Inquiring Organizations: An Organizational Form Perspective

Abstract

This chapter describes each of Churchman’s inquirers as a process and how each can be perceived as an organizational form. By combining the forms suited to each inquirer, we show how an integrated organizational form founded on the inquirers can support an entire inquiring organization and how this form may be used to facilitate organizational learning and the creation and management of knowledge. We have laid the foundation of organizational form perspective for researchers and believe this foundation will enable researchers to investigate organizational learning, knowledge management, and communication processes within the complexity of inquiring organizations.