Open-source and community-based organization

Volunteers and firm-paid contributors build a shared artifact, coordinated by norms, modular code, and governance earned through contribution.

What it is

An open-source or community-based organization is a group of contributors, some volunteers and some paid by firms, who build one shared artifact, such as a program or an encyclopedia. Anyone may contribute without joining. Contributors pick their own tasks, and those who decide what goes into each part hold that standing because others accepted their contributions. Coordination runs through shared norms, the artifact's modular design, and a meritocratic or elected governance the community builds over time.

The open-source community gathers contributors around one artifact, with no manager over them

Select a unit or a letter to read it; no unit heads the community, and anyone may contribute without joining.

Adjust to each other directlyMMutual adjustmentNStandardization of norms

Select a unit or a letter to read it. M, mutual adjustment: People coordinate their own work by informal communication with each other. N, standardization of norms: Shared beliefs and values, usually across the whole organization, guide the work.Earned governance. Layer: Governance. No single head above it. A meritocratic or elected governance the community builds over time. In one community studied, members developed formal authority limited by democratic mechanisms (O'Mahony and Ferraro 2007, one case study); in one foundation's incubator, projects carry formal governance policy (Chakraborti and colleagues 2024).Volunteer contributor. Layer: Contributors. No single head above it. By product, one artifact. Contributes without joining and picks its own tasks. People here neither follow managers' directions nor respond to prices (Benkler 2002).Maintainer of one part. Layer: Contributors. No single head above it. By product, one artifact. Decides what goes into one part because others accepted its contributions. People progressed without hierarchy, taking lateral authority over project tasks without managing people (Dahlander and O'Mahony 2011, a longitudinal study of one project).Maintainer of another part. Layer: Contributors. No single head above it. By product, one artifact. Authority over parts of the artifact goes to different people for different parts, our judgment; after gaining authority, people spent more time coordinating (Dahlander and O'Mahony 2011). Whether contributors group by the artifact's modules is disputed: a review of 142 studies found open collaborative projects did not mirror their artifact's modules (Colfer and Baldwin 2016).Firm-paid contributor. Layer: Contributors. No single head above it. By product, one artifact. Paid by a firm to contribute to the shared artifact. Boundary organizations manage the ties between communities and firms (O'Mahony and Bechky 2008).M, mutual adjustment. People coordinate their own work by informal communication with each other.N, standardization of norms. Shared beliefs and values, usually across the whole organization, guide the work.

The structure in words

Governance
- Earned governance, no single head above it. A meritocratic or elected governance the community builds over time. In one community studied, members developed formal authority limited by democratic mechanisms (O'Mahony and Ferraro 2007, one case study); in one foundation's incubator, projects carry formal governance policy (Chakraborti and colleagues 2024).
Contributors
- Volunteer contributor, no single head above it, grouped by product, one artifact. Contributes without joining and picks its own tasks. People here neither follow managers' directions nor respond to prices (Benkler 2002).
- Maintainer of one part, no single head above it, grouped by product, one artifact. Decides what goes into one part because others accepted its contributions. People progressed without hierarchy, taking lateral authority over project tasks without managing people (Dahlander and O'Mahony 2011, a longitudinal study of one project).
- Maintainer of another part, no single head above it, grouped by product, one artifact. Authority over parts of the artifact goes to different people for different parts, our judgment; after gaining authority, people spent more time coordinating (Dahlander and O'Mahony 2011). Whether contributors group by the artifact's modules is disputed: a review of 142 studies found open collaborative projects did not mirror their artifact's modules (Colfer and Baldwin 2016).
- Firm-paid contributor, no single head above it, grouped by product, one artifact. Paid by a firm to contribute to the shared artifact. Boundary organizations manage the ties between communities and firms (O'Mahony and Bechky 2008).

Volunteer contributor and Maintainer of one part: adjust to each other directly.
Maintainer of one part and Maintainer of another part: adjust to each other directly, coordinated by mutual adjustment.
Maintainer of another part and Firm-paid contributor: adjust to each other directly.
Across the whole organization: standardization of norms.

Volunteers and firm-paid contributors pick their own tasks on one shared artifact, and standing over a part is earned through accepted contributions, not assigned. Shared norms hold across the whole community, and contributors adjust to one another directly.

Source: Benkler 2002; O'Mahony and Ferraro 2007, one case study; Dahlander and O'Mahony 2011, a longitudinal study of one project; Chakraborti and colleagues 2024, a quantitative study of 208 projects in one foundation; O'Mahony and Bechky 2008, a field study of four projects; Colfer and Baldwin 2016, a review of 142 empirical studies.

On each dimension:

Grouping: product or purpose, our judgment: contributors gather around one artifact; whether they group by its modules is disputed (What the research found).
Specialization: medium, our judgment: contributors self-identify for tasks (Benkler) and, in our reading, specialize by module; von Krogh, Spaeth, and Lakhani (2003), one case study, use specialization to explain how newcomers join.
Formalization: medium, our judgment: one community developed formal authority limited by democratic mechanisms (O'Mahony and Ferraro 2007, one case study), and one foundation's incubator projects carry formal governance policy (Chakraborti and colleagues 2024, a quantitative study of 208 projects in one foundation).
Centralization: decentralized, on Benkler's (2002) theory: people follow neither managers nor prices.
Layers and span: flat, from evidence: people took lateral authority over project tasks without managing people (Dahlander and O'Mahony 2011, a longitudinal study of one project).
Decision rights: selective vertical and horizontal decentralization, our judgment.
Coordinating mechanism: spans mutual adjustment and standardization of norms, our judgment.
Lateral mechanisms: direct contact and liaison roles, our judgment.
Differentiation against integration: low differentiation, light integration, our judgment.
Mode of exchange: clan, our judgment: Benkler names a third mode beside firms and markets, and the clan is the nearest of the three in Ouchi (1980), a conceptual article.
Boundary permeability: permeable, on theory (Benkler).

Where the open-source and community-based organization sits on the eleven dimensions

The filled segments are the form's levels; select a row for its reason and sources.

Select a dimension to read why the form sits there, and on what basis.Basis of grouping: Product or purpose. Basis: Judgment. Contributors gather around one product, the shared artifact; community products were more modular than matched products built by tightly coupled firms, but a review of 142 studies found open collaborative projects did not mirror their artifact's modules, so grouping by module is not established and the basis is judgment. Sources: MacCormack and colleagues 2012; Colfer and Baldwin 2016; Benkler 2002.Specialization: Medium. Basis: Judgment. Contributors choose their tasks and specialize by module; judgment for the band. Sources: von Krogh and colleagues 2003; Benkler 2002.Standardization and formalization: Medium. Basis: Judgment. In one community studied, members developed a shared basis of formal authority, limited by democratic mechanisms, and the conception they settled on was more expansive than their original design; in one foundation's incubator, projects carry formal governance policy. Judgment for the band. Sources: O'Mahony and Ferraro 2007; Chakraborti and colleagues 2024.Centralization: Decentralized. Basis: Theory. People neither follow managers' directions nor respond to prices. Sources: Benkler 2002.Layers and span of control: Flat. Basis: Evidence. People progressed without hierarchy, assuming lateral authority over project tasks without managing people. Sources: Dahlander and O'Mahony 2011.Decision rights and the locus of authority: Selective vertical and horizontal decentralization. Basis: Judgment. Authority over parts of the artifact is earned through accepted contributions and goes to different people for different modules; judgment for the type. Sources: O'Mahony and Ferraro 2007; Dahlander and O'Mahony 2011.Prime coordinating mechanism: Mutual adjustment and standardization of norms. Basis: Judgment. Norms and direct adjustment among contributors, with modular code and earned governance; judgment for the prime mechanism. Sources: Benkler 2002; O'Mahony and Ferraro 2007.Lateral mechanisms: Direct contact and liaison roles. Basis: Judgment. Contributors coordinate directly and electronically; after gaining authority, individuals spent more time coordinating; judgment for the band. Sources: Dahlander and O'Mahony 2011.Differentiation against integration: Low differentiation, light integration. Basis: Judgment. Contributors share the artifact and its norms, and modular design keeps integration light; judgment. Sources: MacCormack and colleagues 2012; Lawrence and Lorsch 1967a.Mode of exchange and control: Clan. Basis: Judgment. A third mode of production beside firms and markets; clan is the nearest of the three levels, as judgment. Sources: Benkler 2002; Ouchi 1980.Boundary permeability: Permeable. Basis: Theory. Anyone may contribute without joining, and boundary organizations manage the ties between communities and firms. Sources: Benkler 2002; O'Mahony and Bechky 2008.

Two levels rest on theory, decentralized authority and permeable boundaries (Benkler 2002), and flat layers rest on a longitudinal study of one project (Dahlander and O'Mahony 2011). The other eight are judgment, and no row is contested.

Source: MacCormack and colleagues 2012, a matched comparison of five pairs of software products; Colfer and Baldwin 2016, a review of 142 empirical studies; Benkler 2002; von Krogh and colleagues 2003, one case study; O'Mahony and Ferraro 2007, one case study; Chakraborti and colleagues 2024, a quantitative study of 208 projects in one foundation; Dahlander and O'Mahony 2011, a longitudinal study of one project; Lawrence and Lorsch 1967a, a multi-firm comparative field study; Ouchi 1980, a conceptual article; O'Mahony and Bechky 2008, a field study of four projects.

Where it came from

Yochai Benkler named the form in "Coase's Penguin" (2002) and The Wealth of Networks (2006). He argued that a third mode of production was emerging beside firms and markets, commons-based peer production, in which groups collaborate on motivational drives and social signals, not on prices or managerial commands, and individuals self-identify for tasks. Siobhán O'Mahony and Fabrizio Ferraro (2007), one case study, then traced how governance emerged in one open source community. The form answers how large-scale production can be organized without ownership, employment, or managerial hierarchy.

The schools of organization design and the forms' origins, 1900 to now

Each row is a school's era; each square under them is a form at its first year. Select a row or a square to read it; on a form's page, its own square and span are marked, with the schools that treat it.

The forms by first year

Schools that treat this form: Modularity and the mirroring hypothesis; the new-forms debate.

