Dreams within a dream: Multiple visions and organizational structure

• Author: Jonathan Clark,Alexander Lewis
• Published date: 01 January 2020
• Date: 01 January 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.2419

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Dreams within a dream: Multiple visions and organizational

structure

Alexander Lewis |Jonathan Clark

Department of Management, University of

Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, Texas

Correspondence

Jonathan Clark, Department of Management,

University of Texas at San Antonio, One UTSA

Circle, San Antonio, TX 78249.

Email: jonathan.clark@utsa.edu

Summary

Research has long recognized the potential benefits of vision communicated at all

levels of organizations. Despite this recognition, our understanding of the dynamics

surrounding suborganizational visions remains limited. In this paper, we aim to

explore these dynamics by investigating the role of organizational structure in the

use of suborganizational visions. Although research has begun exploring the implica-

tions of structure for vision, it has done so on a limited basis in the context of vertical

hierarchies. We take a more comprehensive view, exploring the role of both vertical

and horizontal dimensions of structure, with specific interest in the relationship

between organizational and suborganizational visions. Our findings suggest not only

that structural distance moderates the relationship between organizational and

suborganizational visions but also that horizontal distance from the organizational

core provides the conditions under which suborganizational units communicate dis-

tinct visions that are decoupled from the organizational vision. Furthermore, we find

a series of coordinating mechanisms that serve to encourage both the vertical nesting

and horizontal complementarity of visions, ensuring alignment, even in the presence

of decoupling from the organizational vision. Finally, in describing these findings,

we elucidate the role of institutions in both providing content for and ensuring the

complementarity of suborganizational visions.

KEYWORDS

leadership, structural position, vision

1|INTRODUCTION

“Vision is central to leadership. It is an indispensable tool without

which leadership is doomed to failure”(Nanus, 1992, p. 10). Given its

relevance to leadership, and leadership's relevance across the organi-

zational hierarchy, vision has been studied at all levels of organizations.

Although seminal works on leadership generally define vision at the

level of the organization (Bass, 1987; Conger & Kanungo, 1987;

Nanus, 1992; Westley & Mintzberg, 1989), scholars have studied the

use of visions among middle managers (Berson, Shamir, Avolio, & Pop-

per, 2001), entry‐level supervisors (Bono & Judge, 2003; Rafferty &

Griffin, 2004), and frontline managers (Sosik & Dinger, 2007). More-

over, research has consistently supported the benefits of vision up

and down the organizational hierarchy (Ashford, Wellman, Sully de

Luque, De Stobbeleir, & Wollan, 2018; Baum & Locke, 2004; Baum,

Locke, & Kirkpatrick, 1998; Carton, Murphy, & Clark, 2014; Griffin,

Parker, & Mason, 2010), including at the team level (Dionne,

Yammarino, Atwater, & Spangler, 2004; Wellman, 2017). Indeed, the

presence and use of visions at suborganizational levels—organizational

levels beneath the upper echelon or, to use Mintzberg's (1980) term,

the “strategic apex”of an organization—appears to be common in

practice. Despite the observed role of vision in inspiring and coordinat-

ing action at all levels of organizations, the literature on vision has only

just begun to explicitly consider the implications of organizational level

for visioning in organizations (Berson, Halevy, Shamir, & Erez, 2015).

Accordingly, although suborganizational visions appear to be common

Received: 15 May 2018 Revised: 25 September 2019 Accepted: 14 October 2019

DOI: 10.1002/job.2419

50 © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J Organ Behav. 2020;41:50–76.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/job

and useful, our understanding of the dynamics surrounding the use of

this rhetorical device remains limited.

Some insight on this issue may be gained by an appeal to the liter-

ature on strategic alignment (Hayes and Wheelwright, 1984; Papke‐

Shields & Malhotra, 2001; Kaplan & Norton, 2006; Kathuria, Joshi, &

Porth, 2007). Scholars have long recognized the need for mechanisms

at suborganizational levels to both control behavior (Chenhall, 2005)

and align interests with organizational aspirations. This literature

argues that unit strategies (Skinner, 1996) and cascading goals (Kaplan

& Norton, 2006) are necessary to ensure that organizational actors

and activities do not lose their connection to the overarching business

strategy. Viewed from this perspective, suborganizational visions may

be considered a necessary rhetorical device for bridging the meaning

of suborganizational activities with the overall purpose of the

organization.

