Measuring Centrality: A Note on Hackman's Resource-Allocation Theory

This article is dedicated with much appreciation to Jon, my coauthor and a close friend, who recently passed away. This note discusses the measure of centrality, the pivotal concept in Hackman's (1985) theory of resource allocation. It suggests defining centrality in terms of a unit's centrality in an organization's workflow, rather than in terms of a unit's centrality to the organization's mission. Using an empirical study of 40 departments in the liberal arts college of a large university, we show that four measures of centrality-the number of research collaborations, the number of teaching collaborations, the number of broad classes offered by a department, and the number of nonmajor students registered for classes in a department-are good indicators of a department's centrality in the workflow of the organization. We stress the importance of a good measure of centrality, which is taken into account in organizational decision making on resource allocation and cutbacks-