Select a school's row or a form's square to read it.Select a form's square to read it; open a school below.Bureaucracy and its critics1900s to 1950s, revived from the 1990sWhat it claimsWeber held that rational-legal authority exercised through an office hierarchy, written rules, trained officials, and promotion by qualification is technically superior in precision, speed, and reliability. Critics studied its unintended consequences, Michels's iron law sharpest.What it has shownMerton (1940) argued, with no test, that rules can turn from means into ends; case studies followed. The Aston group concluded that the type's dimensions vary independently, and Wagner's meta-analysis (2021) found that many of their interrelationships have weakened.Who disputes itHuman relations and System 4 sets the costs of impersonal rules to motivation and cooperation against the technical superiority Weber stresses.Bureaucracy and its critics in The Schools of Organization DesignClassical administration1910s to 1940s, and in German to the 1970sWhat it claimsThere are general principles of administration, among them division of work, unity of command, a scalar chain of authority, and a limited span of control, and a structure built to them will be efficient in most settings. Taylor added that planners should set work methods.What it has shownThe school offered reasoning and experience, not tests. Woodward (1965) found that the spans and levels of the more successful firms in her sample differed by production system, and Simon (1946) showed that the principles come in pairs that point in opposite directions.Who disputes itStructural contingency theory found that the structure of successful firms varies with technology and environment, where classical writers treat their principles as general.Classical administration in The Schools of Organization DesignHuman relations and System 41920s to 1960sWhat it claimsOutput depends on the social relations of work, the norms of informal groups, and the style of supervision as much as on formal design. Likert's System 4, overlapping work groups joined by linking-pin managers under participative management, outperforms authoritative systems.What it has shownThe founding evidence is the Hawthorne studies, which later reanalyses dispute (Carey 1967; Levitt and List 2011). Likert's support came largely from his own institute's surveys. Wagner (1994) found participation's effects on performance and satisfaction significant but small.Who disputes itLabor process and critical theory reads human relations as a technique of managerial control rather than a change in the distribution of power.Human relations and System 4 in The Schools of Organization DesignTransaction cost economics and the M-form hypothesis1937, then the 1970s to the presentWhat it claimsFirms exist, and are organized as they are, to economize on transaction costs. Hierarchy replaces the market when assets are specific, uncertainty is high, and exchange is frequent, and the multidivisional form should outperform the functional form in large, diversified firms.What it has shownArmour and Teece (1978) found, in United States petroleum firms from 1955 to 1973, a positive relationship between the multidivisional form and profitability while the form was spreading, but not once an equilibrium in organizational form was reached.Who disputes itThe network perspective on organizations: Granovetter argued that the theory undersocializes economic action, which is embedded in networks of personal relations that also produce trust and order.Transaction cost economics and the M-form hypothesis in The Schools of Organization DesignThe Carnegie school and the attention-based view1940s to the presentWhat it claimsPeople in organizations are boundedly rational, so structure matters because it sets the premises of their decisions and channels their attention: who sees which problems, which goals they pursue, and which routines they follow. Ocasio makes structure distribute attention.What it has shownMarch and Simon (1958) drew propositions from the existing literature, and Cyert and March (1963) added process models and simulations. Two studies show hierarchy shaping what is sent up as well as what is chosen (Reitzig and Maciejovsky 2015; Keum and See 2017).Who disputes itOrganizational economics: decision rights, authority, and complementarities models a principal and agents with defined objectives; the Carnegie school, firms as coalitions with unresolved goal conflict.The Carnegie school and the attention-based view in The Schools of Organization DesignSocio-technical systems1950s to 1980sWhat it claimsAn organization is a social system and a technical system that must be designed together. The same technology admits more than one way of organizing work, and groups that own a whole task and control its variances at the source perform better and are more satisfied.What it has shownTrist and Bamforth (1951) found that longwall mechanization broke up self-regulating work groups. A review of 134 experiments found them extremely successful overall, and Stewart (2006) linked team autonomy to performance; studies of socialist brigades and Volkswagen qualify it.Who disputes itLabor process and critical theory: Kelly argued that labor intensification, not joint optimization, accounts for what socio-technical redesign achieved, and that the part of pay incentives was seriously underestimated.Socio-technical systems in The Schools of Organization DesignThe economics of the labor-managed firm and of enterprise ownership1958 to the presentWhat it claimsA firm run by its workers behaves differently from one run for investors: Ward modeled the Yugoslav-style firm as maximizing income per worker. Hansmann argued that an ownership form's success depends on the balance between the costs of market contracting and of ownership.What it has shownBurdín (2014) found a 29 percent lower hazard of dissolution for Uruguayan worker-managed firms than for conventional ones, and Fakhfakh, Pérotin, and Gago (2012) found French labor-managed firms as productive or more so in every industry studied.Who disputes itOrganizational economics (Jensen and Meckling) contrasts the labor-managed firm, in which tradable residual claims are legally prohibited, with cooperatives and partnerships that arise out of voluntary contracting.The economics of the labor-managed firm and of enterprise ownership in The Schools of Organization DesignModularity and the mirroring hypothesis1960s to the presentWhat it claimsComplex systems are built of nearly decomposable parts, and an organization's structure tends to mirror the architecture of what it makes: modular products allow loosely coupled organizations, and tightly coupled products need tightly coupled teams. Conway's law runs in reverse.What it has shownColfer and Baldwin (2016) review the empirical studies and report both support and principled exceptions. Direct tests point both ways: MacCormack, Baldwin, and Rusnak (2012) found open source products more modular than their commercial pairs; dynamic components break the mirror.Who disputes itNo school in the record disputes it head on; it answers information processing, which meets the coordination load inside the organization; mirroring writers locate it in the product's architecture.Modularity and the mirroring hypothesis in The Schools of Organization DesignStrategy and structure1960s to 1980sWhat it claimsStructure follows strategy: firms that diversify by product or geography outgrow the centralized functional structure and, after a lag and usually a crisis, adopt divisions. Chandler drew this from the histories of DuPont, General Motors, Standard Oil of New Jersey, and Sears.What it has shownChandler (1962) is comparative business history of four firms set against a wider survey. Rumelt (1974) related diversification and structure to performance, and Egelhoff (1988), with 34 multinationals, found some of Stopford and Wells's relationships supported and others not.Who disputes itInstitutional theory: in Fligstein's model divisions spread with a product-related or unrelated strategy, presidents from sales or finance, and other firms in the industry changing; strategy was one of three.Strategy and structure in The Schools of Organization DesignStructural contingency theory1960s to the presentWhat it claimsThere is no one best structure. Performance depends on fit between structure and contingencies such as environment, technology, size, and strategy, on an open-system view of the organization. Drazin and Van de Ven separate fit as selection, interaction, and systems.What it has shownBurns and Stalker, Woodward, and the Aston group related structure to context; Drazin and Van de Ven (1985) supported selection and systems fit only. Pennings (1975) found that fit did not explain effectiveness; Schoonhoven (1981) found traditional hypotheses unsupported.Who disputes itStrategic choice: Child argued that contingency theory explains structure by the constraints of context and leaves out the political process by which power-holders choose strategic action, structural forms included.Structural contingency theory in The Schools of Organization DesignThe French bureaucratic school (strategic analysis)1960s to 1980sWhat it claimsA bureaucracy is a system of power relations organized around zones of uncertainty. Impersonal rules and centralization protect members from depending on one another, those who control uncertainties hold power, and, unable to correct its errors, it changes only through crisis.What it has shownLe phénomène bureaucratique (1963; English 1964) rests on two case studies, a clerical agency and a state industrial monopoly. L'acteur et le système (1977; English 1980) is theoretical.Who disputes itSocietal effect and comparative business systems: D'Iribarne argues that national logics of conduct, such as a French logic of honor, explain differences that Crozier attributed to power games.The French bureaucratic school (strategic analysis) in The Schools of Organization DesignThe Japanese-firm literature1960s to the presentWhat it claimsThe large Japanese firm coordinates operating decisions through horizontal information sharing among semi-autonomous shops and uses its ranking hierarchy mainly as an incentive scheme (Aoki). It creates knowledge through middle-up-down management (Nonaka and Takeuchi).What it has shownAoki (1986) is a formal model. Lincoln, Hanada, and McBride (1986) compared 51 Japanese and 55 United States manufacturing plants, and Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995) rest on case studies, chiefly of Japanese firms. Fruin (1994) found the enterprise system defined at three levels.Who disputes itLabor process and critical theory reads shop-floor delegation as control: Sewell and Wilkinson argue that just-in-time and total quality regimes delegate tactical responsibility while centralizing strategic control.The Japanese-firm literature in The Schools of Organization DesignThe Scandinavian and Dutch socio-technical schools1960s to 2000sWhat it claimsThe Scandinavian program sought democracy at work through field experiments with semi-autonomous groups, then through democratic dialogue. The Dutch school's design theory turns complex organizations with simple jobs into simple organizations with complex jobs.What it has shownEmery and Thorsrud reported field experiments in Norwegian industry; Gustavsen (1992) records that they spread less than hoped, his reason for turning to dialogue. Berggren studied work organization in the Swedish auto industry. The Dutch work rests on design cases and argument.Who disputes itThe Japanese-firm literature: defenders of the Toyota system hold that standardized work with employee participation learns faster; Berggren reports Swedish long-cycle plants matching a line plant on productivity.The Scandinavian and Dutch socio-technical schools in The Schools of Organization DesignConfiguration theory1970s to the presentWhat it claimsStructures cluster into a small number of internally coherent configurations whose elements reinforce one another, so organizations move between a few types in large jumps, not small steps. Mintzberg's five configurations each rest on one coordinating mechanism.What it has shownDoty, Glick, and Huber (1993) found that fit to Miles and Snow's ideal types predicted effectiveness while fit to Mintzberg's did not. A meta-analysis of 40 tests (Ketchen and colleagues 1997) found that configuration partly explains performance, more so with broad definitions.Who disputes itStructural contingency theory: Donaldson counters that most organizations sit at intermediate points on a continuum of fits, not in a few configurations, and that studies over time find mostly incremental change.Configuration theory in The Schools of Organization DesignInformation processing1970s to the presentWhat it claimsThe more uncertain the task, the more information must be processed during its execution. An organization either reduces that need, through slack resources or self-contained tasks, or raises its capacity, through vertical information systems or lateral relations up to the matrix.What it has shownGalbraith (1973, 1974) built the framework from cases and from Simon's theory of bounded rationality, and Tushman and Nadler (1978) set it out as an integrating concept for design. Daft and Lengel (1986) argued that structure must reduce equivocality as well as supply data.Who disputes itThe Carnegie school and the attention-based view: Ocasio holds that firm behavior results from how the firm channels and distributes attention, so structure governs where attention goes, not only how much is processed.Information processing in The Schools of Organization DesignLabor process and critical theory1970s to the presentWhat it claimsStructure is above all a system of control over labor. Braverman argued that management deskills work by separating conception from execution; Edwards traced a sequence from simple control by the boss to technical control through machines to bureaucratic control through rules.What it has shownHistorical and theoretical (Braverman 1974; Edwards 1979). Delbridge (1995), observing a Japanese-owned plant in England, found that just-in-time and total quality regimes combined the control of labor with management's economic goals more completely than piece rates had.Who disputes itBureaucracy and its critics: Adler argues that labor process theory ignores the progressive socialization of the labor process, which drives long-term skill upgrading, and disputes deskilling as the trend.Labor process and critical theory in The Schools of Organization DesignStrategic choice1970s to the presentWhat it claimsStructure is the outcome of choices by those with power in the organization, who decide on strategic action, including the structural form, the manipulation of environmental features, and the performance standards to be met. Context constrains but does not determine structure.What it has shownLargely conceptual: