Organization: Contemporary Principles and Practice, 2nd Edition

PART V

Designing Organizations for the 21st Century

Chapter 17 Meeting Strategic Business Needs

Chapter 18 Meeting Strategic Social Needs

Introduction to Part V – Designing Organizations for the 21st Century

Part V steps back from the detail of previous chapters to make sense of how organization can be designed to help meet the strategic business and social criteria of the present century. The twin chapters in this last part of the book reflect the two fundamental faces of organization. In one face we see organization as a set of arrangements for undertaking collective goal-directed activities in a cohesive and coherent manner. This is the side of organization that contributes to meeting strategic business needs.

Chapter 17 illustrates how each strategic business need, and different combinations of them, has a corresponding appropriate form of organization. It has become increasingly necessary to use a mix of organizational forms within the one company or system while at the same time preserving consistency and integration between them. The capability of doing this has become known as “ambidexterity.” Returning to the theme of Chapter 3, a consideration of how these needs are changing helps us to make better sense of how organizational forms are evolving and tending to become increasingly ...