Organizational Architecture

Our knowledge of corporate entrepreneurship (CE) continues to expand. However, this knowledge remains quite fragmented and non-cumulative. Herein, we conceptualize CE strategy as a useful focal point for integrating and synthesizing key elements within CE's intellectual domain. The components of our CE strategy model include (1) the antecedents of CE strategy (i.e., individual entrepreneurial cognitions of the organization's members and external environmental conditions that invite entrepreneurial activity), (2) the elements of CE strategy (i.e., top management's entrepreneurial strategic vision for the firm, organizational architectures that encourage entrepreneurial processes and behavior, and the generic forms of entrepreneurial process that are reflected in entrepreneurial behavior), and (3) the outcomes of CE strategy (i.e., organizational outcomes resulting from entrepreneurial actions, including the development of competitive capability and strategic repositioning). We discuss how our model contributes to the CE literature, distinguish our model from prior models, and identify challenges future CE research should address.

This thesis presents and analyzes the various practices in the functional area of Sourcing and Procurement. The 21 firms that are studied operate in one of the following industries: Aerospace, Apparel/ Footwear, Automotive, Computers, Communications Equipment, Consumer Packaged Goods, Pharmaceuticals, Petroleum and Retail. Those firms have been chosen for their overall supply chain excellence and the research builds on empirical data from case studies, literature survey and interviews with industry experts. By assessing the empirical data and the various practices, a framework is proposed to address the different options that the firms can use relative to the organizational structure of the Procurement Department. These options are based on a combination of the importance of the inputs and the supplier/buyer power differential. Lastly, this thesis identifies the factors that affect these options.

Key organizational decisions made by sapient AIs. The pressure to undergo neuroprosthetic augmentation in order to compete with genetically enhanced coworkers. A corporate headquarters that exists only in cyberspace as a persistent virtual world. A project team whose members interact socially as online avatars without knowing or caring whether fellow team members are human beings or robots.
Futurologists’ visions of the dawning age of ‘posthumanized’ organizations range from the disquieting to the exhilarating. Which of these visions are compatible with our best current understanding of the capacities and the limits of human intelligence, physiology, and sociality? And what can posthumanist thought reveal about the forces of technologization that are transforming how we collaborate with one another – and with ever more sophisticated artificial agents and systems – to achieve shared goals?
This book develops new insights into the evolving nature of intelligent agency and collaboration by applying the post-anthropocentric and post-dualistic methodologies of posthumanism to the fields of organizational theory and management. Building on a comprehensive typology of posthumanism, an emerging ‘organizational posthumanism’ is described which makes sense of the dynamics of technological posthumanization that are reshaping the members, personnel structures, information systems, processes, physical and virtual spaces, and external environments available to organizations. Conceptual frameworks and analytical tools are formulated for use in diagnosing and guiding the ongoing convergence in the capacities of human and artificial actors that is being spurred by novel technologies relating to human augmentation, synthetic agency, and digital-physical ecosystems. As the first systematic investigation of these topics, this text will be of interest to scholars and students of posthumanism and management and to management practitioners who must grapple on a daily basis with the forces of technologization that are increasingly powerful drivers of organizational change.

