CASOS Working PAPER

"Organization Growth and Coordination Problems: An Experimental Study" (PDF file)
Author: Roberto Weber

Abstract
Coordination problems arise when actors within an organization are only willing to commit resources (effort, time, etc.) if they think others will as well, resulting in strategic uncertainty. This paper considers the connection between this type of coordination problem and organizational size. There is support in both the organizational and economics leteratures for the belief that coordination problems become much more difficult as groups increase in size. This implies that solving coordination problems should be a crucial objective of growing organizations. Given the difficulty of coordinating the activity of large groups, however, the question is how to accomplish this.