Determinants of Coordination Modes within Organizations

This paper classifies alternative mechanisms for coordinating work activities within organizations into impersonal, personal and group modes. It investigates how variations and interactions in the use of these coordination mechanisms and modes are explained by task uncertainty, interdependence and unit size. Nine hypotheses that relate these three determining factors to the use of the three coordination modes are developed in order to test some key propositions of Thompson (1967) and others on coordination at the work unit or departmental level of organization analysis. Research results from 197 work units within a large employment security agency largely support the hypotheses. The findings suggest that there are differences in degree and kind of influence of each determining factor on the mix of alternative coordination mechanisms used within organizational units.