La place tenue par les universités dans les économies contemporaines reste au centre de nombreuses polémiques et fait partie des enjeux stratégiques du XXIème siècle, notamment au niveau européen. Au niveau national, l’offre de formation des universités devient éminemment stratégique, notamment par rapport à la concurrence des Grandes Écoles. Dès lors, la construction de l’offre de formation des établissements peut être assimilée à une démarche d’investissement.
Les universités constituent un système de droits de propriété à part, pouvant ainsi être assimilées à des organisations publiques ou à des organisation à but non lucratif, représentant des formes organisationnelles optimales lorsque les préférences sociales intègrent des éléments liés à l’efficacité, et lorsque l’aléa moral est fort. L’étude de la structure des droits de propriété des universités nous permet de comprendre en quoi leur analyse peut se rapprocher de l’analyse des organisations privées, et de mieux appréhender le comportement des acteurs qui les composent.
Nous nous sommes attachés à analyser le processus décisionnel au sein des universités, conduisant à l’émergence de l’offre de formation, en privilégiant une approche partenariale de l’organisation. L’intérêt principal des approches contractuelles réside dans la remise en question de l’hypothèse de séparabilité de l’investissement et du financement. En ce sens, la structure de répartition de la valeur a un effet sur la production des flux. Et la dimension organisationnelle revêt alors une importance toute particulière. La théorie financière permet alors d’expliquer les mécanismes organisationnels qui cherchent à résoudre les dysfonctionnements dans l’atteinte de l’efficience. Dans un tel cadre, l’intégration des différentes parties prenantes permet de mesurer la contribution de chacun au processus de création de valeur, via le processus décisionnel.
Nous avons cherché à justifier l’existence des mécanismes de contrôle au sein des universités à partir de l’étude des droits décisionnels et de leur caractère aliénable, qui permettent de définir l’architecture organisationnelle d’une organisation à travers trois dimensions, recouvrant les variables centrales de la théorie de l’architecture organisationnelle : la répartition des droits décisionnels, le système d’évaluation de la performance, et le système.
Cette problématique trouve des éléments de réponse à travers quatre études de cas, de quatre universités françaises, et nous a permis de tendre vers une généralisation analytique.
La théorie de l’architecture organisationnelle offre ainsi un cadre très riche, permettant d’expliquer les processus décisionnels au sein d’un grand nombre d’organisations, et semble particulièrement adapté management public. Réciproquement, l’étude des organisations publiques permet d’enrichir considérablement le cadre d’analyse organisationnelle dans son ensemble, notamment en intégrant des facteurs d’utilité (principalement d’ordre non pécuniaire) plus nombreux que ceux traditionnellement mobilisés à travers la littérature, et participe à la mise à l’épreuve du cadre théorique de l’architecture organisationnelle.

Mots clés : Architecture organisationnelle, efficience, étude de cas, gouvernance partenariale, universités françaises, management public, LOLF, LMD.

Building on existing forms of critical, cultural, biopolitical, and sociopolitical posthumanism, in this text a new framework is developed for understanding and guiding the forces of technologization and posthumanization that are reshaping contemporary organizations. This ‘organizational posthumanism’ is an approach to analyzing, creating, and managing organizations that employs a post-dualistic and post-anthropocentric perspective and which recognizes that emerging technologies will increasingly transform the kinds of members, structures, systems, processes, physical and virtual spaces, and external ecosystems that are available for organizations to utilize. It is argued that this posthumanizing technologization of organizations will especially be driven by developments in three areas: 1) technologies for human augmentation and enhancement, including many forms of neuroprosthetics and genetic engineering; 2) technologies for synthetic agency, including robotics, artificial intelligence, and artificial life; and 3) technologies for digital-physical ecosystems and networks that create the environments within which and infrastructure through which human and artificial agents will interact.
Drawing on a typology of contemporary posthumanism, organizational posthumanism is shown to be a hybrid form of posthumanism that combines both analytic, synthetic, theoretical, and practical elements. Like analytic forms of posthumanism, organizational posthumanism recognizes the extent to which posthumanization has already transformed businesses and other organizations; it thus occupies itself with understanding organizations as they exist today and developing strategies and best practices for responding to the forces of posthumanization. On the other hand, like synthetic forms of posthumanism, organizational posthumanism anticipates the fact that intensifying and accelerating processes of posthumanization will create future realities quite different from those seen today; it thus attempts to develop conceptual schemas to account for such potential developments, both as a means of expanding our theoretical knowledge of organizations and of enhancing the ability of contemporary organizational stakeholders to conduct strategic planning for a radically posthumanized long-term future.

