Introduction: The matrix structure is sometimes presented as an inevitable "end point" for organizations that must adapt to an increasingly complex business environment. However, observations of the structure of firms do not always confirm this view. Case description :The paper describes the...

In this interview with Professor James G. March, we focused on the key insights stemming from his work, with a special emphasis on the lessons for organization science and organization design. We discussed the major ideas and theories that he and his coauthors generated over the several decades...

This article provides an introduction to evolutionary psychology and its relevance to organizational design theory and practice. Evolutionary psychology assumes that human nature reflect adaptations to an ancestral environment that was intensely social, but differed profoundly from modern...

The innovation era has seen firms adopting a variety of organization designs with autonomous teams as their basic building blocks. Such organization designs have confronted firms with the challenge of managing complex task interdependence configurations. The predominant assumption within the...

This article provides an introduction to divestitures and the research streams that examine these deals. Divestitures are defined as the removal of one or more of a company's lines of business via selloff or spinoff. In this article, we describe how research on divestitures has evolved in the...

The Extended Enterprise, an advanced form of supply-chain integration, focusses on maximizing overall performance while also optimizing the performance of the stand-alone organizations involved. This necessitates not only inter-organizational collaboration but also inter-organizational...

During the past six decades, the Toyota Motor Company established a 'lean' production and management system (the Toyota Way), which has become an iconic template for a high performing and learning organization. The massive recall crisis of 2009/2010 distorted Toyota's image of a role model for a...

Distributed control is a technology and a design philosophy that, albeit superior to centralized control, cannot spread because it would require restructuring existing industries. It survives, however, in specific market niches. In this case-study we report on a small firm creating a novel...

Public-private partnership (PPP) concession agreements are awarded by National, State and local public agencies that contract with private companies to finance and deliver infrastructure as a long term service to governments and their citizens, rather than having the private firms design and...

I draw primarily on two recent works to describe recent and ongoing changes in the business environment and in the structure of U.S. companies. Based on these changes, I describe what I see as action implications for executives and scientists, especially organization scientists. The...