The determinants of the management hierarchy: evidence from Italian plants

The paper aims to test (some of) the predictions of economic theory on the organizational architecture by looking at the relation between:the depth of the management hierarchy of plants and plant and industry-specific variables. I test this relation through the estimates of an ordered logit econometric model on a sample of 438 Italian manufacturing plants. The findings show that the plant size, the characteristics: (i.e., vintage and extent of use) of the production and communication technology in use, the plant's ownership status (i.e., State versus private ownership, and differences in the nationality of firms to which plants belong) figure prominently in explaining the complexity of a plant's organization. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.