New Organizational Forms

Abstract

A definition of organizational form is proposed in terms of labor power, the object, means, and division of labor, and the control of labor at the organizational and institutional level. A number of typological approaches are then reviewed, focusing on the delineation of new organizational forms. The central hypothesis is that new organizational forms are emerging as a result of the transition from industrial to postindustrial capitalism. This hypothesis is elaborated by means of a number of historical and structural subhypotheses specifying the links between corporate dynamics and postbureaucratic organizational forms, the role of computer-integrated production in the internalization and replacement of external, bureaucratic rules by software, and the role of an ideology of responsiveness in service organizations and government agencies. Finally, six characteristics emphasizing the flexibility of postbureaucratic, technocratic organizational forms are examined: informalism, universalism, weak classification and framing of options, loose coupling, interdependence and networking, and the propagation of a corporate culture to counteract the centrifugal and deconstructive tendencies of structural flexibility. In contrast to the technical rationalization of work by computers, these elements of structural flexibility are seen as a form of social rationalization.