time, then the performance of the organization also changes. Growth, shrinkage, entry into new markets, expansion of the product portfolio, introduction of increased regulatory requirements, etc. are such changing influences that management must counteract by changing the contingencies. For example, personnel growth requires an accompanying bureaucratisation, since otherwise more people carry out poorly defined and delimited jobs. According to the SARFIT model, organizational size and task design are used to moderate structural effects on performance.

The SARFIT model is a model for change processes and helps to predict the likely direction of change. The measure is the performance of the organization. If this falls, then factors compared to the structural features have changed and an adjustment is required. The thought of the appropriate structure ( fit ) is central to Donaldson's train of thought. It will always be difficult for management to determine the point of optimal fit. The theory at least makes it possible to determine the direction of the fit and to take appropriate measures.

Donaldson borrows the factors that change the fit from his portfolio, which comes from finance. According to Donaldson, the organizational portfolio contains eight elements. Four of these factors encourage the tendency to change:

• the phase in the business cycle of the economic situation, for example boom or depression
• Competition and the relative strength or weakness of competitors in their own efforts to get fit
• Debt can reduce profits or stunt growth
• Divisional risks, where problems in one division interact with other parts of the organization.

Four other factors hinder adaptation, these are:

• Diversification into a greater variety of products can smooth out fluctuations between the divisions
• Divisionalization, which is likely to go hand in hand with diversification, has a similar effect and spreads risk.
• Disinvestment , i.e. the sale of poorly performing parts of the company, often stabilizes the performance of the remaining part of the company.
• Executives who are not on the management board dampen the risks the board would otherwise take and have a dampening effect on fluctuations.

There is definitely the possibility that two promoting and two dampening factors slow each other down. Up to this point, SARFIT would be a model that would strive for a static state in which the company could generate the maximum return. However, such a condition would enable a company to invest in new products or markets, employ more staff, etc. Donaldson takes these considerations further to a model of neo-contingency theory that seeks a dynamic equilibrium.

Both the contingency theory and the neo-contingency theory are so-called positivist theories. Like the natural sciences, both try to recognize and exploit a cause-and-effect relationship between various identified factors. With this in mind, organizations are treated like systems that obey established laws that remain stable across organizational boundaries, nations and cultures.

Donaldson's research in the tradition of the Aston group prompted various authors to classify him in the Aston group. Royston Greenwood names Donaldson as a member of the third generation of researchers in the Aston Group , while Derek S. Pugh , head of the Industrial Administration Research Unit of the Birmingham College of Advanced Technology , counts him together with Greenwood as the fourth generation to do the methods and research directions of the Aston group spread around the world. Donaldson himself names David J. Hickson , John Child , Jerry Hage and Colin Fletcher as his "foster fathers" in Aston.

His theory of good administration (stewardship theory) has received a significant influence on the modern discussion of corporate governance. His contributions to the literature on organizational behavior are extensive.

Honors

Donaldson taught in Sydney from the first year of its foundation. He received the University's Award for Excellence in Research .

In 2003, Donaldson's work on the contingency theory of power was voted 75th in the list of most important management theories by 95 jurors from the Academy of Management Learning and Education .

bibliography

Donaldson has authored eight books, plus countless chapters and articles. His texts are used in the training of renowned universities such as Harvard or the Wharton School.

Books

• In Defense of Organization Theory: A Reply to Critics ; 1985
• For Positivist Organization Theory
• American Anti-Management Theories of Organization: A Critique of Paradigm Proliferation ; 1995
• For Positivist Organization Theory: Proving the Hard Core ; 1996
• Performance-Driven Organizational Change ; 1999
• The Contingency Theory of Organizations ; 2001
• Management. Redeemed: Debunking the Fads that Undermine Our Corporations ; (with Frederick G. Hilmer), New York and Sydney
• The Meta-Analytic Organization: Introducing Statistico-Organizational Theory ; 2010, New York

chapter

• The Contingency Theory of Organizational Design: Challenges and Opportunities ; Chapter 2 in RM Burton, B. Eriksen, DD Hakonsson and CC Snow (Eds.): Organization Design: The Evolving State-of-the-Art , Springer, 2006, pp. 19-40.

items

• Lex Donaldson and Ben Nanfeng Luo: The Aston Program Contribution to Organizational Research: A Literature Review (January 2014) . In: International Journal of Management Reviews , Vol. 16, Issue 1, pp. 84–104, 2014. Available from SSRN or doi: 10.1111 / ijmr.12010

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa ab ac ad} Derek S. Pugh and David J. Hickson: Greate Writers on Organization . The Third Omnibus Edition. CRC Press, 2016, ISBN 978-1-317-12481-8 , chap. 1 , p. 26-31 (English).
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h} Lex Donaldson. In: Website of the University of Navarra's IESE Business School. Retrieved May 9, 2018 .  
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Lex Donaldson. In: University of New South Wales website. Retrieved May 9, 2018 .  
4. ↑ ^{a b c d} Lex Donaldson (2005) Vita Contemplativa: Following the Scientific Method: How I Became a Committed Functionalist and Positivist ; in Organization Studies 26 (7): 1071-1088 ISSN  0170-8406 2005 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA & New Delhi): doi: 10.1177 / 0170840605053542
5. ^ Royston Greenwood and Kay Devine (1997). Inside Aston: A Conversation with Derek Pugh . Journal of Management Inquiry, 6, pp. 200-208
6. ^ Derek S. Pugh The Aston Program, vols 1–3 ( July 2, 2015 memento on the Internet Archive ), Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998, Classic Research in Management Series; accessed on July 1, 2015.
7. ↑ Lex Donaldson (1985) In Defense of Organization Theory: A Reply to the Critics ; New York; Cambridge University Press