The Effects of Organizational Structure on Time-Based Performance: An Empirical Study in Chinese Automobile Industry

As firms attempt to cope with the constantly changing environment, they must implement innovational practices including business strategy, production system and organizational structure to promote the responsiveness to markets and customers. This study develops a research framework that examines relationships among various structural dimensions and time-based performance in Chinese automobile industry and a contingency approach which is taken by examining the moderating effects of firm size. Six aspects of organizational structure are considered. They are number of layers in the hierarchy, locus of decision-making, and nature of formalization, level of process, internal boundary and external boundary. Results show that those six dimensions of organizational structure have significant influence on time-based performance. Subgroup analysis reveals that these main effects are, for the most part, not moderated by firm size.