Child (1972) built the argument from gaps in contingency findings, and the empirical case rests mostly on the modest share of structural variance contingencies explain. A 2026 review of 42 studies finds upper echelons theory their main theoretical anchor.Who disputes itStructural contingency theory: Donaldson replies that organizations mostly adopt the structures their contingencies dictate, to avoid the loss of performance misfit brings, so choice over structure is at most limited.Strategic choice in The Schools of Organization DesignThe German codetermination literature1970s to the presentWhat it claimsWorks councils and employee board seats form a structural layer through which coordination can become negotiation between management and employees. Defenders argue that it supports long-term employment, training, and cooperation; critics, that it weakens shareholder control.What it has shownJäger, Schoefer, and Heining (2021) found board-level codetermination left wages unchanged and, if anything, raised capital formation. Jirjahn (2011) reports studies pointing to positive works council effects; a meta-analysis found codetermination laws tied to lower productivity.Who disputes itOrganizational economics (Gorton and Schmid) found that firms with equal employee and shareholder representation did worse for their shareholders than firms with one-third employee representation.The German codetermination literature in The Schools of Organization DesignOrganizational economics: decision rights, authority, and complementarities1976 to the presentWhat it claimsDesign is the joint choice of who holds which decision rights, how performance is measured, and how it is rewarded. Rights should be placed where the specific knowledge lies, formal authority differs from real authority, and practices are complements that pay off in clusters.What it has shownIchniowski, Shaw, and Prennushi (1997) found, on 36 steel finishing lines, that lines using a set of innovative work practices achieved substantially higher productivity, consistent with complementarities. Bloom and colleagues found more decentralization where trust was higher.Who disputes itGhoshal argued that management research has shaped managers' worldview with ideologically inspired amoral theories, built on a scientific model that excludes human intentionality and so denies moral considerations.Organizational economics: decision rights, authority, and complementarities in The Schools of Organization DesignInstitutional theory1977 to the presentWhat it claimsFormal structures are often adopted because they are legitimate in the organization's field, as rationalized myths, and then decoupled from the work done. Organizations in a field grow alike through coercive, mimetic, and normative isomorphism, whether or not it is efficient.What it has shownTolbert and Zucker (1983) found that city characteristics predicted early but not later adoption of civil service reform, which they read as institutionalization. Palmer, Jennings, and Zhou (1993) found support for institutional and economic accounts of late M-form adoption.Who disputes itStructural contingency theory: Kraatz and Zajac found little support for neoinstitutional predictions in 631 liberal arts colleges, which grew less alike; the change they studied was curricular, not structural.Institutional theory in The Schools of Organization DesignPopulation ecology1977 to the presentWhat it claimsOrganizations face strong structural inertia, because selection favors the reliability and accountability of stable structures. Change in a population's forms comes mainly from founding and failure, not adaptation, and changing core features resets the liability of newness.What it has shownAmburgey, Kelly, and Barnett (1993) found that the effects of change on the hazard of failure vary by type of change and over time, and that rates of change depend on how often and how recently an organization has changed. Carroll and Hannan (2000) set out the program's methods.Who disputes itFor structural contingency theory, Donaldson argues that ecology understates managers' capacity to adapt structure.Population ecology in The Schools of Organization DesignResource dependence1978 to the presentWhat it claimsOrganizations depend on outside parties for critical resources, and structure follows the management of that dependence: units that cope with critical dependencies gain power, and boundaries are redrawn through cooptation, joint ventures, and mergers to absorb constraint.What it has shownPfeffer and Salancik (1978) assembled studies of boards, mergers, and joint ventures. A meta-analysis of 157 tests (Drees and Heugens 2013) corroborated the main prediction: organizations meet resource dependencies with interorganizational arrangements that raise their autonomy.Who disputes itTransaction cost economics and the M-form hypothesis explains boundaries by efficiency; resource dependence, by power and constraint.Resource dependence in The Schools of Organization DesignThe business-groups literature1978 to the presentWhat it claimsGroups of legally independent firms bound by ownership and social ties are a durable form of their own, neither one firm nor a market. Where institutions function poorly, groups can benefit member firms and can destroy value; they are sometimes paragons, sometimes parasites.What it has shownKhanna and Palepu (2000) found that affiliates of the most diversified Indian groups outperformed unaffiliated firms. A meta-analysis of 141 studies (Carney and colleagues 2011) found that affiliation lowers performance in general, less so where institutions are underdeveloped.Who disputes itOrganizational economics: agency writers read pyramids and cross-holdings as devices that separate control from ownership; Almeida and Wolfenzon offer a financing rationale for pyramids instead.The business-groups literature in The Schools of Organization DesignScandinavian institutionalism1980s to the presentWhat it claimsIdeas of organizing do not diffuse unchanged; they travel and are translated as they are adopted, so a form taken up in one place is not the same form elsewhere. Organizations can also be built of organizations (meta-organizations), which behave differently.What it has shownA discussion paper by Czarniawska and Joerges (1995) contrasts the diffusion of ideas with their translation, drawing on examples such as Swedish municipal reform; the work on meta-organizations (Ahrne and Brunsson 2008) is conceptual.Who disputes itInstitutional theory can read the same processes, seen from a translocal view, as institutional isomorphism, though translation holds that each adopter modifies an idea, so an institution re-created elsewhere is new.Scandinavian institutionalism in The Schools of Organization DesignSocietal effect and comparative business systems1980s to the presentWhat it claimsFirms matched on size, technology, and industry differ systematically by country, because how a society educates, trains, recruits, and promotes its workforce, and its industrial relations, shape how work is divided and supervised, so structure is partly a national product.What it has shownMaurice, Sorge, and Warner (1980) compared closely matched manufacturing units in France, West Germany, and Great Britain and found more pervasive differences in their organization than usually recognized. Whitley (1999) set out a comparative account of business systems.Who disputes itStructural contingency theory stresses culture-free elements of structure; matched comparisons find nationally different shapes of organization.Societal effect and comparative business systems in The Schools of Organization DesignThe network perspective on organizations1985 to the presentWhat it claimsOrganizations and their members are nodes joined by ties, and the pattern of ties shapes what they can do. Economic action is embedded in networks of personal relations (Granovetter 1985), and network forms are a distinct form, not a hybrid of market and hierarchy (Powell 1990).What it has shownPodolny and Page (1998) review the research and find that network forms foster learning, confer status and legitimacy, bring economic benefits, help manage resource dependencies, and give employees considerable autonomy, and they ask for attention to networks' dysfunctions.Who disputes itTransaction cost economics: Williamson treats the hybrid as a third generic form between market and hierarchy; for Powell, network forms are a distinct form, not a mix of the two.The network perspective on organizations in The Schools of Organization DesignComputational organization design and search1990s to the presentWhat it claimsDesign choices interact, so design space is a rugged landscape with many local peaks, and structure affects how well an organization searches it. Decentralizing interdependent decisions can trap units on poor peaks; temporary decentralization, then reintegration, can help.What it has shownMostly simulation, with one field test: Csaszar (2012), with more than 150,000 stock-picking decisions by 609 mutual funds, found that decision-making structure affects the number of initiatives pursued and the omission and commission errors made.Who disputes itNo school in the record disputes it head on; it disputes structural contingency theory, whose bivariate fit, its simulations show, cannot capture how the best design depends on interactions among choices.Computational organization design and search in The Schools of Organization DesignThe new-forms debate1990s to the presentWhat it claimsOrganizations must solve four universal problems (dividing tasks, allocating them, providing rewards, and providing information), and a form is new when it solves them in new ways. Self-managing organizations radically decentralize authority; skeptics hold hierarchy reappears.What it has shownFoss (2003) traced the rise and partial reversal of Oticon's spaghetti organization to the problem of selective intervention. A meta-analysis of 54 studies of 13,914 teams (Greer and colleagues 2018) found that hierarchy within teams on net slightly lowers team performance.Who disputes itBureaucracy and its critics: removing formal structure leaves informal elites whose power is unaccountable (Freeman), and democratic and network organizations are much less hierarchy-free than their labels suggest.The new-forms debate in The Schools of Organization DesignThe algorithmic-management literature2015 to the presentWhat it claimsSoftware does much of the directing, evaluating, and disciplining that managers and rules once did. Kellogg, Valentine, and Christin (2020) call algorithmic control a new contested terrain; Puranam (2021) treats dividing decisions between people and machines as a design problem.What it has shownMostly qualitative field studies of gig work. Wood and colleagues (2019), with 107 interviews in six countries and 679 survey respondents, found that algorithmic management tends to give remote gig workers flexibility and autonomy, but also low pay, isolation, and overwork.Who disputes itLabor process and critical theory reads control at work as contested terrain; Kellogg, Valentine, and Christin take up that view but argue that algorithmic control is distinct from earlier forms.The algorithmic-management literature in The Schools of Organization DesignFunctional structureOrigin: 1911 to 1937.Family: Classical hierarchies.Line and staffOrigin: 1916 to 1943.Family: Classical hierarchies.Multidivisional (M-form) by productOrigin: 1920s practice; named and analyzed 1962 to 1975.Family: Divisionalized forms.Machine bureaucracyOrigin: 1922 (Weber); 1979 (Mintzberg).Family: Classical hierarchies.Divisional by customer or market segmentOrigin: 1937; 2005.Family: Divisionalized forms.Matrix organizationOrigin: 1950s to 1960s practice; analyzed 1971 to 1977.Family: Lateral and multidimensional forms.Co-determined organizationOrigin: 1951 to 1976 (the laws); 1984 to 2022 (the main studies).Family: Forms from other traditions.Socio-technical autonomous work groupsOrigin: 1951 to 1965.Family: Team-based and self-managing forms.Stratified hierarchy (requisite organization)Origin: 1951 to 1989.Family: Classical hierarchies.Cooperative organizationOrigin: 1958 to 1999.Family: Forms from other traditions.Linking-pin organization (System 4)Origin: 1961 to 1967.Family: Team-based and self-managing forms.Divisional by regionOrigin: 1962 to 1972.Family: Divisionalized forms.Adhocracy (innovative organization)Origin: 1968 to 1979.Family: Professional, project, and knowledge forms.J-form (the Japanese firm)Origin: 1968 to 1990.Family: Forms from other traditions.Professional bureaucracyOrigin: 1968 to 1979.Family: Professional, project, and knowledge forms.Holding company (H-form)Origin: 1972 to 1975; 1987.Family: Divisionalized forms.Ambidextrous organizationOrigin: 1976 to 2004.Family: Professional, project, and knowledge forms.Simple structureOrigin: 1979.Family: Classical hierarchies.Hybrid structureOrigin: 1980 to the present.Family: Lateral and multidimensional forms.Missionary (ideological) organizationOrigin: 1980 to 1989.Family: Ideological forms.Network, modular, and virtual organizationOrigin: 1986 to 1990.Family: Network and market-like forms.Transnational and multidimensional organizationOrigin: 1987 to 1989.Family: Lateral and multidimensional forms.Business group (keiretsu, chaebol, family house)Origin: 1988 to 2007.Family: Forms from other traditions.Shamrock organizationOrigin: 1988 to 1989.Family: Network and market-like forms.Federal organizationOrigin: 1989 to 1992.Family: Network and market-like forms.Self-managing organization (less-hierarchical forms)Origin: 1989 to 2017.Family: Team-based and self-managing forms.Boundaryless organizationOrigin: 1990 to 1995.Family: Network and market-like forms.Front-back organizationOrigin: 1990s to 2007.Family: Lateral and multidimensional forms.Professional partnership (P2 form)Origin: 1990.Family: Professional, project, and knowledge forms.The corporate center and shared servicesOrigin: 1991 to 2000.Family: Divisionalized forms.Internal market organizationOrigin: 1993 to 1994.Family: Network and market-like forms.Process (horizontal) organizationOrigin: 1993 to 1999.Family: Lateral and multidimensional forms.Cellular organizationOrigin: 1994 to 1997.Family: Network and market-like forms.Hypertext organizationOrigin: 1994 to 1995.Family: Forms from other traditions.Team-based organizationOrigin: 1995.Family: Team-based and self-managing forms.Project-based organizationOrigin: 2000 to 2006.Family: Professional, project, and knowledge forms.Agile at scaleOrigin: 2001 to 2016.Family: Contemporary and emerging forms.Distributed (all-remote) organizationOrigin: 2002 to 2021.Family: Contemporary and emerging forms.Open-source and community-based organizationOrigin: 2002 to 2007.Family: Contemporary and emerging forms.Algorithmically managed organizationOrigin: 2015 to 2020.Family: Contemporary and emerging forms.Team of teamsOrigin: 2015.Family: Team-based and self-managing forms.

