Works
- Divergent capitalisms: the social structuring and change of business systems, Oxford University Press, 1999
- Project-based firms: new organizational form or variations on a theme?, Industrial and Corporate Change 15(1), 77 to 99, 2006
- Business Systems and Organizational Capabilities: The Institutional Structuring of Competitive Competences, Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York (chapter 9, Project-based firms: new organizational form or variations on a theme?), 2007
In Organizational Structures
Known for
Comparative business systems
Ideas
Varieties of project-based firm. Project-based firms differ in the singularity of their goals and outputs and in how distinct and stable their work roles are, giving at least four ideal types whose prevalence varies across sectors and societies. Caveat: Conceptual; Whitley questions whether they are a new organizational logic.
Business systems. Whitley set out how national institutions shape distinct business systems. Caveat: Comparative synthesis.
Organizational, craft, precarious, and hollow project-based firms. He names four ideal types of project-based firm: organizational firms producing multiple, varied outputs with changeable roles; craft firms producing incrementally related outputs with distinct, stable roles; precarious firms, which employ skilled staff on highly uncertain and singular projects; and hollow, or contractual, firms, which focus on one or a few kinds of project and rely on relatively distinct and stable skills. Caveat: Ideal types; their prevalence is Whitley's expectation, not a measured finding. Only a table and passages of the book were read.
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.