Suchergebnisse

The idea of a general professional/bureaucrat conflict has a very narrow empirical base. It is suggested that such conflict may be `value specific' or `role specific'. To test this, a sample of members of the Institute of Chartered Accountants was drawn as a criterion professional group, because of the equal distribution of its members between private practice and industry. The profession's values were operationalized in specific terms as being concerned with `caution', `exactitude', `anti-theoretical pragmatism', `professional exclusiveness', `quantification' and `rationality'. Differences between members of the profession in private practice and in industry were shown on the first four of these values. A further sample of Accountants in industry showed that the values of `quantification' and `rationality' did not differ between holders of different roles in industry, which accorded with the hypothesized functionality of these values. The extent to which the other values were held was shown to vary with aspects of the role relationships in which the Accountant finds himself in industry.

Unless the intentions of the Conservative government are thwarted, existing local authorities in England and Wales, other than those in London, will be replaced in April 1974. The election of local councils will have taken place twelve months earlier. One would expect such a major change to lead to changes in organisational practices and the development of new organisational forms. For example, the transfer of functions from existing urban authorities to the proposed shire authorities will require the latter authorities to adapt their inherited organisational arrangements. Similarly, the loss of functions will require the reconciliation of existing arrangements with future requirements. In many instances the proposed authorities will be faced with new populations incorporating larger and different clienteles. In some cases there will be no existing arrangements upon which to base the necessary organisation. In all cases there will be the opportunity for—and, more important, an expectation of—organisational change. Within authorities, new central coordination machinery may be created, and changes may take place in, for instance, the numbers and functions of committees and departments. Changes may also take place at the level of the department.

This study presents a replication of the work of Pugh et al. on aspects of organization structure. On a sample of nine manufacturing organizations it is found that the structural dimensions of specialization, formalization and standardization form one related group, and centralization and lack of autonomy form another. The first group of `structuring' variables are related to the size of the organization. The second group of `authority' variables are related to dependence on other organizations. These findings closely parallel those of Pugh et al. and because of the nature of the sample extend them somewhat.

The prevailing theory of mergers is that firms emphasize considerations of "strategic fit" in discussions prior to merger activity, and neglect considerations of "organizational fit". The result is that immediately following a merger dysfunctional organizational behaviours occur. The number of empirical studies of mergers, however, is relatively modest and there are few case studies of the merger process. The present paper studies the merger involving two large accounting firms, over a period of four years. The unique features of accounting firms—in particular, their organization as professional partnerships—and of the accounting industry, make the case study an appropriate "tough" test of the general theory. Accounting firms are likely to take account of organizational fit in merger discussions. The case study rehearses the careful attention to issues of strategic and organizational fit (contrary to the general theory) but also maps the unfolding behavioural problems that followed formal merger. Interestingly, the specific difficulties observed in previous studies were less salient in the present case: problems and difficulties were of a kind peculiar to the type of organization, which suggests that theories of mergers should be sensitive to the context and setting of merger activity. The paper concludes by elaborating elements of a more systematic model of the merger process. These elements include the difference between mergers and acquisitions, the structure of governance, organizational capacity, sector cohesiveness and technology.