On the Measurement of Organizational Slack¶
Bourgeois, L. J. (1981). On the Measurement of Organizational Slack. Academy of Management Review, 6(1), 29-39.
Cited by¶
5 citations across 5 artifacts.
Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.
Primes¶
- Decision
This sourceProposes operational measures of organizational slack.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- The slack-capacity distinction between committed resources serving current operations and uncommitted buffer available for disruption, learning, or opportunity
Mechanisms¶
- Option Buffer Register
- It also has a real carrying cost of its own; holding too many options ties up slack the organization could otherwise deploy, and past some point the hedging costs more than the flexibility is worth.
This sourceOrganizational slack is excess capacity that carries cost while buffering operations and enabling adaptation.
- It also has a real carrying cost of its own; holding too many options ties up slack the organization could otherwise deploy, and past some point the hedging costs more than the flexibility is worth.
- Policy Slack Allowance
- … slack becomes arbitrary discretion or gets gamed (once everyone learns the deadline is really seven days later, the real deadline has just moved), or it silently erodes under efficiency pressure until none is left — a decay that organizational-slack theory treats as both a shock absorber and a standing temptation.
This sourceTreats organizational slack as both an adaptive cushion or shock absorber and a resource associated with inefficiency and political behavior.
- … slack becomes arbitrary discretion or gets gamed (once everyone learns the deadline is really seven days later, the real deadline has just moved), or it silently erodes under efficiency pressure until none is left — a decay that organizational-slack theory treats as both a shock absorber and a standing temptation.
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