In this text we present the Posthuman Management Matrix, a model for understanding the ways in which organizations of the future will be affected by the blurring – or even dissolution – of boundaries between human beings and computers. In this model, an organization’s employees and consumers can include two different kinds of agents (human and artificial) who may possess either of two sets of characteristics (anthropic or computer-like); the model thus defines four types of possible entities. For millennia, the only type of relevance for management theory and practice was that of human agents who possess anthropic characteristics – i.e., ‘natural human beings.’ During the 20th Century, the arrival of computers and industrial robots made relevant a second type: that of artificial agents possessing computer-like characteristics.
Management theory and practice have traditionally overlooked the remaining two types of possible entities – human agents possessing computer-like physical and cognitive characteristics (which can be referred to as ‘cyborgs’) and artificial agents possessing anthropic physical and cognitive characteristics (which for lack of a more appropriate term might be called ‘bioroids’) – because such agents did not yet exist to serve as employees or consumers for organizations. However, in this text we argue that ongoing developments in neuroprosthetics, genetic engineering, virtual reality, robotics, and artificial intelligence are indeed giving rise to such types of agents and that new spheres of management theory and practice will be needed to allow organizations to understand the operational, legal, and ethical issues that arise as their pools of potential workers and customers evolve to include human beings whose bodies and minds incorporate ever more computerized elements and artificial entities that increasingly resemble biological beings.
By analyzing the full spectrum of human, computerized, and hybrid entities that will constitute future organizations, the Posthuman Management Matrix highlights ways in which established disciplines such as cybernetics, systems theory, organizational design, and enterprise architecture can work alongside new disciplines like psychological engineering, AI resource management, metapsychology, and exoeconomics to help organizations anticipate and adapt to posthumanizing technological and social change.

The present research aims to investigate the relationship between organizational architecture and organizational agility in the mobile carriers of Erbil in Iraq. A questionnaire was conducted on mobile companies based on a random sampling technique. The results show there is a statistically significance and positive relation between organizational architecture and organizational agility. The results also indicated that organizational architecture has a statistically significant and direct positive effect on organizational agility. Finally, the researchers draw an overall conclusion from the research as a whole.

Les banques à statut de coopérative peuvent-elles soutenir durablement la compétition face aux banques à statut de société anonyme, et sont -elles capables de se développer? La question a notamment été analysée dans la littérature anglo-saxonne, fondée sur l’observation de l’industrie bancaire américaine. Alors que ces analyses concluent majoritairement à l’inefficacité de la forme coopérative et en conséquence à sa

There are differences in organizational architecture between union and non-union construction firms in early 1990s. The construction industry has traditionally been dominated by strong union firms. However, non-union construction firms began to emerge in the 1990s and this change caused to bring conflicts between union and non-union construction firms. This presents a unique opportunity to study employees' attitude toward organization. This article investigates workers' attitudes toward union and non-union construction firms in terms of organizational commitment (OC) and turnover intention. Control variables in OC and turnover intention include personal characteristics, job characteristics, group−leader relations and organizational characteristics. The study found that employees in union firms are more committed to the organization than non-union organization, but they have higher intention to job turnover although the regression coefficients of union variable in commitment and turnover intention are not statistically significant at the conventional level of significance.

Creativity increasingly takes place in organizational settings best described as large-scale, longtime duration projects. Such projects, directed at the development of complex products such as aircraft, autos and computers, are characterized by high levels of complexity including ambiguity as to the ultimate outcome and design of the product. In developing these types of products, firms design organizational structures that are composed of many multi-functional teams, each responsible for the design of some sub-system of the overall project. Through a process of inductive theory building based on a case analysis of one such organization, we propose that creativity is affected by multiple levels of interdependence. We find that even the best attempts at developing an organizational architecture to handle such complexity are never complete and that periodically crises arise during the design process. These crises are significant events where creativity occurs and new technical knowledge is generated, allowing the organization to realize its project objectives. Although the case analysis centers on the relation of context to creativity, we argue that creativity leads to technological learning, which we define as a form of organizational learning.

Firms increasingly face competitive pressures related to rapid and continuous adaptation to a complex, dynamic, and highly interconnected global environment. Pressing challenges include keeping pace with shorter product life cycles, incorporating multiple technologies into the design of new products, cocreating products and services with customers and partners, and leveraging the growth of scientific and technical knowledge in many sectors. In response, we observe experimentation with new organization designs that are fundamentally different from existing forms of organizing. We propose that these new designs are based on an actor-oriented architectural scheme composed of three main elements: (1) actors who have the capabilities and values to self-organize; (2) commons where the actors accumulate and share resources; and (3) protocols, processes, and infrastructures that enable multi-actor collaboration. We demonstrate the usefulness of the actor-oriented scheme by applying it to organizations drawn from four different sectors: global professional services, open source software development, computer equipment, and national defense. We discuss the implications of the actor-oriented architectural scheme for future research on organizational forms as well as for managers who are involved in designing organizations.

