Unnecessary organizational burden: a conceptual framework

Abstract This paper investigates the mechanisms that lead organizations to impose unnecessary burdens on their actors. The prevailing narrative in the literature is that unnecessary organizational burden (UOB) is created either on purpose—as a way for an organizational actor to assert control—or inadvertently through the passage of time as layers of policies, rules, and processes accumulate. Based on a wide review of relevant literature, we propose a different explanation: in our conceptual framework, the onset and mitigation of unnecessary burdens are explained, respectively, by organizational decision-makers’ weaknesses and strengths. Our framework combines (1) a typology of unnecessary burdens with (2) a typology of factors influencing the likelihood of UOB mitigation, and (3) a typology of managerial mitigation responses to such burdens. The conceptual framework, and a series of 12 propositions, aim to offer researchers and practitioners a shared language to empirically investigate unnecessary organizational burden, and implement effective solutions.