Page 348 - Cultures and Organizations

Pyramids, Machines, Markets, and Families: Organizing Across Nations 313

4. Standardization of outputs (specifying the desired results)
5. Standardization of skills (specifying the training required to perform
the work)

Most organizations show one of five typical confi gurations:

1. The simple structure. Key part: the strategic apex. Coordinating
mechanism: direct supervision.
2. The machine bureaucracy. Key part: the technostructure. Coordi-
nating mechanism: standardization of work processes.
3. The professional bureaucracy. Key part: the operating core. Coor-
dinating mechanism: standardization of skills.
4. The divisionalized form. Key part: the middle line. Coordinating
mechanism: standardization of outputs.
5. The adhocracy. Key part: the support staff (sometimes with the
operating core). Coordinating mechanism: mutual adjustment.

Mintzberg recognized the role of values in the choice of coordinating
mechanisms. For example, about formalization of behavior within organi-
zations (a part of the standardization of work processes), he wrote:

Organizations formalize behavior to reduce its variability, ultimately to
predict and control it . . . to coordinate activities . . . to ensure the machine-
like consistency that leads to effi cient production . . . to ensure fairness to
clients. . . . Organizations formalize behavior for other reasons as well,
of more questionable validity. Formalization may, for example, refl ect an
arbitrary desire for order. . . . The highly formalized structure is above all
the neat one; it warms the heart of people who like to see things orderly. 19

Mintzberg’s reference to “questionable validity” obviously represents his
own values choice. He did not go as far as recognizing the link between
values and nationality. The IBM research has demonstrated to what extent

values about the desirability of centralization (reflected in power distance)
and formalization (reflected in uncertainty avoidance) affect the implicit

models of organizations in people’s minds and to what extent these models
differ from one country to another. This suggests that it should be possible
to link Mintzberg’s typology of organizational confi gurations to national
culture profiles based on the IBM data. The link means that, other factors

being equal, people from a particular national background will prefer a