Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-75dct Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-06T19:24:04.276Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

3 - Actor-Oriented Organizing

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 November 2023

By
Øystein D. Fjeldstad  and
Charles C. Snow
Edited by
Charles C. Snow  and
Øystein D. Fjeldstad
Charles C. Snow
Affiliation:
Pennsylvania State University
Øystein D. Fjeldstad
Affiliation:
BI Norwegian Business School
Get access

Summary

The ability to organize is our most valuable social technology. Organizing affects an enterprise’s efficiency, effectiveness, and ability to adapt. Modern organizations operate in increasingly complex, dynamic environments, which puts a premium on adaptation. Compared to traditional organizations, modern organizations are flatter and more open to their environment. Their processes are more generative and interactive – actors themselves generate and coordinate solutions rather than follow hierarchically devised plans and directives. Modern organizations search outside their boundaries for resources wherever they may exist. They coproduce products and services with suppliers, customers, and partners. They collaborate, both internally and externally, to learn and become more capable. In this book, leading voices in the field of organization design articulate and exemplify how a combination of agile processes, artificial intelligence, and digital platforms powers adaptive, sustainable, and healthy organizations.

Keywords

actor-oriented organizingself-organizingorganizational adaptationorganizational platformnew organizational formsorganization design
Type
Chapter
Information
Designing Adaptive Organizations , pp. 36 - 61
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Arthur, W. B. 2009. The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves. Free Press, New York, NY.Google Scholar
Ashby, W. R. 1947. Principles of the self-organizing dynamic system. Journal of General Psychology 37: 125–128.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ashby, W. R. 1956. An Introduction to Cybernetics. Wiley, New York, NY.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ashby, W. R. 1958. Requisite variety and its implications for the control of complex systems. Cybernetica 1(2): 83–99.Google Scholar
Ashby, W. R. 1962. Principles of the self-organizing system. In von Foerster, H. and Zopf, G. J. (eds.), Principles of Self-Organization: Transactions of the University of Illinois Symposium: 255–278. Pergamon Press, London, UK.Google Scholar
Axelrod, R. M. 1984. The Evolution of Cooperation. Basic Books, New York, NY.Google Scholar
Barnard, C. I. 1938. The Functions of the Executive. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
Batalden, M., Batalden, P., Margolis, P., Seid, M., Armstrong, G., Opipari-Arrigan, L., & Hartung, H., 2016. Coproduction of healthcare service. BMJ Quality & Safety 25(7): 509–517.Google Scholar
Beer, S. 1972. Brain of the Firm: The Managerial Cybernetics of Organization. Penguin Press, London, UK.Google Scholar
Benkler, Y. 2002. Coase’s penguin, or, Linux and the nature of the firm. Yale Law Journal 112(3): 369–446.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bolici, F., Howison, J., & Crowston, K. 2016. Stigmergic coordination in FLOSS development teams: integrating explicit and implicit mechanisms. Cognitive Systems Research 38: 14–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bourgeois III, L. J. & Eisenhardt, K. M. 1988. Strategic decision processes in high-velocity environments: four cases in the microcomputer industry. Management Science 34(7): 816–835.Google Scholar
Britto, M. T., Fuller, S. C., Kaplan, H. C., et al. 2018. Using a network organisational architecture to support the development of Learning Healthcare Systems. BMJ Quality & Safety 27(11): 937–946.Google Scholar
Brynjolfsson, E. & McAfee, A. 2014. The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies. W. W. Norton, New York, NY.Google Scholar
Carboni, I., Cross, R., & Edmondson, A. C. 2021. No team is an island: how leaders shape networked ecosystems for team success. California Management Review 64(1): 5–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chandler, A. D. 1962. Strategy and Structure: Chapters in the History of the Industrial Enterprise. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
Chesbrough, H. & Rosenbloom, R. S. 2002. The role of the business model in capturing value from innovation: evidence from Xerox Corporation’s technology spin‐off companies. Journal of Industrial and Corporate Change 11(3): 529–555.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
