Faced with the ever-accelerating pace of technological change and the restructuring of markets, many firms have been questioning the appropriateness of their own organizational structure and effectiveness. Consequently, we have witnessed much organizational experimentation and the development of new forms of organizing over the last decade. Firms are more dependent than ever on the need for continuous and radical innovations - and often innovations that go beyond their existing businesses. This challenges firms in terms of knowledge and idea sharing, and often necessitates the need to expand beyond the boundaries of the single firm for multi-party collaboration to meet serious challenges and develop creative solutions.

Drawing from the Fourth International Workshop on Organization Design, and featuring contributions from an international array of specialists, this volume focuses on the expansion beyond the boundaries of the single firm and multi-firm networks, to include, for example, community-based organization designs. A community is a connected set of firms; the connections can take on many different dimensions. For organization design theory, community-based organizations have many implications. For one, organization design theory has to identify and describe designs that enhance collaborative behavior among firms without restricting the ability of the individual firm to continue to compete within its own marketplace. Moreover, organization design theory also has to identify and describe information processing strategies and designs that allow the continuous generation, sharing, and application of existing information and knowledge.

The development of effective collaborative community designs is critically important to the global economy because, increasingly, our future depends on pursuing shared goals and sustainably developing our global commons. Ideally, the ideas and findings in this book will contribute to increased attention to new organization designs capable of meeting 21st-century opportunities and challenges.

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Faced with the ever-accelerating pace of technological change and the restructuring of markets, many firms have been questioning the appropriateness of their own organizational structure and effectiveness. Consequently, we have witnessed much organizational experimentation and the development of new forms of organizing over the last decade. Firms are more dependent than ever on the need for continuous and radical innovations - and often innovations that go beyond their existing businesses. This challenges firms in terms of knowledge and idea sharing, and often necessitates the need to expand beyond the boundaries of the single firm for multi-party collaboration to meet serious challenges and develop creative solutions.

Drawing from the Fourth International Workshop on Organization Design, and featuring contributions from an international array of specialists, this volume focuses on the expansion beyond the boundaries of the single firm and multi-firm networks, to include, for example, community-based organization designs. A community is a connected set of firms; the connections can take on many different dimensions. For organization design theory, community-based organizations have many implications. For one, organization design theory has to identify and describe designs that enhance collaborative behavior among firms without restricting the ability of the individual firm to continue to compete within its own marketplace. Moreover, organization design theory also has to identify and describe information processing strategies and designs that allow the continuous generation, sharing, and application of existing information and knowledge.

The development of effective collaborative community designs is critically important to the global economy because, increasingly, our future depends on pursuing shared goals and sustainably developing our global commons. Ideally, the ideas and findings in this book will contribute to increased attention to new organization designs capable of meeting 21st-century opportunities and challenges.

"

"George Huber has achieved an amazing feat in this book. He has eloquently described what it will take for companies to prosper in the future by drawing upon what we know today--what we really know, based on rigorous research--about speed flexibility, learning, and innovation. Anyone interested in preparing firms for tomorrow will benefit from this important book."
--Don Hambrick, Smeal Chaired Professor of Management, Pennsylvania State University

"Professor Huber has produced a valuable and very well researched guide for firms making the necessary transition to the knowledge economy. His sage advice and experiences will greatly help any organization navigate these tricky and dangerous waters."
--Dr. Lawrence Prusak, Former Executive Director, Institute for Knowledge Management

?George Huber has written a wonderfully comprehensive and integrative book on organizational change, learning, and adaptation. Huber synthesizes the research-based work on change in a way that will be helpful to scholars, graduate students, as well as managers interested in organizational learning and change. The book is well written and provocative. It is a state of the art literature review with an experienced, practical point of view. This book belongs on both the scholar's desk as well as in the practitioner's office.?
--Paul R. Lawrence, MBA Class of 1942, Harvard Business School

?In The Necessary Nature of Future Firms, George Huber does what Huber does best--paint a compelling vision of the design of (near) future organizations as well as the implications of this design. What differentiates Huber?s ?visioning? efforts from most others is that they are derived not from speculation but rather from the collective thinking of a generation of organizational scientists as interpreted through Huber?s own research and consulting experiences. This vision of how future firms will be designed (and, hence, how they will behave) emerges in fact from well-founded conceptualizations and validated observations.?
--Robert Zmud, University of Oklahoma

"This book is a must read for managers concerned with guiding their organizations into the information age. Management futurologists and academic writers have speculated on the features and characteristics of new organizational forms. The Necessary Nature of Future Firms by George Huber represents the first rigorous in-depth effort at anticipating the shape of new organizations by combining, recombining, and interpreting a vast management research literature and presenting it to managerial audiences. The book is very accessible to a broad managerial audience but especially to forward looking thoughtful managers concerned with the future of their organizations."
--Arie Y. Lewin, Professor, Director CIBER and JIBS Editor in Chief

"The book offers yet another outstanding contribution by an author known for scholarship and insightful observations about the state of organizations and their management. The topic is timely and the book offers many useful ideas that will find their way into practice. I highly recommend it."
--Paul C. Nutt, Ohio State University

"While many books deal with decision making and many more deal with environmental complexity, this is one of the first to lucidly tie them together and provide executives with the specific tools and mind-set necessary to bring about significant organizational change. The University of Wisconsin-Madison is a key driver of the integration of business and science, and this book will be a must-read for many of the students in our masters and executive education programs."
--Mason A. Carpenter, Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship, University of Wisconsin

Survival depends on the ability to read imminent shifts in the environment and respond accordingly. This holds true for any living system, but it is especially true for firms today.

This is a paperback edition of a book published in 1993. It deals with increasing understanding of the relationships within organizational changes, redesigns, and performance. The contributors are some of the finest authors currently working in the area of organizational change.

What are the root causes of the accelerating rate of change in the business environment? What patterns exist in the ways environmental change leads to organizational change? Confronted with a state of continuously accelerating change, what should managers and organizational scientists do? Organizational Change and Redesign addresses these and other questions to provide a clear and comprehensive understanding of the relationships among environmental changes, organizational redesign, and performance. George Huber, William Glick, and some of the finest authorities now working in the field of organizational change focus on specific new ideas and insights for improving managerial performance. The authors examine how changes in environment affect the overall performance of an organization. They also show how a variety of factors - including demographics, team structure, and communication processes influence the effectiveness of key managers. Drawing on multi-year studies of dozens of organizations and on interviews with top managers, the book includes practical tutorial chapters on how to analyze and manage organizational change and redesign. A thoughtful examination of fundamental issues and questions, Organizational Change and Redesign will be an essential tool for business scholars, students, and practicing managers in the middle and upper levels of organizations.