Organizational Structure

Abstract

For many decades, organization scientists have paid considerable attention to the link between knowledge and organization structure. An early contributor to these discussions was Max Weber (1922), who elaborated his concepts of professional bureaucracy. History shows a multitude of other descriptions and propositions which depict knowledge-friendly organization structures such as the ‘organic form’ for knowledge-intensive innovation promoted by Burns and Stalker (1961), professional bureaucracies and adhocracies described by Mintzberg (1983), and the brain metaphor for organization structure (Morgan, 1986). Discussions on such knowledge­friendly organization structures led to many neologisms including the flexible, intelligent, smart, hypertext, N-form, inverted, network, cellular, or modular organization.