On the measurement of organizational slack

Bourgeois, L. J. (1981). On the measurement of organizational slack. Academy of Management Review, 6(1), 29-39.

Type

Journal article

Intellectual base

Primary research

Year

1981

DOI

10.5465/amr.1981.4287985

Link

https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.1981.4287985

Cited from

cognitive_science, engineering_design, organizational_management

Cited by

3 citations across 3 artifacts.

Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.

Primes

• Decision

  • This sourceProposes operational measures of organizational slack. Tier C (biblio only).

• Reserve
  • A reserve is a deliberately maintained surplus of capacity, resource, or time held beyond expected need, kept so the system can absorb variation, uncertainty, or shock without failing or degrading, a pattern Cyert and March (1963) named "organizational slack" in their behavioral theory of the firm and Bourgeois (1981) later operationalized for empirical work.

    This sourceOperationalizes the slack construct with financial-statement proxies; argues that slack absorbs goal conflict and environmental shock and is chronically eroded by short-horizon optimization — the canonical empirical treatment of held-surplus erosion in firms.

• System Slack
  • The slack-capacity distinction between committed resources serving current operations and uncommitted buffer available for disruption, learning, or opportunity

    This sourceOperationalizes the slack construct with financial-statement proxies; argues that slack absorbs goal conflict and environmental shock and is chronically eroded by short-horizon optimization — the canonical empirical treatment of held-surplus erosion in firms.

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