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The organisational history of multinationals involved a constant search for the most effective means to control and benefit from cross-border operations. Variants of the multinational, international, global, and even transnational organisational forms coexisted as firms sought ways to achieve efficiency, local responsiveness, and knowledge transfer. Forms varied widely between industries, and within industries.

Great uniformity can exist across space but a small one across time. Many actors share similarities in each period but the characteristics that are similar are not stable. Instead, these characteristics are different in different periods. The combination of a high degree of uniformity in space and diversity or variation across time is commonly known as fashion. In this chapter, it is called fashion trend, which may refer to clothing style or car model and be ultimately concerned with aesthetics. Fashion trends also exist in other areas that are usually considered more technical, such as techniques used to achieve certain goals in business, politics, or child care. Fashion trends may result from standardization; change occurs when adopters of standards begin to do things differently after a time. The chapter discusses the cropping-up model of organizational forms, reforms, and discourse.

This chapter explores changing organizational forms from a gendered perspective. The first section discusses whether fluid organizational boundaries challenge gender segregation by identifying the differential impacts new organizational forms have upon women and men's jobs, and whether there is any evidence of women and men entering non-traditional forms of work. The second section focuses on the ‘relational’ work that is required in new organizational forms and whether this is gendered work. The third section provides an analysis of gendered cultures and identities in the case study organizations, building upon Acker's (1990, 1992) account of the gendering of organizations which highlights the myriad of ways that gender divisions are created in organizations, including the creation of symbols, images, and forms of consciousness that explicate and justify gender divisions; interactions between individuals; and the internal mental work of individuals as they consciously construct their gendered understandings and identities within the structure of work and opportunities available.

This introductory chapter begins with a discussion of the blurring of organizational boundaries and fragmentation of work, which are increasing uncertainty and ambiguity in employment relations. It considers popular accounts of new organizational forms and then turns to academic literature on fragmentation. This is followed by a description of the research project presented in this book.

Significant changes that redefine the competitive environment have driven various organizations to re-examine their organization designs and flexible capabilities. Since an ideal flexible form has yet to be determined and described, managers in contemporary firms have proceeded with different organizational experiments even without models or theories. However, firms in today's hypercompetitive environments have continued to develop and identify new advantages that result in a temporary disequilibrium. New organizational forms are needed so that opportunities may be explored and utilized effectively, strategic focus must be easily changed, and values and norms have to be considered. From the framework illustrated in the previous chapter, we identify three optimal organizational forms that link the competitive environments with effective organization designs and flexibility types.

Experimentations with new and different types of flexible organizational forms have emerged from competitive forces that have become increasingly changing. While some companies and managers have attempted several organizational experiments even without guidance from research, others have been emulating successful organizational forms without fully understanding the implications of the changing competitive forces. The need therefore arises to establish a theoretical framework for understanding and managing the future flexible forms. In this concluding chapter, we look into both the theoretical and managerial implications of the typology and strategic framework constructed and identified in this book through analysing how our discoveries are based on observations, and realizing that the logic of discovery is not to be perceived as something as comprehensive as reality.

This chapter evaluates the role allocated to technology within current ideas on the development of new organizational forms — and in particular the notion of networked organizations. Critical of the hyperbole that has surrounded the notion of networking, and related initiatives such as business process re-engineering, the authors emphasize the importance of trust in the negotiation of working practices. They also stress that the problem of realizing the vision of networking is ultimately a political one, challenging the status quo that inheres in many present-day organizations.

This chapter sets out the stakes of the book's argument, situating the English East India Company with respect to some of the larger processes of transition and change in the early modern period and the dawn of modernity in the nineteenth century. The issues addressed are large-scale macro-historical outcomes, such as economic development in the West, underdevelopment in Asia, growth in state capacity, the development of economic theory, and the emergence of new organizational forms. All are linked to and intertwine with the story of the English East India Company. In addition, these developments have at times been indirectly linked to the Industrial Revolution, which the chapter also briefly touches upon.

For several observers, electronic commerce or e-commerce accounts for the beginnings of a novel commercial paradigm, as well as of a new general paradigm for how the suppliers of various services and technologies interact with their users. Utilizing e-commerce in improving the competitiveness of Europe entails certain issues which, when addressed, bring about a broadcast media model for developing the home-access aspect of the communication and information infrastructure – an alternative to the ‘passive’ user. Since e-commerce focuses mainly on business-to-business interactions, the challenges and opportunities associated with this field relate to the changes in processes and structures of trading transactions. As such, we also have to consider the evolution of organizational forms and business models evident in individual trading communities.

This chapter discusses the organizational forms central to European administrative governance. It sets out the central features of these forms, their rationale(s) and, wherever possible, offers an assessment of the issues which they raise in terms of legitimacy and accountability. Specifically, it considers comitology, European agencies, various forms of European networks for administrative governance, the Open Method of Coordination, and organizational forms in which private parties play a dominant role.

Managing virtual corporations confronts a trade‐off between incentives and control, and an alliance can achieve some of the coordination of an integrated company, but the members of an alliance can be driven to enhance their own positions, and their interests may diverge over time. The challenge for managers is to choose the organizational form (virtual, alliance, or otherwise) that best matches the type of innovation (autonomous or systemic) they are pursuing.

This chapter first sketches Max Weber's theory of business associations, highlighting issues of organizational form, cultural orientation, and political process. This perspective shapes social scientists' main assumptions about why and how business associations function, especially for scholars of comparative economic governance. Their comparative approach shows the distinctiveness of American associations, which is demonstrated here with brief contrasts to German and Japanese associational history. This Weberian comparative approach generates a major theoretical and empirical anomaly: it cannot explain why American associations thrive. To explore this issue, the chapter reconstructs the history of American business associations before and after the introduction of antitrust law in the late nineteenth century, again considering that history in terms of their organization, orientation, and politics.

A key argument in institutional theories of organization is that organizational forms are strongly influenced by widely held norms and ideas about the kind of organizational forms that are natural, correct, or desirable. Norms and ideas held in common constitute a major impetus to standardization; they promote similarities in many organizations, even those which conduct quite different types of production but which operate within the same culture or the same field. This chapter presents a ‘cropping-up’ model of standardization. It discusses the basic concepts underlying a ‘cropping-up’ model: forms, reforms, and organizational discourse. It describes how organizational forms are determined by the interaction between general discourse and local reform cycles. Finally, it the way in which local reforms may affect the norms expressed in the general discourse.

We model an organization as a hierarchy of managers erected on top of a technology (here consisting of a collection of plants). In our framework, the role of a manager is to take steps to reduce the adverse consequences of shocks that affect the plants beneath him. We argue that different organizational forms give rise to different information about managers’ performance and therefore differ according to how effective incentives can be in encouraging a good performance. In particular, we show that, under certain assumptions, the M-form (multi-divisional form) is likely to provide better incentives than the U-form (unitary form) because it promotes yardstick competition (i.e., relative performance evaluation) more effectively. We conclude by presenting evidence that the assumptions on which this comparison rests are satisfied for Chinese data.