Works
- Toward the flexible form: how to remain vital in hypercompetitive environments, Organization Science 7(4), 359 to 374, 1996
- Prolegomena on coevolution: a framework for research on strategy and new organizational forms, Organization Science 10(5), 519 to 534, 1999
- The future of organization studies: beyond the selection-adaptation debate, In Haridimos Tsoukas and Christian Knudsen (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Organization Theory, Oxford University Press, chapter 21, 568 to 595, 2003
In Organizational Structures
Known for
The flexible form and strategic flexibility.
Ideas
The flexible form. Argued that bureaucratic vertical forms hamper response to accelerating competition, while a flexible form, whose flexibility comes from a repertoire of managerial capabilities and the organization's responsiveness, can meet a wide variety of changes; because flexibility is paradoxical it needs constructive friction between change and preservation. Caveat: A conceptual typology of forms for hypercompetition. Read in its abstract only.
Coevolution of organizations and environments. With Lewin, set out a coevolutionary perspective and framework for research on strategy and new organizational forms, which reframes the standoff between selection and adaptation accounts of organizational change. Caveat: A research framework, not a study. Read in its abstract only.
Beyond the selection and adaptation debate. With Lewin, proposed coevolution as a meta-theoretical lens that moves organization studies past the debate between adaptation and selection. Caveat: A handbook chapter. Read in its abstract only.
In this section, “read” means read by the Organizational Structures series: where a line says a work, or part of one, was not read, the series did not read it.