Returning to the Frontier of Contingency Theory of Organizational and Institutional Designs

Abstract

Much has been learned, and even more needs to be learned, about designing organizations and institutions. Since the 1960s this research has evolved from contingency to configuration, to complementarity, to complexity and creative theories of organizing. This chapter reviews these evolving theories (better called perspectives) and urges scholars to return to the frontier of organization studies by addressing an important new agenda in designing organizations with promising new research methods.

New Frontiers in Logistics Research: Theorizing at the Middle Range

“…General theories apply to a wide range of phenomena by defining concepts and relationships at a high level of abstraction (Hunt 1983). Such theories are familiar to most logistics scholars; popular general theories used in logistics research include resource-based theory (RBT) (Wernerfelt 1984;Barney 1991), transaction cost economics (Williamson 1973(Williamson , 1979, contingency theory (Van de Ven et al 2013), social network theory (Jones et al 1997;Krause et al 2007), and social exchange theory (Emerson 1976). These theories are general by design.…”

Crowdsourcing Last Mile Delivery: Strategic Implications and Future Research Directions

“…Contingency theory provides a valuable lens through which to analyze the logistics effectiveness (i.e., performance) of a crowdsourced fleet of delivery drivers. Contingency theorists argue that an organization's environment moderates the relationship between its design and performance (Drazin and Van de Ven 1985;Prescott 1986;Rosenzweig 2009;Van de Ven et al 2013). In other words, performance is a function of organizational design and its interaction with organizational environment (Venkatraman 1989); and the level of achieved performance is contingent on the coalignment, or fit, between the strategy and the external environment (Venkatraman and Prescott 1990).…”

“…This research compares each fleet type's (FLT's) logistics effectiveness as a component of logistics performance, which has been demonstrated to have a positive association with firm performance (Mentzer and Konrad 1991;Langley and Holcomb 1992;Rabinovich and Bailey 2004;Rabinovich et al 2008;Fugate et al 2010). Organizational design refers to the strategy employed or the organization's internal configuration (Van de Ven et al 2013), which in this research refers to using a dedicated fleet or a crowdsourced fleet of delivery drivers. The organizational environment refers to external physical and social factors affecting decision making within the firm (Daft et al 1988).…”

“…Contingency theory states that no single strategy provides optimal outcomes in all situations and that an organizational design's performance is contingent on contextual factors (Rosenzweig 2009). As a result, the specific contextual factors may enhance or reduce the negative impact of vehicle supply uncertainty on logistics effectiveness (Van de Ven et al 2013;Gligor et al 2015).…”

“…It is reasonable to hypothesize that the opposite is also true. Combining this perspective with the contingency theory implication that environmental factors may confound the negative performance effect of high vehicle supply uncertainty (Rosenzweig 2009;Van de Ven et al 2013), the following hypothesis is made: H 1 : Tight time windows negatively affect the relationship between a crowdsourced fleet and logistics effectiveness more so than they affect the relationship between a dedicated fleet and logistics effectiveness.…”