This paper brings into question whether information systems should be centralized or decentralized in order to provide greater support for different business processes. During the last century companies and organizations have used different approaches for centralization and decentralization; a simple answer to the question does not exist. This paper provides a survey of the evolution of central...

Authority defines the formal structure of an organization, and is essential for the allocation of resources inside the firm. This paper develops a theory of authority in a multiple layer hierarchy, in which the distribution of authority alleviates incentive incompatibilities. To examine the theory, I collect monthly personnel data from about 200 journalists over three years in a Chinese newspap...

It has been discovered that in many organizations the information technology department is a separate entity, while in others each business unit incorporates their own information technology department. The former represents a centralized approach while the latter represents a decentralized approach. The centralized IT department suits some organizations better than others. However, it is becom...

the behaviour of power transformers is very like to ideal ones. their characteristic matrices can not be determined directly, because the elements of the characteristic matrices are either close to infinity or zero. on the other hand, strong coupling between two transformer windings causes the determinant of these matrices to become zero. therefore, conversion of these matrices to each other wi...

Objective. We investigated the effects of the centralization of obstetricians and obstetric care facilities on the perinatal mortality rate in Japan. Methods. We used the Gini coefficient as an index to represent the centralization of obstetricians and obstetric care facilities. The Gini coefficients were calculated for the number of obstetricians and obstetric care facilities of 47 prefectures...

We compare market returns associated with firms’ creation of new units focused on e-business. Two aspects of organization design governance and leadership are considered with regard to exploitationand exploration-oriented organization learning. We find that exploitation in governance (high centralization) is associated with a lower mean and variance in returns; that exploitation in leadership (...