Business Alignment Requirements and Dynamic Organizations

Abstract

The business environment of today’s demands organizations to be permanently aligned with the market. As knowledge and physical resources associated to the development and production of most of today’s products often exceed what a single firm is able to accomplish, this business alignment requirement suggests that a successful company must acquire the capability to achieve and explore the competitive advantage in synergy, i.e., using the best available resources, corresponding to a shift from “self-centered close-enterprises” to networked structures. Complementarily, permanent business alignment also implies a high dynamics of the networked structure reconfigurability, so that the structure is able of fast adaptability face to the unpredictable changes in the market, to be closely aligned with it, corresponding to the concept of dynamic organizations. The chapter discusses the importance of networking and inter-organizational reconfiguration dynamics in the context of the actual business alignment requirements and introduces the most relevant and pertinent concepts around the dynamic organizational models.