The schools by first year

Bureaucracy and its critics1900s to 1950s, revived from the 1990sWhat it claimsWeber held that rational-legal authority exercised through an office hierarchy, written rules, trained officials, and promotion by qualification is technically superior in precision, speed, and reliability. Critics studied its unintended consequences, Michels's iron law sharpest.What it has shownMerton (1940) argued, with no test, that rules can turn from means into ends; case studies followed. The Aston group concluded that the type's dimensions vary independently, and Wagner's meta-analysis (2021) found that many of their interrelationships have weakened.Who disputes itHuman relations and System 4 sets the costs of impersonal rules to motivation and cooperation against the technical superiority Weber stresses.
Classical administration1910s to 1940s, and in German to the 1970sWhat it claimsThere are general principles of administration, among them division of work, unity of command, a scalar chain of authority, and a limited span of control, and a structure built to them will be efficient in most settings. Taylor added that planners should set work methods.What it has shownThe school offered reasoning and experience, not tests. Woodward (1965) found that the spans and levels of the more successful firms in her sample differed by production system, and Simon (1946) showed that the principles come in pairs that point in opposite directions.Who disputes itStructural contingency theory found that the structure of successful firms varies with technology and environment, where classical writers treat their principles as general.
Human relations and System 41920s to 1960sWhat it claimsOutput depends on the social relations of work, the norms of informal groups, and the style of supervision as much as on formal design. Likert's System 4, overlapping work groups joined by linking-pin managers under participative management, outperforms authoritative systems.What it has shownThe founding evidence is the Hawthorne studies, which later reanalyses dispute (Carey 1967; Levitt and List 2011). Likert's support came largely from his own institute's surveys. Wagner (1994) found participation's effects on performance and satisfaction significant but small.Who disputes itLabor process and critical theory reads human relations as a technique of managerial control rather than a change in the distribution of power.
Transaction cost economics and the M-form hypothesis1937, then the 1970s to the presentWhat it claimsFirms exist, and are organized as they are, to economize on transaction costs. Hierarchy replaces the market when assets are specific, uncertainty is high, and exchange is frequent, and the multidivisional form should outperform the functional form in large, diversified firms.What it has shownArmour and Teece (1978) found, in United States petroleum firms from 1955 to 1973, a positive relationship between the multidivisional form and profitability while the form was spreading, but not once an equilibrium in organizational form was reached.Who disputes itThe network perspective on organizations: Granovetter argued that the theory undersocializes economic action, which is embedded in networks of personal relations that also produce trust and order.
The Carnegie school and the attention-based view1940s to the presentWhat it claimsPeople in organizations are boundedly rational, so structure matters because it sets the premises of their decisions and channels their attention: who sees which problems, which goals they pursue, and which routines they follow. Ocasio makes structure distribute attention.What it has shownMarch and Simon (1958) drew propositions from the existing literature, and Cyert and March (1963) added process models and simulations. Two studies show hierarchy shaping what is sent up as well as what is chosen (Reitzig and Maciejovsky 2015; Keum and See 2017).Who disputes itOrganizational economics: decision rights, authority, and complementarities models a principal and agents with defined objectives; the Carnegie school, firms as coalitions with unresolved goal conflict.
Socio-technical systems1950s to 1980sWhat it claimsAn organization is a social system and a technical system that must be designed together. The same technology admits more than one way of organizing work, and groups that own a whole task and control its variances at the source perform better and are more satisfied.What it has shownTrist and Bamforth (1951) found that longwall mechanization broke up self-regulating work groups. A review of 134 experiments found them extremely successful overall, and Stewart (2006) linked team autonomy to performance; studies of socialist brigades and Volkswagen qualify it.Who disputes itLabor process and critical theory: Kelly argued that labor intensification, not joint optimization, accounts for what socio-technical redesign achieved, and that the part of pay incentives was seriously underestimated.
The economics of the labor-managed firm and of enterprise ownership1958 to the presentWhat it claimsA firm run by its workers behaves differently from one run for investors: Ward modeled the Yugoslav-style firm as maximizing income per worker. Hansmann argued that an ownership form's success depends on the balance between the costs of market contracting and of ownership.What it has shownBurdín (2014) found a 29 percent lower hazard of dissolution for Uruguayan worker-managed firms than for conventional ones, and Fakhfakh, Pérotin, and Gago (2012) found French labor-managed firms as productive or more so in every industry studied.Who disputes itOrganizational economics (Jensen and Meckling) contrasts the labor-managed firm, in which tradable residual claims are legally prohibited, with cooperatives and partnerships that arise out of voluntary contracting.
Modularity and the mirroring hypothesis1960s to the presentWhat it claimsComplex systems are built of nearly decomposable parts, and an organization's structure tends to mirror the architecture of what it makes: modular products allow loosely coupled organizations, and tightly coupled products need tightly coupled teams. Conway's law runs in reverse.What it has shownColfer and Baldwin (2016) review the empirical studies and report both support and principled exceptions. Direct tests point both ways: MacCormack, Baldwin, and Rusnak (2012) found open source products more modular than their commercial pairs; dynamic components break the mirror.Who disputes itNo school in the record disputes it head on; it answers information processing, which meets the coordination load inside the organization; mirroring writers locate it in the product's architecture.
Strategy and structure1960s to 1980sWhat it claimsStructure follows strategy: firms that diversify by product or geography outgrow the centralized functional structure and, after a lag and usually a crisis, adopt divisions. Chandler drew this from the histories of DuPont, General Motors, Standard Oil of New Jersey, and Sears.What it has shownChandler (1962) is comparative business history of four firms set against a wider survey. Rumelt (1974) related diversification and structure to performance, and Egelhoff (1988), with 34 multinationals, found some of Stopford and Wells's relationships supported and others not.Who disputes itInstitutional theory: in Fligstein's model divisions spread with a product-related or unrelated strategy, presidents from sales or finance, and other firms in the industry changing; strategy was one of three.
Structural contingency theory1960s to the presentWhat it claimsThere is no one best structure. Performance depends on fit between structure and contingencies such as environment, technology, size, and strategy, on an open-system view of the organization. Drazin and Van de Ven separate fit as selection, interaction, and systems.What it has shownBurns and Stalker, Woodward, and the Aston group related structure to context; Drazin and Van de Ven (1985) supported selection and systems fit only. Pennings (1975) found that fit did not explain effectiveness; Schoonhoven (1981) found traditional hypotheses unsupported.Who disputes itStrategic choice: Child argued that contingency theory explains structure by the constraints of context and leaves out the political process by which power-holders choose strategic action, structural forms included.
The French bureaucratic school (strategic analysis)1960s to 1980sWhat it claimsA bureaucracy is a system of power relations organized around zones of uncertainty. Impersonal rules and centralization protect members from depending on one another, those who control uncertainties hold power, and, unable to correct its errors, it changes only through crisis.What it has shownLe phénomène bureaucratique (1963; English 1964) rests on two case studies, a clerical agency and a state industrial monopoly. L'acteur et le système (1977; English 1980) is theoretical.Who disputes itSocietal effect and comparative business systems: D'Iribarne argues that national logics of conduct, such as a French logic of honor, explain differences that Crozier attributed to power games.
The Japanese-firm literature1960s to the presentWhat it claimsThe large Japanese firm coordinates operating decisions through horizontal information sharing among semi-autonomous shops and uses its ranking hierarchy mainly as an incentive scheme (Aoki). It creates knowledge through middle-up-down management (Nonaka and Takeuchi).What it has shownAoki (1986) is a formal model. Lincoln, Hanada, and McBride (1986) compared 51 Japanese and 55 United States manufacturing plants, and Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995) rest on case studies, chiefly of Japanese firms. Fruin (1994) found the enterprise system defined at three levels.Who disputes itLabor process and critical theory reads shop-floor delegation as control: Sewell and Wilkinson argue that just-in-time and total quality regimes delegate tactical responsibility while centralizing strategic control.
The Scandinavian and Dutch socio-technical schools1960s to 2000sWhat it claimsThe Scandinavian program sought democracy at work through field experiments with semi-autonomous groups, then through democratic dialogue. The Dutch school's design theory turns complex organizations with simple jobs into simple organizations with complex jobs.What it has shownEmery and Thorsrud reported field experiments in Norwegian industry; Gustavsen (1992) records that they spread less than hoped, his reason for turning to dialogue. Berggren studied work organization in the Swedish auto industry. The Dutch work rests on design cases and argument.Who disputes itThe Japanese-firm literature: defenders of the Toyota system hold that standardized work with employee participation learns faster; Berggren reports Swedish long-cycle plants matching a line plant on productivity.
Configuration theory1970s to the presentWhat it claimsStructures cluster into a small number of internally coherent configurations whose elements reinforce one another, so organizations move between a few types in large jumps, not small steps. Mintzberg's five configurations each rest on one coordinating mechanism.What it has shownDoty, Glick, and Huber (1993) found that fit to Miles and Snow's ideal types predicted effectiveness while fit to Mintzberg's did not. A meta-analysis of 40 tests (Ketchen and colleagues 1997) found that configuration partly explains performance, more so with broad definitions.Who disputes itStructural contingency theory: Donaldson counters that most organizations sit at intermediate points on a continuum of fits, not in a few configurations, and that studies over time find mostly incremental change.
