The ability to organize is our most valuable social technology. Organizing affects an enterprise’s efficiency, effectiveness, and ability to adapt. Modern organizations operate in increasingly complex, dynamic environments, which puts a premium on adaptation. Compared to traditional organizations, modern organizations are flatter and more open to their environment. Their processes are more generative and interactive – actors themselves generate and coordinate solutions rather than follow hierarchically devised plans and directives. Modern organizations search outside their boundaries for resources wherever they may exist. They coproduce products and services with suppliers, customers, and partners. They collaborate, both internally and externally, to learn and become more capable. In this book, leading voices in the field of organization design articulate and exemplify how a combination of agile processes, artificial intelligence, and digital platforms powers adaptive, sustainable, and healthy organizations.

The marketing literature on business-to-business (B2B) relationship governance is largely rooted in one particular form of value creation, namely the value chain. As a result, our current understanding of value creation and value claiming in interfirm marketing relationships mostly reflect one particular value system, and the associated organization of relationships between exchange partners. The recent literature on business models provides an account of a more diverse set of value systems. We present a typology of different value configurations and show how the way in which a firm creates and claims value has fundamental implications both for the nature of its relationships with other firms as well as how these relationships are governed. We rely on findings from our conceptualization of the different value systems to present promising areas for future research into the governance of business-to-business (B2B) relationships in marketing.

Creating better value in health care service today is very challenging. The social pressure to do so is real for every health care system and its leadership. Real benefit has been achieved in manufacturing sector work by the use of "value-chain" thinking, which assumes that the work is a series of linked processes necessary to make a product. For those activities in health care systems that are similar, this model may be very helpful. Attempts to "install" the value chain widely in health care systems have, however, been frustrating. As a result, well-meaning leaders seeking better value have resorted to programs of cost reduction, rather than service redesign. Professionals have not been very happy or willing participants. The work of health care service invites an expanded model of value creation, one that better matches the work. This paper proposes a networked architecture that can mobilize and integrate the resources of health care professionals, interested patients, family, and other community members in the delivery and improvement of health care systems. It also suggests how this value-creation architecture might contribute to research and the development of new knowledge. Two cases illustrate the proposed architecture and its implications for system design and practice, technology development, and roles and responsibilities of all actors involved in health care systems. We believe that this model better fits the need of making and improving health care services. This expanded understanding of how value is created invites attention by senior leaders, by those attempting to facilitate the improvement of current systems, by patients and clinicians involved in the daily work of health care service coproduction, by those charged with the preparation and formation of future professionals, by those who measure and conduct research in health care services, and by those leading policy, payment, and reimbursement systems.

Purpose This paper aims to identify promising areas for future business to business (B2B) governance research. Design/methodology/approach This paper uses a theoretical approach. Findings Most governance research in marketing is conducted within the context of value chains (Porter 1985). There are great opportunities for governance researchers in marketing to improve the understanding of B2B relationships in problem solving and networking services. Moreover, rapid innovations taking place in networking services are changing the institutional environment across all forms of value creation. This in turn impacts how the nature and governance of relationships in the broader economy are understood. Originality/value The literature on B2B relationship governance is primarily rooted in one particular form of value creation, namely, the “value chain” (Porter, 1985). The authors examine whether the current conceptualization of B2B relationship governance is equally applicable for firms that have a different value creation logic and therefore engage in exchange relationships that differ in their object of exchange.

Despite a voluminous literature, business model research continues to be plagued with problems. Those problems hinder theory development and make it difficult for managers to use research findings in their decision-making. In our article, we seek to make three contributions. First, we clarify the theoretical foundations of the business model concept and relate them to the five elements of a business model: customers, value propositions, product/service offerings, value creation mechanisms, and value appropriation mechanisms. A clear definition of a business model enables theory to develop systematically and provides coherent guidance to managers. Second, we suggest that value configuration is a contingency variable that should be included in future theorizing and model building. Each of the elements of a business model is affected by a firm's value configuration depending on whether the firm is a value chain, value shop, or value network. Third, we link business models to organization design. We show how organization design is affected by value configuration and how new collaborative organizational forms enable open and agile business models. We derive the implications of our analysis for future research and management practice.

Increasingly, organizations are assessing their opportunities, developing and delivering products and services, and interacting with customers and other stakeholders digitally. Mobile computing, social media, and big data are the drivers of the future workplace, and these and other digitally based technologies are having large economic and social impacts, including increased competition and collaboration, the disruption of many industries, and pressure being put on organizations to develop new capabilities and transform their cultures. In this article, we provide a conceptual framework for the design of effective digital organizations. Our framework is predicated on the current state of digitization across diverse sectors of the global economy. In the digital world, all activities and transactions leave digital marks, and all actors, things, and places can be reached and affected digitally. As a result, we can design for self-organization rather than using hierarchical mechanisms for control and coordination. Such designs require the strategic and cultural alignment of digital technologies within the organization and externally with stakeholders. We propose that "actor-oriented" principles are at the heart of designing digital organizations and that, if properly applied, can result in a workplace where organization members are highly engaged and productive.

