A Multidimensional Approach Toward a Typology of Bureaucracy

The Structuring of Organizations

“…Thus, when the Aston group replicated its study four to five years later (Inkson et aI., 1970), it found that 13 of the 14 organizations in both samples had increased in the measure of formalization of activities. Samuel and Mannheim (1970) also found statistically significant evidence that the older Israeli plants they studied were the more imper~onal ones.…”

An Approach of Organisational Specialisation in Intelligent Systems

“…There are several authors who propose measures of the specialisation of the organisations [12] [42]. These measures apply to human organisations; however, taking into account the similarity between human and agent organisations, it is easy to suppose that these measures can be applied to communities of agents.…”

“…The thresholds of specialisation proposed in this paragraph are defined on the basis of the works of [12] [42], and the direct observation of the different jobs in twenty different types of companies. The consideration of specialisation is given by the heads of each plant and by the heads of each of the departments of the enterprises visited with regard to the tasks carried out by their subordinates.…”

The Use of Gestalt Approaches for Understanding Adaptive Behaviors in Channels of Distribution

“…In a sense, this approach is holistic, in that it attempts to assess the influence of a large number of variables that "collectively define a meaningful and coherent slice of organizational reality" (Miller, 1981, p.8). & Pinder, 1972Pugh, Hickson, & Hinnings, 1969;Samuel & Mannheim, 1970) to box or cluster given sets of organizational factors so as to provide a means of identifying remaining features. These natural clusters or "configurations" of variables (i.e., environmental, structural, and/or behavioral dimensions) are then tested for predictive utility.…”