China.org.cn 2018. Zhang Ruimin lights the fire of management change.Google Scholar
Ciborra, C. U. 1996. The platform organization: Recombining strategies, structures, and surprises. Organization Science 7(2): 103–118. www.china.org.cn/business/2018-12/03/content_74233673.htmCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chong, A. Y. L., Lim, E. T. K., Hua, X., Zheng, S., & Tan, C.-W. 2019. Business on chain: a comparative case study of five blockchain-inspired business models. Journal of the Association for Information Systems 20(9): 1310–1399.Google Scholar
Christensen, C. M. & Bower, J. L. 1996. Customer power, strategic investment, and the failure of leading firms. Strategic Management Journal 17(3): 197–218.3.0.CO;2-U>CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crawford, S. E. & Ostrom, E. 1995. A grammar of institutions. American Political Science Review 89(3): 582–600.Google Scholar
Crowston, K. 1997. A coordination theory approach to organizational process design. Organization Science 8(2): 157–175.Google Scholar
Cusumano, M. A., Gawer, A., & Yoffie, D. B. 2019. The Business of Platforms: Strategy in the Age of Digital Competition, Innovation, and Power. HarperCollins, New York, NY.Google Scholar
Dahl, O.-J. & Nygaard, K. 1966. SIMULA: an ALGOL-based simulation language. Communications of the ACM 9(9): 671–678.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davis, J. P., Eisenhardt, K. M., & Bingham, C. B. 2009. Optimal structure, market dynamism, and the strategy of simple rules. Administrative Science Quarterly 54(3): 413–452.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Drucker, P. F. 1954. The Practice of Management: A Study of the Most Important Function in American Society. Harper & Brothers, New York, NY.Google Scholar
Edmondson, A. C. 2012. Teamwork on the fly. Harvard Business Review 90(4): 72–80.Google Scholar
Endsley, M. R. 1995. Toward a theory of situation awareness in dynamic systems. Human Factors 37(1): 32–64.Google Scholar
Endsley, M. R. & Jones, W. M. 1997. Situation Awareness, Information Dominance, and Information Warfare. Technical Report 97–01. Endsley Consulting, Belmont, CA.Google Scholar
Ethiraj, S. K. & Levinthal, D. 2004. Bounded rationality and the search for organizational architecture: an evolutionary perspective on the design of organizations and their evolvability. Administrative Science Quarterly 49(3): 404–437.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Faraj, S., Pachidi, S., & Sayegh, K. 2018. Working and organizing in the age of the learning algorithm. Information and Organization 28(1): 62–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fischer, B., Lago, U., & Liu, F. 2013. Reinventing Giants: How Chinese Global Competitor Haier Has Changed the Way Big Companies Transform. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA.Google Scholar
Fjeldstad, Ø. D., Snow, C. C., Miles, R. E., & Lettl, C. 2012. The architecture of collaboration. Strategic Management Journal 33(6): 734–750.Google Scholar
Forrest, C. B., Margolis, P., Seid, M., & Colletti, R. B. 2014. PEDSnet: how a prototype pediatric learning health system is being expanded into a national network. Health Affairs 33(7): 1171–1177.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Foss, N. J., Frederiksen, L., & Rullani, F., 2016. Problem‐formulation and problem‐solving in self‐organized communities: How modes of communication shape project behaviors in the free open‐source software community. Strategic Management Journal 37(13): 2589–2610.Google Scholar
Furr, N., Ozcan, P., & Eisenhardt, K. M. 2022. What is digital transformation? Core tensions facing established companies on the global stage. Global Strategy Journal 12(4): 595–618.Google Scholar
Garud, R., Kumaraswamy, A., & Sambamurthy, V. 2006. Emergent by design: performance and transformation at Infosys Technologies. Organization Science 17(2): 277–286.Google Scholar
Gawer, A. & Cusumano, M. A. 2014. Industry platforms and ecosystem innovation. Journal of Product Innovation Management 31(3): 417–433.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gershgorn, D. 2016. Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence group opens a “gym” to train A.I. Popular Science. April 27. www.popsci.com/elon-musks-artificial-intelligence-group-opens-gym-to-train-ai/.Google Scholar
Girod, S. J. G. & Whittington, R. 2015. Change escalation processes and complex adaptive systems: from incremental reconfigurations to discontinuous restructuring. Organization Science 26(5): 1520–1535.Google Scholar
