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The Demand for Coordination

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Author Info
Dessein, Wouter
Santos, Jesus
Abstract

This paper endogenizes coordination problems in organizations by allowing for both ex ante coordination of activities, using rules and task guidelines, and ex post coordination, using communication and broad job assignments. It shows that: (i) Task specialization and the division of labour is mainly limited by employee discretion, rather than by the importance of coordination. In particular, specialization is often non-monotonic in the importance of coordination. (ii) Organizations exhibit increasing returns to ex post coordination. This rationalizes discrete ‘shifts’ in organizational design from very rigid and specialized task assignments, to very flexible organizations characterized by extensive task-bundling, intensive horizontal communication and substantial employee discretion. (iii) Broad task assignments and intensive horizontal communication are complementary. Hence, lower communication costs often result in less specialization.

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Paper provided by C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers in its series CEPR Discussion Papers with number 4096.

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Date of creation: Oct 2003
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Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:4096

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Related research
Keywords: authority; communication; coordination; information technology; organizations; skills; specialization;

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
D2 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations
D8 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty
J2 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor
L2 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior

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References listed on IDEAS
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Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Raouf Boucekkine & Patricia Crifo & Claudio Mattalia, 2008. "Technological Progress, Organizational Change and the Size of the Human Resources Department," Working Papers hal-00240715_v1, HAL. [Downloadable!]
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  2. Andrea Patacconi, 2005. "Optimal Coordination in Hierarchies," Economics Series Working Papers 238, University of Oxford, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
  3. Dezsö Szalay & Ramon Arean, 2005. "Communicating with a Team of Experts," Cahiers de Recherches Economiques du Département d'Econométrie et d'Economie politique (DEEP) 05.12, Université de Lausanne, Faculté des HEC, DEEP. [Downloadable!]
  4. Raouf Boucekkine & Patricia Criffo & Claudio Mattalia, 2008. "Technological progress, organizational change and the size of the Human Resources Department," Working Papers 2008_20, Department of Economics, University of Glasgow. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
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