There are differences in organizational architecture between union and non-union construction firms in early 1990s. The construction industry has traditionally been dominated by strong union firms. However, non-union construction firms began to emerge in the 1990s and this change caused to bring conflicts between union and non-union construction firms. This presents a unique opportunity to study employees' attitude toward organization. This article investigates workers' attitudes toward union and non-union construction firms in terms of organizational commitment (OC) and turnover intention. Control variables in OC and turnover intention include personal characteristics, job characteristics, group−leader relations and organizational characteristics. The study found that employees in union firms are more committed to the organization than non-union organization, but they have higher intention to job turnover although the regression coefficients of union variable in commitment and turnover intention are not statistically significant at the conventional level of significance.

In the past, when the commercial world was relatively stable and the future plannable, organizational structure was appropriately the principal instrument of strategy. Now that strategy is more about intent than long-term plans, more about pasting and prototyping than planning for D-Day, companies need to start preparing for the future differently. The paper arises from a 98-corporation study of building e-business infrastructure. A particularly complex and pervasive issue was the fit between technology infrastructure and strategic intent and structure. Several companies were observed to be developing what we call here an Organizational Architecture capability to manage the problems they experienced. Here, using the case study base, we develop the rationale and content of such a capability, and show its key tie in to leveraging IT applications and infrastructure. 

S tarting from the premise that individuals within an organization are fallible, this paper advances the study of relationships between the organization's decision-making structure and its performance. We offer a general treatment that allows one to analyze the full range of organizational architectures between extreme centralized and decentralized forms (often referred to as hierarchies and polyarchies). Our approach furthermore allows designers to examine the change in the overall reliability of the organizational structure as the number of actors within the organization changes. We provide general proofs that show how decision-making structures can be constructed so they maximize reliability for a given number of agents. Our model can be used directly for a qualitative assessment of decision-making structures. It is thereby useful for assessment of the many complicated hybrid structures that we see in actual decision-making organizations, such as banks, purchasing departments, and military intelligence. An application from a bank illustrates how our framework can be used in practice.

This volume serves a resource for the design and analysis of neuroprosthetic supersystems, which can be defined as organizations – either small or large, simple or complex – whose human members have been neuroprosthetically augmented. While numerous other texts focus on the biomedical engineering of neuroprostheses as technological devices or on the biocybernetic engineering of the host-device system comprising a neuroprosthesis and its human host, this volume presents a unique investigation of the intentional creation of higher-order supersystems that allow multiple neuroprosthetically augmented human beings to interact with one another and with external information systems in order to accomplish some shared task. In essence, this can be understood as the work of designing and managing neuroprosthetically enhanced organizations.

Individual chapters present an ontology of the neuroprosthesis as a computing device; a biocybernetic ontology of the host-device system; an ontology of the neuroprosthesis as an instrument of ‘cyborgization’; motivating and inhibiting factors for the organizational deployment of posthumanizing neuroprostheses by military organizations and other early adopters; an introduction to enterprise architecture in the context of technological posthumanization; an exploration of the implications of neuroprosthetic augmentation for enterprise architecture; and considerations for the development of effective network topologies for neuroprosthetically augmented organizations. The conceptual frameworks formulated within this book offer a wide range of tools that can be of use to policymakers, ethicists, neuroprosthetic device manufacturers, organizational decision-makers, and others who must analyze or manage the complex legal, ethical, and managerial implications that result from the use of emerging neuroprosthetic technologies within an organizational context.

This article proposes a simple framework for understanding an emergent diversity of linkages between corporate governance (CG) and organizational architecture (OA). It distinguishes discreet modes of their linkage by different combinatorial patterns between three basic assets: managers' human assets (MHA), workers' human assets (WHA), and non-human assets (NHA). Using the concept of essentiality of human assets proposed by and distinguished from that of complementarities, we first propose a new characterization of four known modes of CG-OA linkage: three traditional (Anglo-American, German, and Japanese) and one relatively new (Silicon Valley) models. Then we present empirical evidences of emergent diversity of CG-OA linkages in Japan, which is somewhat at odds with the old Japanese model. We interpret its emergent dominant mode as the path-dependent evolution of a new pattern of essentiality between human assets, made viable by lessening of institutionalcomplementarity-constraints which surrounded the traditional Japanese model. We argue that this new mode interpreted in terms of essentiality may have broader applicability beyond Japanese context.

