Measuring Organizational Strain as a Leading Indicator for Operational Execution Risk

Organizational and IT changes, combined with unforeseen changes in external demands, can create strain on employees and organizational units. Organizational strain can reduce performance in the short term while also creating long term risks in areas such as compliance, capacity, and agility. This project aims to construct a statistical model of early indicators of organizational strain as well as policy guidelines to prevent or alleviate strain. We will construct potential indicators of strain using detailed microdata, and link the indicators to organizational unit performance and risk. By selecting units appropriately, we will identify natural experiments which we can exploit to further test our models of organizational strain and outcomes.