Synopsis "New Ways of Organizing: Alternatives to Bureaucracy (in English)"
This book is about integral organizing. Organizations face major challenges in terms of innovation, customerfocus, flexibility, productivity, and finding and retaining talent. Technical innovations in and of themselves canonly address such challenges to a limited extent. Attention to culture and behaviour, in and of itself, also has itslimitations. Social innovation relates to the integral development and renewal of the organisation. Many organizations, however, are based on persistent bureaucratic organizational principles that are outdated.New ways of organizing offer sustainable solutions for the limitations and dysfunctions that cling to traditionallystructured organizations. We are not under the illusion that a few quick fixes and quick wins will provide thesolution to all of today's organizational problems. The first part of this book is therefore aimed at getting to thebottom of how organisations operate. Why do organisations function as they do under certain conditions? Whydo people behave the way they do under certain conditions? A fundamental understanding of the problems oforganizations is a prerequisite for sustainable solutions.In finding structural solutions to organizational problems, as discussed in the second part of this book, an organization'sstrategy serves as the main guide. The basic starting point for realizing organizational design is theprimary process and its requirements. Moreover, in an integral organization, solutions are not fixed in advance;the purpose is to find design solutions that are tailored to the particularities of each organization. In this context, we deal with an integral design chain that provides support in establishing solutions for specific, real-lifesituations.This book is a translation of the Dutch version of Het Nieuwe Organiseren, first published in 2010. Its contenthas been thoroughly used by professors and lecturers since the very first edition, and their feedback has beentaken into account with this newly translated revision. The scope of the discussion of certain themes has beennarrowed, and new themes and cases have been added in order to bring more clarity to the structure of thebook. Ideas about the network regime have been expanded into two new chapters which include current trendssuch as Agile, Scrum and the 'exponential' organization, as well as the socio-technical perspective.New Ways of Organizing is written for students, practitioners, and organizational experts who want to take thenecessary time to delve into the functioning of organizations within the context of their structure, and want tohelp think about sustainable social innovation.