Girod, S. J. G. & Whittington, R. 2017. Reconfiguration, restructuring and firm performance: dynamic capabilities and environmental dynamism. Strategic Management Journal 38(5): 1121–1133.Google Scholar
Goldstein, J. 1999. Emergence as a construct: history and issues. Emergence 1(1): 49–72.Google Scholar
Goldstein, J. 2007. A new model of emergence and its leadership implications. In Hazy, J., Goldstein, J., and Lichtenstein, B. (eds.), Complex Systems Leadership Theory: 61–92. ICSE Publishing, Mansfield, MA.Google Scholar
Grassé, P. P. 1959. La reconstruction du nid et les coordinations interindividuelles chez Bellicositermes natalensis et Cubitermes sp. la théorie de la stigmergie: Essai d’interprétation du comportement des termites constructeurs. Insectes Sociaux 6(1): 41–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Greer, C. R., Lusch, R. F., & Vargo, S. L. 2016. A service perspective. Organizational Dynamics 1(45): 28–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guimera, R., Uzzi, B., Spiro, J., & Amaral, L. A. N. 2005. Team assembly mechanisms determine collaboration network structure and team performance. Science 308(5722): 697–702.Google Scholar
Hayek, F. A. 1945. The use of knowledge in society. American Economic Review 35(4): 519–530.Google Scholar
Hazy, J. K. & Uhl-Bien, M. 2015. Towards operationalizing complexity leadership: how generative, administrative and community-building leadership practices enact organizational outcomes. Leadership 11(1): 79–104.Google Scholar
Hess, C. & Ostrom, E. 2006. Understanding Knowledge as a Commons: From Theory to Practice. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
Hewitt, C. 1977. Viewing control structures as patterns of passing messages. Artificial Intelligence 8(3): 323–364.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heylighen, F. 2016. Stigmergy as a universal coordination mechanism I: definition and components. Cognitive Systems Research 38: 4–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hodson, H. 2014. The AI boss that deploys Hong Kong’s subway engineers. New Scientist. July 2. www.newscientist.com/article/mg22329764-000-the-ai-boss-that-deploys-hong-kongs-subway-engineers.Google Scholar
Holland, J. H. 1992. Genetic algorithms. Scientific American 267(1): 66–73.Google Scholar
Jiang, S., Hu, Y., & Wang, Z. 2019. Core firm based view on the mechanism of constructing an enterprise innovation ecosystem: a case study of Haier Group. Sustainability 11: 3108–3144.Google Scholar
Jones, C., Hesterly, W. S., Fladmoe-Lindquist, K., & Borgatti, S. P. 1998. Professional service constellations: how strategies and capabilities influence collaborative stability and change. Organization Science 9(3): 396–410.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kanter, R. M. 2015. Move: Putting America’s Infrastructure Back in the Lead. W. W. Norton, New York, NY.Google Scholar
Kanter, R. M. 2019. The future of bureaucracy and hierarchy in organizational theory: a report from the field. In Bourdieu, P., Coleman, J. S., and Coleman, Z. W. (eds.), Social Theory for a Changing Society: 63–93. Routledge, New York, NY.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Katz, M. L. & Shapiro, C.. 1985. Network externalities, competition, and compatibility. American Economic Review 75(3): 424–440.Google Scholar
Kellogg, K. C., Orlikowski, W. J., & Yates, J. 2006. Life in the trading zone: structuring coordination across boundaries in postbureaucratic organizations. Organization Science 17(1): 22–44.Google Scholar
Kellogg, K. C., Valentine, M. A., & Christin, A. 2020. Algorithms at work: the new contested terrain of control. Academy of Management Annals 14(1): 336–410.Google Scholar
King, B. G., Felin, T., & Whetten, D. A. 2010. Perspective – finding the organization in organizational theory: a meta-theory of the organization as a social actor. Organization Science 21(1): 290–305.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kolbjørnsrud, V. 2018. Collaborative organizational forms: on communities, crowds, and new hybrids. Journal of Organization Design 7(1): 1–21.Google Scholar
Kriegman, S., Blackiston, D., Levin, M., & Bongard, J. 2020. A scalable pipeline for designing reconfigurable organisms. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 117(4): 1853–1859.Google Scholar
Lawrence, P. R. & Lorsch, J. W. 1967. Differentiation and integration in complex organizations. Administrative Science Quarterly 12(1): 1–47.Google Scholar
Levinthal, D. A. & Warglien, M. 1999. Landscape design: designing for local action in complex worlds. Organization Science 10(3): 342–357.Google Scholar
