The DOI matches its Crossref record.
Modeling Coordination in Organizations and Markets
Abstract
This paper describes a simple set of coordination structures that model certain kinds of information processing involved in organizations and markets. Four generic coordination structures are defined: product hierarchies, functional hierarchies, centralized markets, and decentralized markets. Then tradeoffs among these structures are analyzed in terms of production costs, coordination costs, and vulnerability costs. This model is unusual in that it includes detailed definitions of the structures at a micro-level and mathematical derivations of comparisons among them at a macro-level. In the final section of the paper, several connections are made between these formal results and previous work on organizational design.
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Claims other papers make about this one
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In the citing paper
“Decentralized markets, on the other hand, were much less vulnera- ble to processor failures but had high coordination costs.”
From The interdisciplinary study of coordination (1994) · cites this paper as Malone 1987
In the citing paper
“Then they used techniques from queuing theory and probability theory to analyze tradeoffs among these structures in terms of production costs, coordination costs, and vulnerability costs.”
From The interdisciplinary study of coordination (1994) · cites this paper as Malone 1987
In the citing paper
“For instance, they showed that the centralized schemes had lower coordination costs, but were more vulnerable to processor failures.”
From The interdisciplinary study of coordination (1994) · cites this paper as Malone 1987
In the citing paper
“In particular, they developed formal models t o represent various forms of markets (centralized and decentralized) and various forms of hierarchies (based on products or functions).”
From The interdisciplinary study of coordination (1994) · cites this paper as Malone 1987
In the citing paper
“And decentralized hierarchies (”
From The interdisciplinary study of coordination (1994) · cites this paper as Malone 1987
Self-check
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Citations
Cited by
What Makes Teams Work: Group Effectiveness Research from the Shop Floor to the Executive Suite
Cohen, S. G., & Bailey, D. E. (1997) · Journal of Management · doi:10.1177/014920639702300303 · Cited by 3,526
The interdisciplinary study of coordination
Malone, T. W., & Crowston, K. (1994) · ACM Computing Surveys · doi:10.1145/174666.174668 · Cited by 3,504
Self-citationBeyond computation: Information technology, organizational transformation and business performance
Brynjolfsson, E., & Hitt, L. M. (2000) · Journal of Economic Perspectives · doi:10.1257/jep.14.4.23 · Cited by 3,335
Modeling Supply Chain Dynamics: A multiagent Approach
Swaminathan, J. M., Smith, S. F., & Sadeh, N. M. (1998) · Decision Sciences · doi:10.1111/j.1540-5915.1998.tb01356.x · Cited by 878
Perceived information quality in data exchanges: Effects on risk, trust, and intention to use
Nicolaou, A. I., & McKnight, D. H. (2006) · Information Systems Research · doi:10.1287/isre.1060.0103 · Cited by 682
Metadata
- Authors
- Malone, T. W.
- Venue
- Management Science
- Published
- 1987-10
- Volume
- 33
- Issue
- 10
- Pages
- 1317-1332
- ISSN
- 0025-1909 (ISSN-L)
- 1526-5501
- OpenAlex
- W1585825907
- Cited by
- 661
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 10.41
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
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- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Modeling Coordination in Organizations and Markets. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1287/mnsc.33.10.1317
- The paper
- Malone, T. W. (1987). Modeling Coordination in Organizations and Markets. Management Science. https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.33.10.1317
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
