School of Information Management & Systems.   Infosys 101: Information Systems.  Spr 1997.  M. Buckland.

Information handling, organizational structure, and power.

1. There is an inverse relationship between communications and the delegation of decision-making: The worse the communications, the greater the delegation; the better the communications, the less the delegation of decision making.

2. Technology provides enabling tools: The must be human values at work motivating changed behavior. Central authorities, in general, prefer to make decisions.

3. Central decision makers will tend to retain control to the extent feasible.

4. Corollary: Improved communications will tend to lead to reduced delegation.

Span of control. 1 foreman to 58 workers at Ford assembly plant in 1914. Fewer if tasks complex, roles varied, situation changeable, extensive liaison / consultation reqd. Requires assistant supervisors. Supervision involves learning, consulting, deciding, negotiating, informing:

The more effectively information is handled, the less the delegation, the flatter the hierarchy, the greater the centralization of control.

More turbulence, more complexity, less feasible for top boss to make decisions. Trade-off: Size, complexity, delegation, information handling.

Markus examples: (1) Firm with three divisions; centralized accounting decision difficult to implement. Why? (2) Military logistics. Terminals on desks of junior officers allowed them to by-pass senior officers. More delegation? No, Senior officers redundant. Prevented. Inaccurate data. Both opposed because it reduced the need for delegation.

Delegation is the granting of autonomy (= power). Expect resistance from threatened middle management.

Traditionally business firms were single-unit enterprises, single product, single function, single geographical area. Market and price effected coordination.

"Deconcentration" not = decentralization.

1. The centralization of decision-making is directly related to the effectiveness of information handling;

2. The greater the difficulties of information handling, the more the layers of hierarchy;

3. More generally, the delegation of decision-making is inversely related to the effectiveness of information handling;

4. Technical improvements in information handling will tend to result in centralization of power; and, as corollaries:

5. The effective centralization of power is indicative of effective information handling; and, therefore,

6. More effective centralization can be viewed as a measure of technical improvement in information systems.

For more detailed discussion see: Buckland, M.K. "Information handling, organizational structure, and power." Journal of the American Society of Information Science 40(5) Sept 1989 329-333. Summarized in textbook on pp. 183-189.
Arrangements for processing and communicating information are ordinarily designed to serve an organization's structure of more-or-less delegated decision making. But the reverse is also true. Organizational structures adapt to changes in information handling.
Battle of Marathon 490 BC - Persian navy, army, cavalry - 25 miles from Athens. Athenians - 10 divisions, leaders, overall leadership rotated. Athenians on high ground. Miltiades attacked when cavalry absent. Successful: Warn Athens - run; get army back. Delegated to person on the spot. Signalling, waving, hoisting flags, even with telescope, little change until end 18th century.
Duke of Marlborough, Prince Eugene of Savoy, Admiral Lord Nelson could conduct campaigns. Horse, stagecoach, sailing ship, too slow. One month to cross Atlantic one way. Warfare a summer activity. 1789, Nootka Sound incident: No Panama Canal, no AT&T, no transcontinental railroad.
1794 French Revolution hired Claude Chappe. Mechanical flag waving from hilltops in line of sight: 50 characters in 1 hour form Toulon to Paris. Horseback 3-4 days. "Visual telegraph" OK by daylight, not raining, alert, right route,... Bribe warden?
c. 1850 electrical or field telegraph: Crimean War, Civil War.
Franco-Prussian War 1870-71, combined with railways.
Heliograph. [Handout Encycl. Brit 11th ed, 1911, v 25, p. 72].
Radio in Russo-Japanese war of 1911. Stalingrad, Fall 1942: German 6th army, surrounded by Russians and winter. Gen. Von Seidlitz: "Breakthrough... or annihilation" [Quote] 200,000 soldiers, 6,000 survived.
Greater delegation in WWII in US Navy than Japanese. Battle of New Orleans Jan 8, 1815, two weeks after peace treaty signed in Europe. May 1975 rescue of Mayaguez, HG interfered with operations. Rescue of hostages in Teheran, decisions checked with President Carter.
(Rev. 1/27/97)