Information processing1970s to the presentWhat it claimsThe more uncertain the task, the more information must be processed during its execution. An organization either reduces that need, through slack resources or self-contained tasks, or raises its capacity, through vertical information systems or lateral relations up to the matrix.What it has shownGalbraith (1973, 1974) built the framework from cases and from Simon's theory of bounded rationality, and Tushman and Nadler (1978) set it out as an integrating concept for design. Daft and Lengel (1986) argued that structure must reduce equivocality as well as supply data.Who disputes itThe Carnegie school and the attention-based view: Ocasio holds that firm behavior results from how the firm channels and distributes attention, so structure governs where attention goes, not only how much is processed.
Labor process and critical theory1970s to the presentWhat it claimsStructure is above all a system of control over labor. Braverman argued that management deskills work by separating conception from execution; Edwards traced a sequence from simple control by the boss to technical control through machines to bureaucratic control through rules.What it has shownHistorical and theoretical (Braverman 1974; Edwards 1979). Delbridge (1995), observing a Japanese-owned plant in England, found that just-in-time and total quality regimes combined the control of labor with management's economic goals more completely than piece rates had.Who disputes itBureaucracy and its critics: Adler argues that labor process theory ignores the progressive socialization of the labor process, which drives long-term skill upgrading, and disputes deskilling as the trend.
Strategic choice1970s to the presentWhat it claimsStructure is the outcome of choices by those with power in the organization, who decide on strategic action, including the structural form, the manipulation of environmental features, and the performance standards to be met. Context constrains but does not determine structure.What it has shownLargely conceptual: Child (1972) built the argument from gaps in contingency findings, and the empirical case rests mostly on the modest share of structural variance contingencies explain. A 2026 review of 42 studies finds upper echelons theory their main theoretical anchor.Who disputes itStructural contingency theory: Donaldson replies that organizations mostly adopt the structures their contingencies dictate, to avoid the loss of performance misfit brings, so choice over structure is at most limited.
The German codetermination literature1970s to the presentWhat it claimsWorks councils and employee board seats form a structural layer through which coordination can become negotiation between management and employees. Defenders argue that it supports long-term employment, training, and cooperation; critics, that it weakens shareholder control.What it has shownJäger, Schoefer, and Heining (2021) found board-level codetermination left wages unchanged and, if anything, raised capital formation. Jirjahn (2011) reports studies pointing to positive works council effects; a meta-analysis found codetermination laws tied to lower productivity.Who disputes itOrganizational economics (Gorton and Schmid) found that firms with equal employee and shareholder representation did worse for their shareholders than firms with one-third employee representation.
Organizational economics: decision rights, authority, and complementarities1976 to the presentWhat it claimsDesign is the joint choice of who holds which decision rights, how performance is measured, and how it is rewarded. Rights should be placed where the specific knowledge lies, formal authority differs from real authority, and practices are complements that pay off in clusters.What it has shownIchniowski, Shaw, and Prennushi (1997) found, on 36 steel finishing lines, that lines using a set of innovative work practices achieved substantially higher productivity, consistent with complementarities. Bloom and colleagues found more decentralization where trust was higher.Who disputes itGhoshal argued that management research has shaped managers' worldview with ideologically inspired amoral theories, built on a scientific model that excludes human intentionality and so denies moral considerations.
Institutional theory1977 to the presentWhat it claimsFormal structures are often adopted because they are legitimate in the organization's field, as rationalized myths, and then decoupled from the work done. Organizations in a field grow alike through coercive, mimetic, and normative isomorphism, whether or not it is efficient.What it has shownTolbert and Zucker (1983) found that city characteristics predicted early but not later adoption of civil service reform, which they read as institutionalization. Palmer, Jennings, and Zhou (1993) found support for institutional and economic accounts of late M-form adoption.Who disputes itStructural contingency theory: Kraatz and Zajac found little support for neoinstitutional predictions in 631 liberal arts colleges, which grew less alike; the change they studied was curricular, not structural.
Population ecology1977 to the presentWhat it claimsOrganizations face strong structural inertia, because selection favors the reliability and accountability of stable structures. Change in a population's forms comes mainly from founding and failure, not adaptation, and changing core features resets the liability of newness.What it has shownAmburgey, Kelly, and Barnett (1993) found that the effects of change on the hazard of failure vary by type of change and over time, and that rates of change depend on how often and how recently an organization has changed. Carroll and Hannan (2000) set out the program's methods.Who disputes itFor structural contingency theory, Donaldson argues that ecology understates managers' capacity to adapt structure.
Resource dependence1978 to the presentWhat it claimsOrganizations depend on outside parties for critical resources, and structure follows the management of that dependence: units that cope with critical dependencies gain power, and boundaries are redrawn through cooptation, joint ventures, and mergers to absorb constraint.What it has shownPfeffer and Salancik (1978) assembled studies of boards, mergers, and joint ventures. A meta-analysis of 157 tests (Drees and Heugens 2013) corroborated the main prediction: organizations meet resource dependencies with interorganizational arrangements that raise their autonomy.Who disputes itTransaction cost economics and the M-form hypothesis explains boundaries by efficiency; resource dependence, by power and constraint.
The business-groups literature1978 to the presentWhat it claimsGroups of legally independent firms bound by ownership and social ties are a durable form of their own, neither one firm nor a market. Where institutions function poorly, groups can benefit member firms and can destroy value; they are sometimes paragons, sometimes parasites.What it has shownKhanna and Palepu (2000) found that affiliates of the most diversified Indian groups outperformed unaffiliated firms. A meta-analysis of 141 studies (Carney and colleagues 2011) found that affiliation lowers performance in general, less so where institutions are underdeveloped.Who disputes itOrganizational economics: agency writers read pyramids and cross-holdings as devices that separate control from ownership; Almeida and Wolfenzon offer a financing rationale for pyramids instead.
Scandinavian institutionalism1980s to the presentWhat it claimsIdeas of organizing do not diffuse unchanged; they travel and are translated as they are adopted, so a form taken up in one place is not the same form elsewhere. Organizations can also be built of organizations (meta-organizations), which behave differently.What it has shownA discussion paper by Czarniawska and Joerges (1995) contrasts the diffusion of ideas with their translation, drawing on examples such as Swedish municipal reform; the work on meta-organizations (Ahrne and Brunsson 2008) is conceptual.Who disputes itInstitutional theory can read the same processes, seen from a translocal view, as institutional isomorphism, though translation holds that each adopter modifies an idea, so an institution re-created elsewhere is new.
Societal effect and comparative business systems1980s to the presentWhat it claimsFirms matched on size, technology, and industry differ systematically by country, because how a society educates, trains, recruits, and promotes its workforce, and its industrial relations, shape how work is divided and supervised, so structure is partly a national product.What it has shownMaurice, Sorge, and Warner (1980) compared closely matched manufacturing units in France, West Germany, and Great Britain and found more pervasive differences in their organization than usually recognized. Whitley (1999) set out a comparative account of business systems.Who disputes itStructural contingency theory stresses culture-free elements of structure; matched comparisons find nationally different shapes of organization.
The network perspective on organizations1985 to the presentWhat it claimsOrganizations and their members are nodes joined by ties, and the pattern of ties shapes what they can do. Economic action is embedded in networks of personal relations (Granovetter 1985), and network forms are a distinct form, not a hybrid of market and hierarchy (Powell 1990).What it has shownPodolny and Page (1998) review the research and find that network forms foster learning, confer status and legitimacy, bring economic benefits, help manage resource dependencies, and give employees considerable autonomy, and they ask for attention to networks' dysfunctions.Who disputes itTransaction cost economics: Williamson treats the hybrid as a third generic form between market and hierarchy; for Powell, network forms are a distinct form, not a mix of the two.
Computational organization design and search1990s to the presentWhat it claimsDesign choices interact, so design space is a rugged landscape with many local peaks, and structure affects how well an organization searches it. Decentralizing interdependent decisions can trap units on poor peaks; temporary decentralization, then reintegration, can help.What it has shownMostly simulation, with one field test: Csaszar (2012), with more than 150,000 stock-picking decisions by 609 mutual funds, found that decision-making structure affects the number of initiatives pursued and the omission and commission errors made.Who disputes itNo school in the record disputes it head on; it disputes structural contingency theory, whose bivariate fit, its simulations show, cannot capture how the best design depends on interactions among choices.
The new-forms debate1990s to the presentWhat it claimsOrganizations must solve four universal problems (dividing tasks, allocating them, providing rewards, and providing information), and a form is new when it solves them in new ways. Self-managing organizations radically decentralize authority; skeptics hold hierarchy reappears.What it has shownFoss (2003) traced the rise and partial reversal of Oticon's spaghetti organization to the problem of selective intervention. A meta-analysis of 54 studies of 13,914 teams (Greer and colleagues 2018) found that hierarchy within teams on net slightly lowers team performance.Who disputes itBureaucracy and its critics: removing formal structure leaves informal elites whose power is unaccountable (Freeman), and democratic and network organizations are much less hierarchy-free than their labels suggest.
The algorithmic-management literature2015 to the presentWhat it claimsSoftware does much of the directing, evaluating, and disciplining that managers and rules once did. Kellogg, Valentine, and Christin (2020) call algorithmic control a new contested terrain; Puranam (2021) treats dividing decisions between people and machines as a design problem.What it has shownMostly qualitative field studies of gig work. Wood and colleagues (2019), with 107 interviews in six countries and 679 survey respondents, found that algorithmic management tends to give remote gig workers flexibility and autonomy, but also low pay, isolation, and overwork.Who disputes itLabor process and critical theory reads control at work as contested terrain; Kellogg, Valentine, and Christin take up that view but argue that algorithmic control is distinct from earlier forms.

