Organizational Deadweight (OD)

Outline

　　Our research team has studied characteristics of organizational behaviors and strategies in Japanese firms on the basis of systematically collected questionnaire data. In order to explore the issues, we launched a research consortium with Japanese firms in 2004. Since then we have conducted questionnaire survey biannually. In the third survey in 2008FY, more than 1000 managers participated in the survey from 139 business units of 20 firms.
　The core concept of our research is “Organizational Deadweight (OD)”, which is defined as “an ineffectual organizational load caused by low organizational cohesiveness that hampers cooperation among middle-level managers pursuing their organizational goals” (see Karube, M., Numagami, T. & Kato, T. (2009) “Exploring Organisational Deterioration: ‘Organisational deadweight’ as a cause of malfunction of strategic initiatives in Japanese Firms”. Long Range Planning, in press, doi:10.1016/j.lrp.2009.06.005).
　The analysis of the latest survey suggests the stability and validity of the concept, and the main findings are consistent with previous ones.