STRUCTURE,ENVIRONMENT, AND ORGANIZATIONAL GOVERNANCE IN MANUFACTURING*

The paper compares theories of organizational governance that explain delegation in decision making in terms of administrative rationality on the parts of top corporate officials with theories that emphasize lower-level actors mobilizing resources to gain control over organizational outcomes. These two alternative theories are developed and extended to apply to the relationship between manufacturing plants and parent companies. A general model is introduced to compare these theories which includes characteristics of parent companies and site environments, site resources, and delegation. The model is then tested on a sample of manufacturing plants.