Since the Industrial Revolution, management has relied on hierarchy to control assets and employees. The negative impact of that hierarchical control on employee performance has long been recognized, yet in spite of expert and scholarly attempts to solve these problems hierarchical control...

We investigate overlapping contests in multi-divisional organizations in which an individual's effort simultaneously determines the outcome of several contests on different hierarchical levels. We show that individuals in smaller units are advantaged in the grand (organization-wide) contest for...

Previous research on cooperation has primarily focused on egalitarian interactions, overlooking a fundamental feature of social life: hierarchy and power asymmetry. While recent accounts posit that hierarchies can reduce within-group conflict, individuals who possess high rank or power tend to...

State-owned enterprises (SOE) are essentially extensions of the government and are therefore responsible for multi-task objectives. The incentive system for SOE managers consists of both monetary compensation and promotion within the bureaucratic system. Political promotion is key to...

In der vorliegenden Dissertation wird ein Managementtrend untersucht, der die Abschaffung autoritativer Hierarchien in Unternehmen propagiert. Der Fokus der Arbeit liegt auf Paradoxien, Leidenschaft und Macht in dezentralen Organisationen. Es wird aufgezeigt, wie Diskurse und Alltagspraktiken in...

With the emergence of new organizational forms promoting de-layering, downscoping, and self-management, middle managers have been under attack in recent years. Organizational design has traditionally been concerned with how top management designs organizations, and little is known about the role...

How do geographic frictions affect firm organization? We show theoretically and empirically that geographic frictions increase the use of middle managers in multi-establishment firms. In our model, we assume that a CEO's time is a resource in limited supply, shared across headquarters and...

Theories of path dependence and incumbent inertia assume that self-reinforcing mechanisms lead to highly persistent and eventually inefficient institutional solutions. The resulting lock-in is likely to threaten the viability of an organization. While path dependence theory was initially...

We investigate overlapping contests in multi-divisional organizations in which an individual's effort simultaneously determines the outcome of several contests on different hierarchical levels. We show that individuals in smaller units are advantaged in the grand (organization-wide) contest for...