With Special Guest Bob Hinings

The Aston Group was based in the United Kingdom and played a major role in the early development of organization theory and management science. Starting in the 1960s, they carried out a program of research that departed from the comparative study of work organizations in the Birmingham area in the UK and contributed landmark works on organizational structure and the development of contingency approach. Derek S. Pugh (pictured, 1930-2015) led the Group that included, among others, Bob Hinings, John Child, Lex Donaldson, David Hickson, Roy Payne, Diana Pheysey, and Charles McMillan. The collective spirit and the participation of scholars from a wide range of disciplines including psychology, sociology, political science, and economics make it reminiscent of the work of another important group, the Carnegie-Mellon School covered in several episodes in the podcast. 

We are therefore honored to welcome one of its members, Bob Hinings, as a special guest to talk about the Aston School, its contributions, and some of the stories behind them. Our conversation centered on the four papers published in Administrative Science Quarterly which revolutionized our understanding of organization structure, organizational forms and bureaucracy as well as expanding the methodological toolkit of organizational and management researchers. Specifically, the first papers proposed a new multidimensional conceptualization of bureaucracy in terms of formal organization structure (1963) and examined the clustering of these dimensions based on work organizations that lead to the now-famous notion of structuration of activities and concentration of authority (1968). Subsequent papers explored how the context impacts organization structure (e.g., size, control, location, dependence on other organizations) evidencing the particular importance of size (1969a). Finally, they brought together these multiple insights into a taxonomy of different structures and forms of bureaucracy (1969b). 

Read With Us:

Pugh, D. S., Hickson, D. J., Hinings, C. R., & Turner, C. (1969a). The context of organization structures. Administrative science quarterly, 91-114.

Pugh, D. S., Hickson, D. J., & Hinings, C. R. (1969b). An empirical taxonomy of structures of work organizations. Administrative science quarterly, 115-126.

To Know More:

Donaldson, L., & Luo, B. N. (2014). The Aston Programme contribution to organizational research: a literature review. International Journal of Management Reviews, 16(1), 84-104.

Greenwood, R., & Devine, K. (1997). Inside Aston: a conversation with Derek Pugh. Journal of Management Inquiry, 6(3), 200-208.

Hinings, C. R., Hickson, D. J., Pennings, J. M., & Schneck, R. E. (1974). Structural conditions of intraorganizational power. Administrative Science Quarterly, 22-44.

Kostera, M. (2020). The Imagined Organization: Spaces, Dreams and Places. Edward Elgar Publishing.