Building on the argument put forward by North and Wallis (1994) that the transaction sector enables economic growth by lowering the costs of transacting, we investigate how internationalizing firms’ host and home country bank relationships affect their international specific investments and growth. Banks provide payment, liquidity, and risk management services, which are essential to international business relationships, yet little is known about how banks affect international business relationships. In a sample of 255 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), we find that host and home country bank relationships affect the dependent variables differently. We contribute to the literature by explicating the role and effects of banks in international business relationships. Our findings have implications for understanding transaction services in international business as well as the choices made by their customers.

Network theory and analysis have played a prominent role in the field of organization science for more than six decades. Previous articles of the organizational networks literature have discussed the attributes, antecedents, and consequences of networks. Our article focuses on the organizational functions of networks. Specifically, we discuss how networks enable exploration, exploitation, and organization.

In this paper, we examine the effects of network service innovations, such as new telecommunication services, social media, and other internet-based communication services on organizational internal and external structure and organization performance. We argue that such innovations enhance organizational performance directly by improving the efficiency of coordination and indirectly by improving the structure of the organization’s internal and external networks. We test the argument in the context of the adoption of mobile broadband by a sample of 245 Norwegian business organizations collected over three years (2008-2010). We find support for the hypothesized direct effect of network service innovation on organization performance and a mediating effect through the effects of the clustering of internal relationships but not for a mediating effect of the external network. The findings contribute the understanding of the effects of network service innovations on organizational structure and performance and have important implications for organizational design and innovation.

Measures that estimate the clustering coefficients of ego and overall social networks are important to social network studies. Existing measures differ in how they define and estimate triplet clustering with implications for how network theoretic properties are reflected. In this paper, we propose a novel definition of triplet clustering for weighted and undirected social networks that explicitly considers the relative strength of the tie connecting the two alters of the ego in the triplet. We argue that our proposed definition better reflects theorized effects of the important third tie in the social network literature. We also develop new methods for estimating triplet, local and global clustering. Three different types of mathematical means, i.e. arithmetic, geometric, and quadratic, are used to reflect alternative theoretical assumptions concerning the marginal effect of tie substitution. (c) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The increased importance of knowledge creation and use to firms' global competitiveness has spawned considerable experimentation with organizational designs for product development and commercialization over the last three decades. This paper discusses innovation-related organizational design developments during this period, showing how firms have moved from stand-alone organizations to multifirm network organizations to community-based organizational designs. The collaborative community of firms model, the most recent organizational design in this evolutionary process, is described in detail. Blade.org, a purposefully designed collaborative community of firms dedicated to the continuous development and commercialization of blade servers, a computer technology with large but unforeseeable market potential, is used as an illustrative case. Blade.org's organizational design combines a community "commons" for the collective development and sharing of knowledge among member firms with explicit institutional mechanisms for the support of direct intermember collaboration. These design elements are used to overcome the challenges associated with (1) concurrent technological and market experimentation and (2) the dynamic coordination of a complex emergent system of hardware, software, and services provided by otherwise independent firms. To date, Blade.org has developed more than 60 new products, providing strong evidence of the innovation prowess of the collaborative community of firms organizational model. Based on an analysis of the evolution of organizational designs and the case of Blade.org, implications for innovation management theory and practice are derived.

T he 21s-century promises to offer abundant opportunities if the firms and nations of the world can design organizational mechanisms to fully utilize the knowledge generated by modern science while finding solutions for the problems that economic progress has created—including global warming and the starkly visible income inequalities that exist across various segments of the global economy. Fortunately, in both the public and private sectors, our understanding of how the global economy works has increased, as evidenced by the emergence of widely effective business and management approaches that are spreading around the world. Indeed, it is our belief that recent experiments involving new organizational approaches will prove to be valuable in addressing not only the exciting economic opportunities of this century but also the pressing challenges that currently plague global society. In order to explore current organizational developments, we present a dynamic theory of organization design and show how it explains the four major designs that have appeared in the U.S. since the latter half of the 1800s: U-form, M-form, matrix, and multi-firm network. We describe how the components of each of these traditional designs reflect the economic and sociopolitical conditions of their birth period. We then use our theory to predict the shape of a new organizational design – a collaborative community – as well as its uses and benefits. Overall, we observe that recent decades have brought an increased awareness that global resources are commons in the keeping of all nations and societies. Such shared interests require the use of community values and collaborative capabilities in emerging organizational designs if their full benefits are to be obtained and shared. We describe two types of situations in which large-scale multi-party collaboration is required in order to successfully pursue global opportunities or to resolve global problems: (1) situations in which a large number of actors depend on and contribute to a commons and (2) situations in which a large number of actors share a common goal and each actor provides its complementary contribution to the larger system in a coordinated manner.