Organizational Structure, Information Flows and Attitude Change

• Autor(a) principal: Almeida Costa, Luís
• Data de Publicação: 1999
• Outros Autores: Amaro de Matos, João
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10362/85070

The alignment of collective goals and individual behavior has been extensively studied under a principal-agent framework. Two main solutions have been presented: explicit incentive contracts and monitoring. These solutions correspond to changes in the objective situation faced by individuals. However, an extensive literature in social psychology provides evidence that behavior is influenced, not only by situational constraints, but also by attitudes. Therefore, an important dimension of organizational design is to choose the organizational structure and procedures that best contribute to the alignment of attitudes. This paper uses a dynamic model of the process of attitude change to discuss the relationship between organizational structure, the timing of information flows and the process of formation of attitudes. We obtain two main results. First, organizational structure affects the evolution of attitudes in the organization. When the top manager is trying to change the dominant attitude in the organization, the optimal structure is the one in which the communication channels correspond to the links of authority characterizing the formal structure. In contrast, when there is no clearly dominant attitude in the organization, the optimal structure is the one in which the communication channels corresponding to the formal links of authority are complemented by a complete system of informal relation-ships. Second, the process of attitude change is influenced by the timing of information flows. In situations where attitude change is difficult, as when there is a dominant attitude in the organization, change is easier if issues are discussed between individuals in an order determined by the formal structure of authority.