Environments, Transactions, and Organizational Practices: The Management and Performance of Real Estate Brokerage Firms
Sovik, Nord Christian
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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/72314
Description
Title
Environments, Transactions, and Organizational Practices: The Management and Performance of Real Estate Brokerage Firms
Author(s)
Sovik, Nord Christian
Issue Date
1993
Doctoral Committee Chair(s)
Leblebici, Huseyin
Department of Study
Business Administration
Discipline
Business Adminstration
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
Business Administration, Management
Abstract
A reconceptualization of the environment-organizational structure relationship is at the heart of this study. The poverty of the theoretical language used to articulate this relationship which has made it difficult for organization theorists to relate organizational practices to external factors. This has impaired our ability to understand the consequences of organizational practices. A generative logic is used to generate hypotheses concerning the mechanism through which organizations engage their environment: transactions. Then the central question of the study, how are these transaction arrangements related to organizational practices, is addressed. Finally, how organizational outcomes may be related to practices is explored.
Transactions take place between technologically separable entities. This produces a division of labor in the market, economic sense. But how, once a set of activities is allocated to a particular organizational actor--a firm--is the production stream to be parsed and allocated to organizational members? The problem of understanding the division of labor in organizations is quite different from understanding it in markets. In the latter case the invisible hand is responsible, in the former the hand is visible. The issue at stake here is: what are the constraints on the situation which impel a manager to allocate tasks in one way rather than another? How are organizational practices related to market transactions? Or, more generally, how can we better understand the transition from market to hierarchy?
Findings show that the transition from market to hierarchy implies a simultaneous engagement in several market transactions. How these transactions are arranged is important in determining organizational practices. This transition involves a deliberate, simultaneous construction of both transaction arrangements and organizational practices. It involves the assessment of risk, bargaining with transaction partners over transaction arrangements, and the design of organizational practices.
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