Structure, Policy, and Style: Strategies of Organizational Control.

This paper investigates and attempts to explain some relationships between control achieved through structural arrangements and control achieved through supervisory style. Eighty large governmental psychiatric hospitals and 52 small private hospitals were studied. With some exceptions--and these apparently traceable either to the differential effects of size or sponsorship--maximum structural control (approximating that of bureaucratic organizations) was found in association with a limited employee control, and, minimal structural control (resembling that of less bureaucratic institutions) was found in association with more pervasive employee control. In general, the scope of employee control varied inversely with the scope of patient control--sometimes because of structural arrangements and sometimes because of supervisory style. These basic patterns are discussed in their relation to classical Weberian conceptions of formal organizations, as well as to more recent theoretical formulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]