The forms by first year

Functional structure: 1911 to 1937
Line and staff: 1916 to 1943
Multidivisional (M-form) by product: 1920s practice; named and analyzed 1962 to 1975
Machine bureaucracy: 1922 (Weber); 1979 (Mintzberg)
Divisional by customer or market segment: 1937; 2005
Matrix organization: 1950s to 1960s practice; analyzed 1971 to 1977
Co-determined organization: 1951 to 1976 (the laws); 1984 to 2022 (the main studies)
Socio-technical autonomous work groups: 1951 to 1965
Stratified hierarchy (requisite organization): 1951 to 1989
Cooperative organization: 1958 to 1999
Linking-pin organization (System 4): 1961 to 1967
Divisional by region: 1962 to 1972
Adhocracy (innovative organization): 1968 to 1979
J-form (the Japanese firm): 1968 to 1990
Professional bureaucracy: 1968 to 1979
Holding company (H-form): 1972 to 1975; 1987
Ambidextrous organization: 1976 to 2004
Simple structure: 1979
Hybrid structure: 1980 to the present
Missionary (ideological) organization: 1980 to 1989
Network, modular, and virtual organization: 1986 to 1990
Transnational and multidimensional organization: 1987 to 1989
Business group (keiretsu, chaebol, family house): 1988 to 2007
Shamrock organization: 1988 to 1989
Federal organization: 1989 to 1992
Self-managing organization (less-hierarchical forms): 1989 to 2017
Boundaryless organization: 1990 to 1995
Front-back organization: 1990s to 2007
Professional partnership (P2 form): 1990
The corporate center and shared services: 1991 to 2000
Internal market organization: 1993 to 1994
Process (horizontal) organization: 1993 to 1999
Cellular organization: 1994 to 1997
Hypertext organization: 1994 to 1995
Team-based organization: 1995
Project-based organization: 2000 to 2006
Agile at scale: 2001 to 2016
Distributed (all-remote) organization: 2002 to 2021
Open-source and community-based organization: 2002 to 2007
Algorithmically managed organization: 2015 to 2020
Team of teams: 2015

Twenty-three of the 29 schools run to the present, and 16 of those began in the 1970s or later. The forms arrive in waves: 14 of the 41 first appear between 1985 and 1994.

Source: Fayol 1949; Weber 1978; Mayo 1933; Trist and Bamforth 1951, an interview-based field study in one industry; Burns and Stalker 1961, a field study of twenty firms; Mintzberg 1979; Child 1972a; Coase 1937; Meyer and Rowan 1977; Hannan and Freeman 1977; Galbraith 1973; Jensen and Meckling 1976; Crozier 1963; Emery and Thorsrud 1969; Yoshino 1968; Streeck 1984a; Kellogg and colleagues 2020, a review of earlier research through one theoretical lens, with no new data; Puranam and colleagues 2014, a conceptual argument; Chandler 1962, several independent case histories by a historian; Pfeffer and Salancik 1978; Simon 1946; Maurice and colleagues 1980, a comparison of matched factories in three countries; Levinthal 1997; Simon 1962; Braverman 1974; Hamilton and Biggart 1988, a comparison of three economies by scholars; Ward 1958; Czarniawska and Joerges 1995; Granovetter 1985.

Before Benkler, Eric Raymond's "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" (1998), a practitioner's report on his own project, set the bazaar model of Linux against the cathedral model of commercial development. Josh Lerner and Jean Tirole (2002), in a preliminary exploration, explained open source projects' features with labor economics, especially career concerns.

Sector of origin: software, then encyclopedias and other knowledge goods.

Where it fits

One cell, interdependence, rests on evidence. The other eleven rest on our judgment, because no study sets their fits or strains for the form. Three are contested, and the explorer counts them only where their views agree.

The open-source and community-based organization against the twelve contingency factors

Each factor at its three levels, Fits, Partial, or Strain; select a row for its reason, sources, and grade.

Select a factor to read its reason, sources, basis, and grade.Size. Communities of thousands of contributors use the form, and across 683 wikis oligarchy increased as the contributor base grew, so at large size the earned, open authority the form relies on tends to concentrate. Basis: Judgment. Sources: Lee and Cole 2003; Aaltonen and Lanzara 2015; O'Mahony and Ferraro 2007; Shaw and Hill 2014.Age. Young and mature projects both run on earned authority, and in one mature project people gained lateral authority, with coordination work mattering more at the later stage of their progression. Basis: Judgment. Sources: Dahlander and O'Mahony 2011; O'Mahony and Ferraro 2007; Davis and colleagues 2009. View 1: Young fits, Established fits, Old fits. Young and mature projects both run on earned authority, and in one mature project people gained lateral authority, with coordination work mattering more at the later stage of their progression. Sources: Dahlander and O'Mahony 2011; O'Mahony and Ferraro 2007. View 2: Young partial, Established fits, Old fits. A simulation found that entrepreneurial organizations should quickly add structure in all environments, so a young community that keeps its authority informal is not by that alone in fit; reading new projects as entrepreneurial organizations is our reading. Sources: Davis and colleagues 2009.Environmental uncertainty (unpredictability, dynamism). Works disagree: modular code and open participation let many contributors respond to change, while a simulation of structure and market dynamism finds that rising unpredictability narrows the range of structures that work and that too little structure costs more than too much. Basis: Judgment. Sources: Lee and Cole 2003; Colfer and Baldwin 2016; Davis and colleagues 2009. View 1: Stable fits, Shifting fits, Unpredictable fits. Modular code and open participation let many contributors respond to change; no work tests the form against unpredictability, so the levels are our judgment from the evolutionary-learning premise. Sources: Lee and Cole 2003; Colfer and Baldwin 2016. View 2: Stable fits, Shifting fits, Unpredictable partial. In a simulation, increasing unpredictability lowered the optimal amount of structure but narrowed the range of effective strategies, and it was better to err on the side of too much structure, so a form with little designed structure is not assured of fitting where change is least predictable. Sources: Davis and colleagues 2009.Environmental complexity. Modular code and earned governance coordinate contributors whatever the environment; nothing read ties the form to complexity. Basis: Judgment. Sources: MacCormack and colleagues 2012.Munificence and hostility. Volunteer and firm-paid contributors keep a shared artifact going whatever the market does; nothing read ties the form to munificence. Basis: Judgment. Sources: Shah 2006.Diversity of products and markets. A community forms around one shared artifact, and one foundation can host many projects under common governance; nothing read speaks to unrelated businesses, so whether hosting is related diversification is our judgment. Basis: Judgment. Sources: O'Mahony and Ferraro 2007; Chakraborti and colleagues 2024.Strategy type. Burton and Obel name low centralization a misfit for a defender, and a community's decisions are spread among its contributors; communities build shared artifacts both by imitating established products and by creating new ones, so no work read ties the form to the analyzer or the prospector. Basis: Judgment. Sources: Benkler 2006; Puranam and colleagues 2014; Burton and Obel 2004.Technology and routineness. Contributors choose their own tasks within modular code, and nothing read ties the form's fit to how routine the work is. Basis: Judgment. Sources: Benkler 2002; Puranam and colleagues 2014.Interdependence. Studies of open collaborative projects did not support the mirroring hypothesis, while one matched comparison found loosely coupled communities built far more modular products than tightly coupled firms. Basis: Evidence. Grade: several independent quantitative studies or a meta-analysis. Sources: Colfer and Baldwin 2016; MacCormack and colleagues 2012; Puranam and colleagues 2014. View 1: Pooled fits, Sequential fits, Reciprocal fits. Open collaborative projects did not show the mirroring the hypothesis predicts, and the review argues that digital technologies make possible new modes of coordination that let groups deviate from it, so coupled work does not keep a community from doing it. Sources: Colfer and Baldwin 2016. View 2: Pooled fits, Sequential partial, Reciprocal strain. Loosely coupled communities built products more modular than tightly coupled organizations did, by up to a factor of six in the potential for a design change in one component to propagate to others, so the form goes with decomposable work. Sources: MacCormack and colleagues 2012; Puranam and colleagues 2014.Knowledge intensity and professionalization. Contributors are often skilled programmers, but much of that skill is self-taught, and no work read ties the form to outside professional training. Basis: Judgment. Sources: Benkler 2002; Shah 2006.Global integration pressure. Contributors work across many countries, but no work read sets the open source community against integration pressure across countries. Basis: Judgment. Sources: Benkler 2002.Local responsiveness pressure. No work read ties the open source community to local responsiveness across countries, so this factor gives no reason for or against. Basis: Judgment. Sources: Benkler 2002.

Counting the three contested cells, age, environmental uncertainty, and interdependence, by their first views, the 36 settings read Fits at 12, Partial at 23, and Strain at 1, the one strain a defender strategy. Eleven of the twelve cells rest on judgment.

