CMR Highlights Organizational Design
08/18/2009
The new issue of the Haas School's California Management Review highlights organizational design with a symposium of four articles that explore several new organizational forms and the types of companies that have adopted them.
In the introduction to the summer 2009 issue, Sara Beckman, a senior lecturer in the Haas Operations and Information Technology Management Group, lays out the six dimensions that theorists believe should be considered in designing an organization and examines how the dimensions are integrated into the models featured in the symposium’s articles. She also discusses emerging organizational models and the types of new organizational structures required in these times of rapid change.
One of these, the innovation-form or I-form model, is the subject of an article by Haas Professor Emeritus and former Dean Raymond Miles and four co-authors. This organizational model has been best applied within knowledge-intensive industries, including high-tech and medical instruments. The I-form requires collaboration within organizations and across networks of firms and individuals, the sharing of knowledge among members, and leadership by managers who truly believe in collaborative values.
Miles and his co-authors describe two organizations, Syndicom and Blade.org, as solid I-form examples. Syndicom has created a community of spine surgeons who share information on diagnoses and treatment of spinal disorders. What began as 25 members now has more than 1,300 surgeons around the world, some of whom have used their Syndicom connections to collaborate with medical instrument manufacturers on designing medical devices.
Blade.org was created just 3 1/2 years ago by six firms, including IBM and Intel. Today Blade.org includes more than 100 firms with an interest in open blade computer server platforms, who work with each other and their customers to develop solutions for this rapidly growing technology.
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