CEO Attitudes as Determinants of Organization Design: An Integrated Model

Abstract

This paper argues that micro-level individual properties may be expressed in choices of macro-level organizational features. In particular, we believe that social-psychological attitudes of chief executive officers and general managers are a critical contingency in organization design and strategy that has not been developed sufficiently in previous studies. When actual organization designs devi ate from contingency-theory prescriptions, individual properties of top managers may account for within-industry variation. These attitudes include need for achievement, Machiavellianism, locus of control, egalitarianism, trust in people, tolerance for ambiguity, risk propensity, and level of moral reasoning. A compre hensive theory and summary propositions are deduced from related research. The theory includes prediction of the circumstances that facilitate and impede top managers' abilities to design organizations according to their preferences.