Съвременните предизвикателства към сигурността на страната изискват бързи и адекватни реакции от страна на държавното ръководство. С влизането на страната ни в ЕС и НАТО средата за сигурност значително се промени. Това доведе до промени в изискванията към структурирането и ръководството на целия сектор за сигурност /СС/, чиито елемент са и службите за сигурност, наричани Разузнавателна общност /РО/. Българските граждани и българското общество вече се нуждаят от нов начин на сигурност.
Предмет на тази статия ще е необходимостта от изграждането на нов архитектурен модел за управление на РО.

S tarting from the premise that individuals within an organization are fallible, this paper advances the study of relationships between the organization's decision-making structure and its performance. We offer a general treatment that allows one to analyze the full range of organizational architectures between extreme centralized and decentralized forms (often referred to as hierarchies and polyarchies). Our approach furthermore allows designers to examine the change in the overall reliability of the organizational structure as the number of actors within the organization changes. We provide general proofs that show how decision-making structures can be constructed so they maximize reliability for a given number of agents. Our model can be used directly for a qualitative assessment of decision-making structures. It is thereby useful for assessment of the many complicated hybrid structures that we see in actual decision-making organizations, such as banks, purchasing departments, and military intelligence. An application from a bank illustrates how our framework can be used in practice.

The discipline of enterprise architecture (EA) provides valuable tools for aligning an organization’s business strategy and processes, IT strategy and systems, personnel structures, and organizational culture, with the goal of enhancing organizational agility, adaptability, and efficiency. However, the centralized and exhaustively detailed approach of conventional EA is susceptible to failure when employed in organizations demonstrating exceedingly great size, speed of operation and change, and IT complexity – a combination of traits that characterizes, for example, some emerging types of “technologized” oligopolistic megacorps reflecting the Industry 4.0 paradigm. This text develops the conceptual basis for a variant form of enterprise architecture that can be used to enact improved target architectures for organizations whose characteristics would otherwise render them “unmanageable” from the perspective of conventional EA. The proposed approach of “enterprise meta-architecture” (or EMA) disengages human enterprise architects from the fine-grained details of architectural analysis, design, and implementation, which are handled by artificially intelligent systems functioning as active agents rather than passive tools. The role of the human enterprise architect becomes one of determining the types of performance improvements a target architecture should ideally generate, establishing the operating parameters for an EMA system, and monitoring and optimizing its functioning. Advances in Big Data and parametric design provide models for enterprise meta-architecture, which is distinct from other new approaches like agile and adaptive EA. Deployment of EMA systems should become feasible as ongoing advances in AI result in an increasing share of organizational agency and decision-making responsibility being shifted to artificial agents.

There are differences in organizational architecture between union and non-union construction firms in early 1990s. The construction industry has traditionally been dominated by strong union firms. However, non-union construction firms began to emerge in the 1990s and this change caused to bring conflicts between union and non-union construction firms. This presents a unique opportunity to study employees' attitude toward organization. This article investigates workers' attitudes toward union and non-union construction firms in terms of organizational commitment (OC) and turnover intention. Control variables in OC and turnover intention include personal characteristics, job characteristics, group−leader relations and organizational characteristics. The study found that employees in union firms are more committed to the organization than non-union organization, but they have higher intention to job turnover although the regression coefficients of union variable in commitment and turnover intention are not statistically significant at the conventional level of significance.

Firms increasingly face competitive pressures related to rapid and continuous adaptation to a complex, dynamic, and highly interconnected global environment. Pressing challenges include keeping pace with shorter product life cycles, incorporating multiple technologies into the design of new products, cocreating products and services with customers and partners, and leveraging the growth of scientific and technical knowledge in many sectors. In response, we observe experimentation with new organization designs that are fundamentally different from existing forms of organizing. We propose that these new designs are based on an actor-oriented architectural scheme composed of three main elements: (1) actors who have the capabilities and values to self-organize; (2) commons where the actors accumulate and share resources; and (3) protocols, processes, and infrastructures that enable multi-actor collaboration. We demonstrate the usefulness of the actor-oriented scheme by applying it to organizations drawn from four different sectors: global professional services, open source software development, computer equipment, and national defense. We discuss the implications of the actor-oriented architectural scheme for future research on organizational forms as well as for managers who are involved in designing organizations.