Despite these insights, recent research that explicitly distinguishes

between visions and goals raises important questions about

suborganizational visions. This research argues that within a vertical

hierarchy, concrete goals are more appropriate than abstract visions

for leaders operating in closer social proximity to followers (Berson

& Halevy, 2014). Said another way, the abstract visions aimed at

inspiring suborganizational units are most effective when they “are

used at high leader‐follower social/spatial distance”(Berson et al.,

2015, p. 145). Of course, for a given level in a hierarchy, the greatest

social distance between leaders and followers is experienced between

the followers at that level and leaders in the strategic apex (i.e., the

CEO), but significant social distance may still be experienced at

suborganizational levels between, for example, workers on a factory

floor and the manager of the factory.

Notably, this research, along with the research on cascading goals

and strategic alignment, is circumscribed to focus primarily on vertical

hierarchies: relatively homogeneous organizational systems tightly

coupled in purpose and activity (Weick, 1976). But as Mintzberg

(1980) notes, even within verticals—what Mintzberg identifies as the

hierarchy extending from the “strategic apex”to the “operating core”

of a business—there are important organizational actors and units that

operate “out of the formal ‘line’structure”(p. 323). For example, ver-

tical hierarchies tend to be surrounded by a technostructure of ana-

lysts who tend to the maintenance and adaptation of the structure

itself, and peripheral units composed of support staff, that is, “groups

that provide indirect support to the rest of the organization”

(Mintzberg, 1980, p. 324). Moreover, many organizations operate in

multiple businesses, producing other products and services even

where the organization remains focused on a core offering (e.g., lodg-

ing, food services, and retail at theme parks). Perhaps these are among

the contingencies that led Berson et al. (2015) to ask what is to be

done in more heterogeneous circumstances (p. 152). In the context

of the apparent virtues of tight coupling (i.e., sameness) between orga-

nizational and suborganizational visions within vertical hierarchies, in

this paper, we explore whether there are structural circumstances in

which suborganizational visions exhibit a necessary loose coupling or

even decoupling (i.e., entirely distinct suborganizational visions com-

municated by suborganizational leaders) from organizational visions.

We address these issues through an inductive, qualitative study of

a large, public research university undergoing strategic renewal driven

by a change‐oriented organizational vision. In doing so, we pay partic-

ular attention to the structural position (vertical and horizontal) of the

units under study. Broadly summarized, our findings suggest that the

horizontal distance of units—that is, the extent to which the unit

operates outside of the vertical line structure of the organization's

core (Mintzberg, 1993)—is an important moderator of the relationship

between organizational and suborganizational visions. Specifically, we

find that units that are horizontally distant from (i.e., simply support or

operate outside of) the core perceive a greater need for

suborganizational visions that are either loosely coupled or entirely

decoupled from the organizational vision.

Our findings along these lines make several contributions to the lit-

erature on vision in organizations. First, our findings with respect to

structural distance echo the implications of the concept of linkage

strength—similar to the concepts of interdependence (Simon, 1973)

and coupling (Weick, 1976)—in the framework for multilevel theoriz-

ing of Kozlowski and Klein (2000). In our setting, a position outside

of the organizational core is associated with an observed reduction

in the content relevance of the organizational vision—the degree with

which the content of the organizational vision is relevant to the values,

goals, and future state of a specific collective. We argue that such

reductions in content relevance are, at least in part, a function of the

boundaries created by horizontal distance, with such boundaries

amplifying the need for the visions of the suborganizational leaders

of these horizontally distant units. In explicating these findings, we

highlight how an incomplete treatment of structure in vision scholar-

ship may lead to incorrect inferences and generalizations.

Second, our findings allow us to attend to an important question

related to the existence of multiple visions operating at multiple levels

in a single organization: If different leaders at different levels have dif-

ferent visions that speak to the different values of their respective

units, how does coordination occur? Emerging from our study is a

set of coordinating mechanisms that exist at the microlevel, mesolevel,

and perhaps most interestingly, macrolevel (societal) that ensure the

coordination and integration of multiple visions at multiple levels.

These mechanisms allow organizations to effectively cope with, and

take advantage of, both the presence of multiple visions and the dis-

parate values that drive them.

Finally, we provide a nuanced understanding of the relationship

between visions and institutions. We find that although the influence

of an organizational vision wanes as horizontal distance increases,

institutional influences, professions in our setting, gain strength. The

perspective our study offers on these dynamics departs from prior

conceptualizations of vision as simply constrained by the institutional

environment (e.g., O'Connell, Hickerson, & Pillutla, 2011) and instead

offers institutions as both a source of visionary content and context

for visionary aspiration.

Our paper is structured as follows. We first introduce the concept

of vision and proceed to a discussion of its study at different levels of

organizations. In doing so, we motivate our research questions: (a)

How does organizational structure influence the use of vision? And

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