Delegation of Decisions About Change in Organizations: The Roles of Competition, Trade, Uncertainty, and Scale

Abstract

Using unique establishment-level data, we find that delegation of organizational change is more likely in workplaces that: face a competitive product market, export, have predictable demand, are part of a smaller overall organization, and have fewer workplaces in the firm producing the same output. Surprisingly, we find no significant relationship between import competition and the allocation of decision-making rights within a firm. Our results are robust to a range of specifications and to alternative measures of our key explanatory variables. (JEL D23, L23, L29).