Designing Adaptive Organizations

Presents a new organization design paradigm, outlining the concepts, principles, and tools that enable organizations to adapt quickly in response to novel circumstances. Suitable for managers and consultants with responsibility for organizational design and development, and scholars and students wanting to understand how modern organizations work.

The ability to organize is our most valuable social technology and the successful organizational design of an enterprise can increase its efficiency, effectiveness, and ability to adapt. Modern organizations operate in increasingly complex, dynamic, and global environments, which puts a premium on rapid adaptation. Compared to traditional organizations, modern organizations are flatter and more open to their environments. Their processes are more generative and interactive – actors themselves generate and coordinate solutions rather than follow hierarchically devised plans and directives. They also search outside their boundaries for resources wherever they may exist, and co-produce products and services with suppliers, customers, and partners, collaborating – both internally and externally – to learn and become more capable. In this volume, leading voices in the field of organization design demonstrate how a combination of agile processes, artificial intelligence, and digital platforms can power adaptive, sustainable, and healthy organizations.