Source: Lee and Cole 2003, one case study; Aaltonen and Lanzara 2015, one case used to build theory; O'Mahony and Ferraro 2007, one case study; Shaw and Hill 2014, a quantitative study of 683 wikis; Dahlander and O'Mahony 2011, a longitudinal study of one project; Davis and colleagues 2009, a computer simulation, with no field data; Colfer and Baldwin 2016, a review of 142 empirical studies; MacCormack and colleagues 2012, a matched comparison of five pairs of software products; Shah 2006, a qualitative study of two communities; Chakraborti and colleagues 2024, a quantitative study of 208 projects in one foundation; Benkler 2006; Puranam and colleagues 2014, a conceptual argument; Burton and Obel 2004; Benkler 2002.

Your own situation against the open-source and community-based organization

Set any factor to outline its cell in the strip above; the lines under the switches give the counts, the form's place among the 41, and the misfit rules that fire.

Size

Age

Environmental uncertainty (unpredictability, dynamism)

Environmental complexity

Munificence and hostility

Diversity of products and markets

Strategy type

Technology and routineness

Interdependence

Knowledge intensity and professionalization

Global integration pressure

Local responsiveness pressure

Set: 0 of 12 factors. Fits on 0, Partial on 0, Strain on 0, Contested on 0.

Its place in the explorer's rankingEvery factor is on Any: all 41 forms tie, and the explorer lists them alphabetically.1st of 411st of 41, tied with one other1st of 41, tied with 0 othersSunk by a misfit rule: 1st of 41Sunk by a misfit rule: 1st of 41, tied with one otherSunk by a misfit rule: 1st of 41, tied with 0 others

Flagged (its sources disagree): A defender with authority spread wide. Disputed: Burton and Obel 2004; against it, Mintzberg 1980.
Sinks the form: An analyzer with authority spread wide. Source: Burton and Obel 2004.

Ranking rule: by count of Fits on the factors the reader has set, then fewest Strains, then alphabetical; a fired misfit rule that no source disputes sinks the form to the bottom when every level of the form's profile meets it, a disputed one, or one that meets the form only through one end of a spanned level, one view of a contested profile cell, or one part of a two-part form, is flagged on the row (with both views where it is disputed), and a misfit between two of the reader's own settings is shown once above the list; a contested cell counts only where its views agree at the reader's level, and otherwise shows as Contested; factors on "Any" count for nothing; with every factor on "Any" the list is alphabetical and says so.

Open these settings in the explorer

The misfit rules that can fire for this form

A defender with authority spread wide fires when Strategy type at Defender (exploitation): flagged (its sources disagree). Disputed: Burton and Obel 2004; against it, Mintzberg 1980.
An analyzer with authority spread wide fires when Strategy type at Analyzer (exploitation and exploration): sinks the form. Source: Burton and Obel 2004.

Only two of the 39 contingency misfit rules can fire here, both against authority spread wide. The analyzer rule is undisputed and meets the form's decentralized authority in full, so it would sink the form; the defender rule is disputed, so it would only flag it.

Source: Burton and Obel 2004; Burton and colleagues 2020a.

Size. Our judgment: fits small and medium, partial for large. Thousands of volunteers built the Linux kernel (Lee and Cole 2003, one case study), but Wikipedia's governance evolved with growth (Aaltonen and Lanzara 2015, one case used to build theory), and oligarchy increased with the contributor base (Shaw and Hill 2014, a quantitative study of 683 wikis). O'Mahony and Ferraro tie their community's move toward formal authority to time and to members' changing conceptions of authority, and do not speak to size.
Age. Our judgment, contested. One view: fits at every age, on the premise that young and mature projects both run on earned authority, though neither premise compares young projects: Dahlander and O'Mahony followed one mature project, O'Mahony and Ferraro one community. The other, on Davis, Eisenhardt, and Bingham (2009), a computer simulation with no field data: partial when young, since entrepreneurial organizations should quickly add structure in all environments; treating new communities as entrepreneurial is our reading. They agree at established and old.
Environmental uncertainty. Our judgment, contested. One view: fits at every level, since modular code and open participation let many contributors respond to change (premises: Lee and Cole; Colfer and Baldwin 2016, a review of 142 empirical studies). The other, our reading of Davis and colleagues, who simulate firms, not communities: partial at unpredictable, since rising unpredictability lowered the optimal amount of structure but narrowed the range of effective strategies, and erring toward too much structure was better. At stable and shifting they agree.
Diversity. Our judgment: fits a single or dominant business, partial related and unrelated diversification. Neither premise speaks to diversification: O'Mahony and Ferraro studied one community, and Chakraborti and colleagues one foundation governing many projects; that such hosting is related diversification is our reading, and nothing read speaks to unrelated ones.
Interdependence. Evidence, contested. Colfer and Baldwin: open collaborative projects did not show the predicted mirroring, and digital technologies make possible new modes of coordination, so fits at every level. MacCormack, Baldwin, and Rusnak (2012), a matched comparison of five pairs of software products: in every pair the community's product was significantly more modular, by up to a factor of six (eight in the working paper) in how far a design change can propagate. Puranam, Alexy, and Reitzig (2014), a conceptual argument, add that a fine-grained, visible division of tasks lets contributors select tasks. On this view the form goes with decomposable work: fits pooled, partial sequential, strain reciprocal. They agree at pooled.
Strategy. Our judgment: strain for a defender, partial for an analyzer and a prospector. Burton and Obel (2004), the most developed scholarly fit model, name low centralization a misfit for a defender, and a community spreads decisions among its contributors; communities both imitate established products and create new ones (premises: Benkler; Puranam and colleagues). A misfit rule sinks the form under an analyzer and a contested one flags it under a defender (How it fails).
Complexity, munificence, technology, knowledge intensity, global integration, and local responsiveness. Our judgment: partial throughout, the neutral value; no work read ties the form to them. The cells' premises are MacCormack and colleagues (complexity), Shah (munificence, knowledge intensity), Benkler (technology, knowledge intensity, and both international factors), and Puranam and colleagues (technology).

What it does well

People who share no employer build one product of high quality, as in the Linux kernel (Lee and Cole 2003). Demil and Lecocq (2006), a conceptual argument, hold that the open license can generate strong positive network externalities.

In the communities studied, the products came out modular. In all five matched pairs, a sample bounded by the few open source products of enough size, the community's product was significantly more modular (MacCormack and colleagues), and the hobbyists who stayed kept the code simple and modular (Shah 2006, a qualitative study of two communities).

The form builds its own governance. License disputes were more likely resolved in larger discussion groups (He, Puranam, Shrestha, and von Krogh 2020, a study of many GitHub communities). Projects and firms with divergent interests found convergent ones through boundary organizations (O'Mahony and Bechky 2008, a field study of four projects).

What it costs

The organization's low control over its labor and weak incentive intensity make its transactions highly uncertain (Demil and Lecocq).

Earned authority is paid for in coordination: those who gained it spent significantly more time coordinating (Dahlander and O'Mahony).

Written policy reaches only so far. In the Apache Software Foundation Incubator, more formal policy on a topic did not bring more governance activity on it, though it predicted members' internalization of the policy (Chakraborti and colleagues).

How it fails

In parentheses, each Coordination Failures link is our judgment.

How the open-source and community-based organization fails, and the coordination failures behind it

The entry's failure modes at the left, each tied to the Coordination Failures patterns it names at the right; a pattern links its entry there.

Subsystem self-perpetuation Commons under-provision Veto deadlock Coordination overhead overrun

How many ties the failure has. Highest: A few come to hold the powerThe work rests on the few who stayDisputes over the rules stallCoupled work outruns loose coordinationSubsystem self-perpetuationCommons under-provisionVeto deadlockCoordination overhead overrun

Select a failure to read its place in the network.A few come to hold the power. Degree 1The work rests on the few who stay. Degree 1Disputes over the rules stall. Degree 1Coupled work outruns loose coordination. Degree 1Subsystem self-perpetuation. Degree 1Commons under-provision. Degree 1Veto deadlock. Degree 1Coordination overhead overrun. Degree 1

Failure	Degree
A few come to hold the power	1
The work rests on the few who stay	1
Disputes over the rules stall	1
Coupled work outruns loose coordination	1
Subsystem self-perpetuation	1
Commons under-provision	1
Veto deadlock	1
Coordination overhead overrun	1

Four failure modes name four different patterns, from subsystem self-perpetuation as power gathers in a few hands to coordination overhead overrun when coupled work outruns loose coordination, a mode the entry marks contested. Each link to a pattern is our judgment.

Source: Shaw and Hill 2014, a quantitative study of 683 wikis; Michels 1911; Smirnova and colleagues 2022, an observational study and two experiments; Freeman 1972; Shah 2006, a qualitative study of two communities; He and colleagues 2020, a study of many GitHub communities; MacCormack and colleagues 2012, a matched comparison of five pairs of software products; Puranam and colleagues 2014, a conceptual argument; Colfer and Baldwin 2016, a review of 142 empirical studies; Sanchez and Mahoney 1996.

A few come to hold the power (subsystem self-perpetuation). A quantitative study of 683 wikis, unlike previous studies, supported the iron law of oligarchy that Michels (1911) drew from a study of political parties, with oligarchy increasing as a wiki's contributor base grew (Shaw and Hill 2014). On Stack Overflow, as people rose in status, further gains came increasingly from actions hard or impossible to evaluate (Smirnova, Reitzig, and Sorenson 2022, an observational study and two experiments, on a question-and-answer site, not a shared artifact). Freeman (1972), an essay, argued that groups without formal structure form unaccountable informal elites.

The work rests on the few who stay (commons under-provision). Most participants leave once their need is met, and tasks that might otherwise go undone fall to the small group of hobbyists who stay (Shah 2006). Shah reports those tasks done; what we read as the risk is shared work kept up by too few.

Disputes over the rules stall (veto deadlock). Resolving a license dispute required both reflective agency, switching from bargaining to problem solving, and preference alignment (He and colleagues 2020).

Coupled work outruns loose coordination (coordination overhead overrun). Contested: on one view the form strains at reciprocal interdependence, on Colfer and Baldwin's not (Where it fits). Modularity's answer to information processing places the coordination load in the product's architecture: standardized interfaces embed coordination, so a modular product holds a loosely coupled organization together (Sanchez and Mahoney 1996, a conceptual argument).

