Probalistic Baseline Generator for Role Differentiation in Formal Organizations.

Algorithms are suggested for generating probabilistic distributions of organization role differentiation for given organization sizes under five general assumptions. The assumptions deal with uniqueness among the skills of organization members and among skill demands of organization roles. The algorithms calculate the distributions of all logically possible arrangements of s people filling k roles. This procedure yields a percentile role differentiation indicator PRDI for any given organization size s under each of the five general assumptions. A PRDI value indicates how much of an organizations empirical role differentiation is accounted for by size, allowing an investigator to examine the effects of other influences upon complexity. A series of PRDI values across time tell the effects of other variables besides size upon the complexity of a growing organization. In cross-sectional analysis, PRDI values eliminate the logical effects of size alone upon the complexity of a set of organizations of different sizes.