Ineffective slack

Abstract

In what is known as the contribution-inducement model the organization is regarded as a coalition between various participants. If certain participants receive larger inducements that are necessary to hold the coalition together, what is called organizational slack will arise. Superfluous employees also constitute slack.

The existence of slack enables the organization to survive during bad times. Slack is also said to reduce conflicts and to play a stabilising role in the organization.

This theory is questioned in what follows — the starting point being a definition of the concept of slack. From the same initial assumptions as the slack theory, the article culminates in diametrically opposite conclusions.