Study On Organizational Structure Evolution From The View Of Complex Adaptive System

Organizational structure and the external environment are experiencing dramatic changes under the rapid development of economy and market. Organizational structure efficiency is not only relied on the designed framework during the founding, but also decided by the interplay among its internal elements and the interaction between the organization and its environment. Accordingly, organizational structure study should increasingly emphasize on the process of organizational change and reform, instead of focus on organizational structure form, ―optimal‖ structure design, or the influencing factors of organizational structure from a static perspective.After a review on existing organizational structure evolution theories, such as contingency theory, configuration theory, and complexity theory, this paper explores the possible procedure, pattern, and internal mechanism of organizational structure evolution from the complex adaptive system perspective. As for research method, taking a ―process‖ research on organizational structure evolution, this paper conducts a longitudinal case study through a multi-stage, multi-level, and nested case study design with the combination of various methods as content analysis, questionnaire survey, interview, and social network analysis, aiming at enriching our knowledge of organizational structure evolution and providing practical implications for managers.Analysis of three different levels, organization, function system, and department, allows us to explore the organizational evolution process from macro level of an organization to micro level of the department inside the organization. Organizational strategic theme, core value, and formal structure compose the key content of organization level analysis. Investigating the interplay among these three factors and their interaction with the external environment consist the main content of organization level analysis which makes a foundation for other analysis. Based on the six system(strategic apex, operating core, middle line, support staff, technostructure, ideology) proposed by Mintzberg(1991), this paper classifies organizational departments into six systems, and summarizes the changes of each system during the five stage. And by classifying the appeared departments of case company into core department and supporting department, this paper describes the evolution process of case company‘s core departments during its development.Organizational structure evolution as organizational responses to the dynamics of organizational strategy, organizational operation, and the external environment, becomes an important approach to understand organizational evolution. This paper discovers a close relation among organizational structure, organizational strategy and organizational core value. During the 46 years development of case company, its structure continuously changes along with the renewals of strategic theme and the external environment, while organizational core value keeps relatively stable.Simultaneously, by comparing the function system profiles of each stage, it is found that the ideological system and organizational core value are almost stable, and the internal promotion mechanism of senior management has further strengthened this stable state. Changes in core operation system will lead to changes in support system. Besides, core operation system evolution presents two trends, on one hand, non-key production departments are easy to be affected by the market environment, and thus continuously adjust their structure according to the change in market environment, such as outsourcing or setting subsidiaries to reduce risks, on the other, key production departments are generally stable, and not very sensitive to market environment changes. Due to the function ambiguity of support system and middle line system, frequently, they become the approach to ―decoupling‖ with the environmental pressure.Further, engaged in the ―relation‖ view, this paper measures and identifies the core department of case company during each stage by using social network analytic method, then depicts the evolution processes of major core departments through ―strengthen‖, ―patch‖, ―delete‖, and ―maintain‖. It is fount that organizational work decides the status of each department in organizational structure. The emergences of new core department derive from the external environmental requirement mutation as well as organizations‘ internal dynamic. The interrelations of core departments restrain the development of organizational structure form. Mutual enhancing core elements are much easier to keep their central status, while competitive core elements are easy to make one of them peripheral.Department level analysis provides two ideal modes for organizational structure formation, the patch-by-patch mode and the thin-to-thick mode. Based on the concept of core element, this paper conducts a comparative case study of these two modes, case company the patch-by-patch and benchmarking enterprises in the same industry the thin-to-thick. It turns out that new core element evolution exhibits the character of path dependence. Organization that continuously thickens one core element during its development will be dominated by this element, resulting in greater internal structure inertia. Meanwhile, the larger number of mutual enhancing core element inside the organization, the greater the internal structure inertia.Based on complex adaptive system, this paper conducts a case study of organizational structure evolution from organization level, function system level, and department level. Organization level analysis, consisting of organizational strategic theme, organizational core value, and organizational structure changes, reveals the punctuated equilibrium mode of organization evolution under the Chinese realistic economy context. Function system level analysis shows the characters of distinctive organizational systems during their evolution, and the relations among these systems. By dissecting the evolution processes of case company, department level analysis uncovers the micro-foundation that how organizational structure and organizational development strategy interacts with each other through organizational department setting, and by doing this, this paper innovatively brings the social network analytic method into organizational structure study, providing a new method for accurately and quantitatively, descripting organizational evolution processes and detecting evolution patterns. This paper enriches our knowledge about organizational structure and organizational design, at the same time, inspires new thoughts for studying the interaction between organizations and the environment.