Inventing the Organizations of the 21st Century

by Thomas W. Malone, Robert Laubacher and Michael S. Scott Morton (Eds.)

• ISBN13: 9780262632737
• ISBN10: 026263273X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-09-01
• Publisher: Ecampus Direct

Summary

Technological changes have displaced the hierarchical corporation as the model for business organization; the large corporations of the new century are decentralizing and externalizing, creating networks of "industry ecosystems" that will replace the top-down organizations of the last century. Inventing the Organizations of the 21st Centuryreports on a five-year multidisciplinary research initiative conducted by MIT's Sloan School of Management and sponsored by leading international corporations. The goal of the initiative was not only to understand the way we work now but to invent new ways of working and put them into practice. The twenty articles in the book are organized to answer three questions. The first part, "What is changing?" examines the reasons for change and the results of change. The second part, "What can you do about it?" considers the new business strategies and organizations that technology and competition demand. The third part, "What do you want in the first place?" examines the goals that animate the initiative, which go beyond pure profit to reflect the human values we want the organizations of the twenty-first century to serve.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction	p. 1
Inventing the Organizations of the 21st Century	p. 3
What is Changing?	p. 15
Why Are Things Changing?	p. 23
The Boundaries of the Firm Revisited	p. 25
Is Empowerment Just a Fad? Control, Decision Making, and IT	p. 49
Beyond Computation: Information Technology, Organizational Transformation and Business Performance	p. 71
How Are Things Changing?	p. 101
The Dawn of the E-Lance Economy	p. 103
Two Scenarios for 21st Century Organizations: Shifting Networks of Small Firms or All-Encompassing "Virtual Countries"?	p. 115
The Interesting Organizations Project: Digitalization of the 21st Century Firm	p. 133
What Can You Do About It?	p. 161
Inventing New Strategies	p. 171
The Delta Model: Adaptive Management for a Changing World	p. 173
Clockspeed-Based Strategies for Supply Chain Design	p. 205
Inventing New Organizations	p. 219
Tools for Inventing Organizations: Toward a Handbook of Organizational Processes	p. 221
Inventing Organizations with the Process Handbook: Excerpts from a Learning History	p. 251
An Improvisational Model for Change Management: The Case of Groupware Technologies	p. 265
The Comparative Advantage of X-Teams	p. 283
Eight Imperatives for the New IT Organization	p. 297
What Do You Want in the First Place?	p. 319
What Do We Really Want? A Manifesto for Organizations of the 21st Century	p. 325
Building a New Social Contract at Work: A Call to Action	p. 333
Retreat of the Firm and the Rise of Guilds: The Employment Relationship in an Age off Virtual Business	p. 353
Unexpected Connections: Considering Your Employees' Personal Lives Can Revitalize Your Business	p. 375
Innovating Our Way to the Next Industrial Revolution	p. 389
Conclusion	p. 413
Prospects for the New Century	p. 415
List of Contributors	p. 417
Index	p. 421
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.