Adaptive System Organisation Design

Abstract

This chapter outlines Adaptive System Organisation Design (ASOD) as an approach to designing organisations for high performance in conditions of high complexity and uncertainty. ASOD treats an organisation as a single whole adaptive system, and creates a recursive structure of smaller adaptive systems down to the level of an individual. The process of organisation design can be conceptualised as building the elements of high performance at an individual level, and then integrating these into progressively larger systems to eventually end up with a whole organisation. The work of creating high performance at each level of system (individual, work unit and business unit or whole organisation) differs and specific design considerations for each level are described.