van der Mandele,H.C.van Witteloostuijn,Arjen2025-02-012025-02-012015-12van der Mandele, H C & van Witteloostuijn, A 2015, 'The inevitability and irreversibility of organizational uncontrollability', Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory, vol. 21, no. 4, pp. 380-405. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10588-015-9190-01381-298X10.1007/s10588-015-9190-0https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14602/63854In this paper, a classic and seminal contribution of Williamson (J Polit Econ 75:123–138, 1967), “Hierarchical control and optimum firm size”, is revisited so as to remove two of its restrictive assumptions. The introduction of the dynamics of the quality of vertical communication into Williamson’s static model and the development of a simulation to analyze these dynamics provide the opportunity to demonstrate the plausibility of a new conjecture: in each and every hierarchically structured organization, irreversible organizational uncontrollability is ultimately bound to arise, even in a completely stable environment. This is our main contribution. Moreover, we demonstrate that this conjecture is also valid for non-hierarchically structured organizations.enginfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccesscontrol lossuncontrollabilityserial reproductionorganizational failuresimulationstochastic logistic equationArticleGeneral rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. - Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. - You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain - You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal" Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim.https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/849464855168115652https://research.tilburguniversity.edu/en/publications/572e16c4-d9b3-4e96-a9c8-cc38045c8d15(c) Universiteit van Tilburgvan der Mandele, H.C.van Witteloostuijn, Arjen