Worker Competence and Structure

Hall (1968) studied occupational groups in 27 organizations to explore the relation between work competence and organization structure (Scott p. 263). He found that more highly qualified workers were found in organizations with less Weberian bureaucratic attributes (hierarch of authority, functional specialization, rules, procedural specification, impersonality). Thus worker competence has an effect on structure. This may be somewhat cultural however -- studies of Japanese organizations show that less specialization and centralized decision making (opposites in traditional definitions of bureaucratic attributes) is present there, though there is more decentralized informal decision making in Japan that compensates for it. (Scott p. 264).