Li, X., Cao, J., Liu, Z., & Luo, X. 2020. Sustainable business model based on digital twin platform network: The inspiration from Haier’s case study in China. Sustainability 12(3): 936.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Licklider, J. C. R. 1960. Man-computer symbiosis. IRE Transactions on Human Factors in Electronics HFE-1: 4–11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Løwendahl, B. R., Revang, Ø., & Fosstenløkken, S. M. 2001. Knowledge and value creation in professional service firms: a framework for analysis. Human Relations 54(7): 911–931.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Majchrzak, A., Jarvenpaa, S. L., & Hollingshead, A. B. 2007. Coordinating expertise among emergent groups responding to disasters. Organization Science 18(1): 147–161.Google Scholar
Malone, T. W. & Crowston, K. 1994. The interdisciplinary study of coordination. ACM Computing Surveys 26(1): 87–119.Google Scholar
March, J. G. 1991. Exploration and exploitation in organizational learning. Organization Science 2(1): 71–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
March, J. G. & Simon, H. A. 1958. Organizations. Wiley, New York, NY.Google Scholar
Massa, F. G. & O’Mahony, S. 2021. Order from chaos: how networked activists self-organize by creating a participation architecture. Administrative Science Quarterly 66(4): 1037–1083.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McChrystal, G. S., Silverman, D., Collins, T., & Fussell, C. 2015. Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World. Penguin Random House, New York, NY.Google Scholar
McGinnis, J., Michael, D. A., & Olsen, L. A. eds. 2007. The Learning Healthcare System: Workshop Summary. National Academies Press.Google Scholar
Metcalf, L., Askay, D. A., & Rosenberg, L. B. 2019. Keeping humans in the loop: pooling knowledge through artificial swarm intelligence to improve business decision making. California Management Review 61(4): 84–109.Google Scholar
Miles, R. E. & Snow, C. C. 1978. Organizational Strategy, Structure, and Process. McGraw-Hill, New York, NY.Google ScholarPubMed
Miles, R. E. & Snow, C. C. 1984. Fit, failure and the hall of fame. California Management Review 26(3): 10–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miles, R. E. & Snow, C. C. 1994. Fit, Failure, and the Hall of Fame: How Companies Succeed or Fail. Free Press, New York, NY.Google Scholar
Mullins, R. 2007. IBM’s Blade.org group attracts investors. IDG News Service. www.networkworld.com/article/2295419/ibm-s-blade-org-group-attracts-investors.htmlGoogle Scholar
North, D. C. & Wallis, J. J. 1994. Integrating institutional change and technical change in economic history: a transaction cost approach. Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE)/Zeitschrift für die gesamte Staatswissenschaft 150(4): 609–624.Google Scholar
Nunes, P. & Downes, L. 2016. At Haier and Lenovo, Chinese-style open innovation. Forbes.com, 26 Sept.Google Scholar
Ostrom, E. 1990. Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.Google Scholar
Ostrom, E. 2000. Collective action and the evolution of social norms. Journal of Economic Perspectives 14(3): 137–158.Google Scholar
Ostrom, E. 2010. Beyond markets and states: polycentric governance of complex economic systems (2009 Nobel Prize Lecture). Transnational Corporations Review 2(2): 1–12.Google Scholar
Peters, A. 2019. How 3D printing is making prosthetics cheap and accessible, even in remote places. Fast Company. June 4. www.fastcompany.com/90358495/how-3d-printing-is-making-prosthetics-cheap-and-accessible-even-in-remote-places.Google Scholar
Pew, R. W. & Mavor, A. S. 1998. Modeling Human and Organizational Behavior: Application to Military Simulations. The National Academies Press, Washington, DC.Google Scholar
Piller, F. T., Weller, C., & Kleer, R. 2015. Business models with additive manufacturing – opportunities and challenges from the perspective of economics and management. In Brecher, C. (ed.), Advances in Production Technology: 39–48. Springer, New York, NY.Google Scholar
Puranam, P. 2018. The Microstructure of Organizations. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK.Google Scholar
Reeves, M., Haanæs, K., & Sinha, J. 2015. Your Strategy Needs a Strategy: How to Choose and Execute the Right Approach. Harvard Business Review Press, Boston, MA.Google Scholar
Saieg, P., Sotelino, E. D., Nascimento, D., & Caiado, R. G. G. 2018. Interactions of building information modeling, lean and sustainability on the architectural, engineering and construction industry: a systematic review. Journal of Cleaner Production 174: 788–806.Google Scholar