None of the misfit rules names this form; two fire on its profile, both Burton and Obel's propositions, not tested singly, that authority spread wide misfits a strategy. Undisputed: an analyzer, named for the one without innovation; for one that innovates they recommend medium centralization and name no misfit, yet the explorer's analyzer level covers both. Disputed: a defender, against which Mintzberg (1980), a synthesis offering propositions without a new test, places the professional bureaucracy, with extensive decentralization, in complex but stable environments; that a defender's domain shares that stability is our reading. Burton, Lauridsen, and Obel (2002), a quantitative study of 224 Danish small and medium-sized firms, tested an earlier version of the rules as a set and found lower return on assets with misfits. Limits: the selection form of fit, which the explorer uses, and the systems form were supported, the interaction form not (Drazin and Van de Ven 1985, a quantitative study of 629 work units in two states' employment security agencies); contingency and institutional fit explain performance together, though firms in perfect institutional fit slightly lost performance striving for contingency fit (Volberda and colleagues 2012, a survey of 3,259 respondents in 1,904 companies); the fit of environment to structure failed to explain effectiveness (Pennings 1975, a quantitative field test of the structural-contingency model); and no support was found for effectiveness depending on matching technology to structure (Mohr 1971, a quantitative field study of technology and structure), though Donaldson (2001) traces both failures to method and reports that later studies of the job unpredictability Mohr studied found positive evidence.

What the research found

Of the 21 studies recorded for this form, seven are single cases or a practitioner's report, ten compare projects, run experiments, or review a field, one reviews 142 studies, and three are conceptual. Bianchi, Kang, and Stewart (2012), a study of one community, add status markers. Crowston and colleagues (2012), a review of research to about 2008, called for better sampling and longitudinal work; multi-project studies followed (Foss, Frederiksen, and Rullani 2016, a quantitative study of the open source community; He and colleagues 2020). Chakraborti and colleagues (2024) is the most recent study recorded; its preprint states the findings differently.

The mirroring evidence disagrees: MacCormack and colleagues' pairs support the hypothesis, while Colfer and Baldwin's review found open collaborative projects did not, though Baldwin wrote both. Motives are disputed too: Shah qualifies Lerner and Tirole's career concerns with need, then hobby.

Whether the form is new is argued, not tested. Puranam, Alexy, and Reitzig propose criteria for newness and find, even where existing theory explains each element, room for new theory in bundles of co-occurring elements. Benkler (2017), an essay, holds that peer production challenges the centrality of material incentives, property, and firms. The new-forms debate's dissents bear here: Foss and Klein (2022), a book-length argument, hold that authority and hierarchy are needed to coordinate work; Diefenbach and Sillince (2011), a conceptual analysis, find network organizations much less hierarchy-free than their labels suggest; Adler and Borys (1996), a conceptual argument, hold that formalization can enable; and Barker (1993), one ethnographic case study of self-managing teams in a firm, found that members' own normative rules controlled them more completely than bureaucracy had.

The evidence ledger holds 21 studies filed under this form.

In practice: one published case

Lee and Cole (2003), "From a firm-based to a community-based model of knowledge creation: the case of the Linux kernel development," in Organization Science, is one case study of the Linux kernel development project.

In the Linux kernel project, thousands of talented volunteers, dispersed across organizational and geographical boundaries, collaborated over the Internet and produced a knowledge-intensive, innovative product of high quality. The authors compared the Linux model with the traditional commercial model of software development and with firm-based knowledge creation.

They concluded that product development can be effectively organized as an evolutionary process of learning driven by criticism and error correction, a community-based model of knowledge creation that extends beyond the boundary of the firm.

The grade: one case study, read here in its abstract. The search, through Crossref and the web, covered published cases of open source and peer production (Linux, Debian, Apache, Mozilla, Freenet, and Wikipedia) in the plan's starting works and the major journals. The other cases found are recorded as studies: O'Mahony and Ferraro (2007, one community's governance), von Krogh and colleagues (2003, Freenet), Aaltonen and Lanzara (2015, Wikipedia), and Mockus and colleagues (2002, Apache and Mozilla). For the DAO variant, the search found Hsieh and colleagues (2018), who describe Bitcoin with commentaries but report no empirical test.

Source: Lee and Cole 2003. From a firm-based to a community-based model of knowledge creation: the case of the Linux kernel development, Organization Science 14(6), 633 to 649; one case study.

Variants and near relatives

Commons-based peer production (Benkler 2002, 2006): decentralized production in which individuals self-select tasks and no one owns the output exclusively; it names the mode of production.

Private-collective model (von Hippel and von Krogh 2003), a conceptual proposal, adds the contributor's motive: users program to solve their own and shared problems and freely reveal what they make, combining the private investment and collective action models.

Community-based knowledge creation (Lee and Cole 2003) adds how the community learns: the Linux kernel as a community model distinct from the firm.

Decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) (Hsieh and colleagues 2018): routine tasks run by a software protocol on a public blockchain ledger, and protocol changes decided by the votes of a class of members; the authors describe Bitcoin as the first real-world implementation. Graded emerging: conceptual work and commentary, no body of empirical study.

The Self-managing organization (less-hierarchical forms) is the nearest neighbor; it still selects its members and assigns authority through designed roles and rules. This form lets anyone contribute, lets contributors choose tasks, and gives authority for accepted contributions.

Relatives: Team of teams, the closest profile, links teams of assigned members, and the Distributed (all-remote) organization employs its members and assigns work through a hierarchy. The Network, modular, and virtual organization contracts with other firms; the Boundaryless organization makes one firm's boundaries permeable but keeps the work inside it. The Missionary (ideological) organization coordinates through internalized beliefs, and its collaborative community variant through a shared ethic of interdependent contribution; here standing comes from accepted contributions. The Cellular organization's actor-oriented architecture was applied to open source development (Fjeldstad and colleagues 2012, a conceptual framework applied to organizations from four sectors), but its cells share ownership. Crowd contests, which seek one best answer from an unaffiliated crowd (Puranam and colleagues; Kolbjørnsrud 2018, a conceptual framework illustrated with three cases), are the contrast case; crowds organized into roles by software are flash organizations, under the Algorithmically managed organization.

The open-source community beside its nearest neighbor, the self-managing organization

Select a number to fill what it marks in both drawings; the list under them gives the dimensions on which the two profiles differ.

Anyone may contribute without joining, contributors choose their own tasks, and authority is earned through accepted contributions, where the self-managing organization still selects its members and assigns authority through designed roles and rules.

Open-source and community-based organization

Adjust to each other directlyMMutual adjustmentNStandardization of norms

Self-managing organization (less-hierarchical forms)

Adjust to each other directlyMMutual adjustment

A maintainer's standing over one part is earned through contributions others accepted, where a self-managing role's authority is set by written rules.
The volunteer contributes without joining and picks its own tasks. The self-managing organization selects its members, and at Morning Star colleagues negotiate their responsibilities in a yearly letter.
Shared norms hold across the whole community beside direct adjustment; the self-managing organization's one prime mechanism is mutual adjustment among role holders inside written rules.
Every contributor gathers around one shared artifact, where the self-managing organization's primary unit differs by design: the role at Zappos, the project team at Valve.

Differs on 6 of 11 dimensions

Basis of grouping Product or purpose; Self-managing organization (less-hierarchical forms): Function or process and product or purpose
Prime coordinating mechanism Mutual adjustment and standardization of norms; Self-managing organization (less-hierarchical forms): Mutual adjustment
Lateral mechanisms Direct contact and liaison roles; Self-managing organization (less-hierarchical forms): Task forces and teams
Differentiation against integration Low differentiation, light integration; Self-managing organization (less-hierarchical forms): Moderate differentiation, some integrating roles
Mode of exchange and control Clan; Self-managing organization (less-hierarchical forms): Market
Boundary permeability Permeable; Self-managing organization (less-hierarchical forms): Selective

Neither form puts a manager over its people. The self-managing organization selects its members and sets authority in designed roles and rules, whereas the open-source community lets anyone contribute and gives authority for accepted contributions.

Source: Benkler 2002; O'Mahony and Ferraro 2007, one case study; Dahlander and O'Mahony 2011, a longitudinal study of one project; Lee and Edmondson 2017, a review of the literature; Robertson 2015; Hamel 2011.

Moving into or out of it

We found no study following an organization converting into this form or out of it; the studies describe movement within it. Newcomers enter through joining scripts (von Krogh and colleagues); people rise by technical contribution first, coordination later (Dahlander and O'Mahony).

For the conduct of a reorganization, see Change & Transformation.

The thinking behind it

Yochai Benkler (2002, 2006, 2017): commons-based peer production, a third mode beside firms and markets, which defines the form. Siobhán O'Mahony with Fabrizio Ferraro (2007), emergent governance, and with Linus Dahlander (2011), progression to lateral authority, explain how authority is earned.

Eric von Hippel and Georg von Krogh (2003): the private-collective model; von Krogh with Spaeth and Lakhani (2003), joining scripts; Sonali K. Shah (2006), need, then hobby; Josh Lerner and Jean Tirole (2002), career concerns. They explain why people contribute and who stays.

Gwendolyn K. Lee and Robert E. Cole (2003): how a community learns without a firm. Alan MacCormack and Carliss Y. Baldwin (2012, 2016): mirroring, supported in matched pairs and not in a review, hence the contested interdependence cell. Benoît Demil and Xavier Lecocq (2006): bazaar governance, the form's low control. Phanish Puranam, Oliver Alexy, and Markus Reitzig (2014): four universal problems of organizing, criteria for newness, and new theory in bundles of co-occurring elements; Smirnova, Reitzig, and Sorenson (2022): how status builds, so a few rise.

Robert Michels (1911), the iron law of oligarchy, and Jo Freeman (1972), informal elites in structureless groups, explain why power concentrates where no one designed it. Practitioner lore: Eric S. Raymond (1998), the bazaar against the cathedral. Richard M. Burton and Børge Obel (2004): explicit fit and misfit rules, synthesized from the literature, an earlier version tested as a set in 2002, behind the defender strain and the analyzer misfit.

Also called

Peer production, Benkler's shorter term. Community-based organization. Open-source project. Free/libre open source software development (Crowston and colleagues 2012). Bazaar governance (Demil and Lecocq 2006). Online social production (Aaltonen and Lanzara 2015). Open collaborative projects (Colfer and Baldwin 2016).

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