{"title":"实施权力下放:超越等级制度的实践与限制","authors":"Michael Y. Lee","doi":"10.1177/00018392241257372","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Decentralization as an organizing principle has drawn growing interest from scholars and practitioners because of its perceived suitability for contemporary market conditions and alignment with employees’ evolving work expectations. However, efforts to decentralize authority face significant obstacles and often end in failure. I propose that existing research on decentralization has struggled to generate insight into how such barriers can be overcome because it has treated decentralization as a static outcome imposed by organizational designers. In contrast, this article treats decentralization as a dynamic and situated achievement that must be continually enacted, and it leverages ethnographic data from a decentralization effort in order to build theory on the organizational practices that support enactments of decentralized authority. I find that successful enactments of decentralized authority were supported by practices that established clear boundaries of authority and focused collective attention on these boundaries, as well as by practices that depersonalized collective attributions of the source of authority. At the same time, the practices were difficult to sustain because they were cognitively, emotionally, and temporally demanding. Through this study, I show that decentralization is not merely a one-time structural change but an ongoing collective process that requires navigating and neutralizing the structural and psychological forces pulling organizations back toward hierarchy.","PeriodicalId":7203,"journal":{"name":"Administrative Science Quarterly","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":8.3000,"publicationDate":"2024-06-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":"{\"title\":\"Enacting Decentralized Authority: The Practices and Limits of Moving Beyond Hierarchy\",\"authors\":\"Michael Y. Lee\",\"doi\":\"10.1177/00018392241257372\",\"DOIUrl\":null,\"url\":null,\"abstract\":\"Decentralization as an organizing principle has drawn growing interest from scholars and practitioners because of its perceived suitability for contemporary market conditions and alignment with employees’ evolving work expectations. However, efforts to decentralize authority face significant obstacles and often end in failure. I propose that existing research on decentralization has struggled to generate insight into how such barriers can be overcome because it has treated decentralization as a static outcome imposed by organizational designers. In contrast, this article treats decentralization as a dynamic and situated achievement that must be continually enacted, and it leverages ethnographic data from a decentralization effort in order to build theory on the organizational practices that support enactments of decentralized authority. I find that successful enactments of decentralized authority were supported by practices that established clear boundaries of authority and focused collective attention on these boundaries, as well as by practices that depersonalized collective attributions of the source of authority. At the same time, the practices were difficult to sustain because they were cognitively, emotionally, and temporally demanding. Through this study, I show that decentralization is not merely a one-time structural change but an ongoing collective process that requires navigating and neutralizing the structural and psychological forces pulling organizations back toward hierarchy.\",\"PeriodicalId\":7203,\"journal\":{\"name\":\"Administrative Science Quarterly\",\"volume\":null,\"pages\":null},\"PeriodicalIF\":8.3000,\"publicationDate\":\"2024-06-12\",\"publicationTypes\":\"Journal Article\",\"fieldsOfStudy\":null,\"isOpenAccess\":false,\"openAccessPdf\":\"\",\"citationCount\":\"0\",\"resultStr\":null,\"platform\":\"Semanticscholar\",\"paperid\":null,\"PeriodicalName\":\"Administrative Science Quarterly\",\"FirstCategoryId\":\"91\",\"ListUrlMain\":\"https://doi.org/10.1177/00018392241257372\",\"RegionNum\":1,\"RegionCategory\":\"管理学\",\"ArticlePicture\":[],\"TitleCN\":null,\"AbstractTextCN\":null,\"PMCID\":null,\"EPubDate\":\"\",\"PubModel\":\"\",\"JCR\":\"Q1\",\"JCRName\":\"BUSINESS\",\"Score\":null,\"Total\":0}","platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Administrative Science Quarterly","FirstCategoryId":"91","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00018392241257372","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"BUSINESS","Score":null,"Total":0}
Enacting Decentralized Authority: The Practices and Limits of Moving Beyond Hierarchy
Decentralization as an organizing principle has drawn growing interest from scholars and practitioners because of its perceived suitability for contemporary market conditions and alignment with employees’ evolving work expectations. However, efforts to decentralize authority face significant obstacles and often end in failure. I propose that existing research on decentralization has struggled to generate insight into how such barriers can be overcome because it has treated decentralization as a static outcome imposed by organizational designers. In contrast, this article treats decentralization as a dynamic and situated achievement that must be continually enacted, and it leverages ethnographic data from a decentralization effort in order to build theory on the organizational practices that support enactments of decentralized authority. I find that successful enactments of decentralized authority were supported by practices that established clear boundaries of authority and focused collective attention on these boundaries, as well as by practices that depersonalized collective attributions of the source of authority. At the same time, the practices were difficult to sustain because they were cognitively, emotionally, and temporally demanding. Through this study, I show that decentralization is not merely a one-time structural change but an ongoing collective process that requires navigating and neutralizing the structural and psychological forces pulling organizations back toward hierarchy.
期刊介绍:
Administrative Science Quarterly, under the ownership and management of the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University, has consistently been a pioneer in organizational studies since the inception of the field. As a premier journal, it consistently features the finest theoretical and empirical papers derived from dissertations, along with the latest contributions from well-established scholars. Additionally, the journal showcases interdisciplinary work in organizational theory and offers insightful book reviews.