Seid, M., Hartley, D. M., Dellal, G., Myers, S., & Margolis, P. A. 2019. Organizing for collaboration: an actor‐oriented architecture in ImproveCareNow. Learning Health Systems 4(1): e10205.Google Scholar
Setia, P., Venkatesh, V., & Joglekar, S. 2013. Leveraging digital technologies: how information quality leads to localized capabilities and customer service performance. MIS Quarterly 37(2): 565–590.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shannon, C. E. & Weaver, W. 1949. A Mathematical Theory of Communication. University of Illinois Press, Urbana, IL.Google Scholar
Shapiro, C. & Varian, H. R. 1999. Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy. Harvard Business School Press, Boston, MA.Google Scholar
Simon, H. A. 1947. Administrative Behavior: A Study of Decision-Making Processes in Administrative Organizations. Macmillan, New York, NY.Google Scholar
Simon, H. A. 1962. The architecture of complexity. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 106(6): 467–482.Google Scholar
Simon, H. A. 1969. The Sciences of the Artificial. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
Simon, H. A. 1993. Strategy and organizational evolution. Strategic Management Journal 14(S2): 131–142.Google Scholar
Simon, H. A. & Newell, A. 1958. Heuristic problem solving: the next advance in operations research. Operations Research 6(1): 1–10.Google Scholar
Snow, C. C. 2015. Organizing in the age of competition, cooperation, and collaboration. Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies 22(4): 433–442.Google Scholar
Snow, C. C., Fjeldstad, Ø. D., & Langer, A. M. 2017. Designing the digital organization. Journal of Organization Design 6(1): 1–13.Google Scholar
Snow, C. C., Fjeldstad, Ø. D., Lettl, C., & Miles, R. E. 2011. Organizing continuous product development and commercialization: the collaborative community of firms model. Journal of Product Innovation Management 28(1): 3–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sull, D. & Eisenhardt, K. M. 2015. Simple Rules: How to Thrive in a Complex World. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston.Google Scholar
Thompson, J. D. 1967. Organizations in Action: Social Science Bases of Administrative Theory. McGraw-Hill, New York, NY.Google Scholar
Uhl-Bien, M. 2021. Complexity and COVID‐19: leadership and followership in a complex world. Journal of Management Studies 58(5): 1400–1404.Google Scholar
Uhl-Bien, M. & Arena, M. 2017. Complexity leadership: enabling people and organizations for adaptability. Organizational Dynamics 46: 9–20.Google Scholar
Uhl-Bien, M. & Arena, M. 2018. Leadership for organizational adaptability: a theoretical synthesis and integrative framework. The Leadership Quarterly 29: 89–104.Google Scholar
Uhl-Bien, M., Marion, R., & McKelvey, B. 2007. Complexity leadership theory: shifting leadership from the industrial age to the knowledge era. The Leadership Quarterly 18(4): 298–318.Google Scholar
Varian, H. R. 2000. Buying, sharing and renting information goods. Journal of Industrial Economics 48(4): 473–488.Google Scholar
von Foerster, H. 1960. On self-organizing systems and their environments. In von Foerster, H. (ed.), Understanding Understanding: Essays on Cybernetics and Cognition: 1–20. Springer, New York, NY.Google Scholar
von Hippel, E. & von Krogh, G. 2003. Open source software and the “private-collective” innovation model: issues for organization science. Organization Science 14(2): 209–223.Google Scholar
Weick, K. E. 1979. The Social Psychology of Organizing, 2nd ed. Addison-Wesley, New York, NY.Google Scholar
Whitesides, G. M. & Grzybowski, B. 2002. Self-assembly at all scales. Science 295(5564): 2418–2421.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wiener, N. 1950. The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society. Houghton Mifflin, Boston, MA.Google Scholar
Williamson, O. E. 1985. The Economic Institutions of Capitalism: Firms, Markets, Relational Contracting. Free Press, New York, NY.Google Scholar
Wilson, D. S., Ostrom, E., & Cox, M. E. (2013). Generalizing the core design principles for the efficacy of groups. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 90: S21–S32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Winston, P. H. 1992. Artificial Intelligence, 3rd ed. Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA.Google Scholar
Ziemke, T., Schaefer, K. E., & Endsley, M. 2017. Situation awareness in human-machine interactive systems. Cognitive Systems Research 46(1): 1–2.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×