The Role of Interdependence in the Micro-Foundations of Organization Design: Task, Goal, and Knowledge Interdependence
综合组织设计与行为研究，区分任务、目标和知识三种相互依赖类型，分析其内生形成过程及相互关系，为管理者应对不确定工作流提供新视角。
Interdependence is a core concept in organization design, yet one that has remained consistently understudied. Current notions of interdependence remain rooted in seminal works, produced at a time when managers’ near-perfect understanding of the task at hand drove the organization design process. In this context, task interdependence was rightly assumed to be exogenously determined by characteristics of the work and the technology. We no longer live in that world, yet our view of interdependence has remained exceedingly task centric and our treatment of interdependence overly deterministic. As organizations face increasingly unpredictable work streams and workers codesign the organization alongside managers, our field requires a more comprehensive toolbox that incorporates aspects of agent-based interdependence. In this article, we synthesize research in organization design, organizational behavior, and other related literatures to examine three types of interdependence that characterize organizations’ workflows: task, goal, and knowledge interdependence. We offer clear definitions for each construct, analyze how each arises endogenously in the design process, explore their interrelations, and pose questions to guide future research.