CEO ATTITUDES AS DETERMINANTS OF ORGANIZATION DESIGN - AN INTEGRATED MODEL

This paper argues that micro-level individual properties may be expres sed in choices of macro-level organizational features. In particular, we believe that social-psychological attitudes of chief executive offi cers and general managers are a critical contingency in organization d esign and strategy that has not been developed sufficiently in previou s studies. When actual organization designs deviate from contingency-t heory prescriptions, individual properties of top managers may account for within-industry variation. These attitudes include need for achie vement, Machiavellianism, locus of control, egalitarianism, trust in p eople, tolerance for ambiguity, risk propensity, and level of moral re asoning. A comprehensive theory and summary propositions are deduced f rom related research. The theory includes prediction of the circumstan ces that facilitate and impede top managers' abilities to design organ izations according to their preferences.