Integrated Organization and Technology Development – an Approach to Manage Change

Organizations face increasing complexity and dynamics of their environment. To cope with it organizational structures have to be rethought. In this context the concept of self-organization is nowadays widely discussed in management science. Contrary to a tayloristic approach where organizations were perceived as social units which could be controlled mechanically from the top, the concept of self-organization is based on the idea that social units are networks of autonomous self-regulating subunits whose behaviour cannot be controlled easily from the outside. To be able to exploit the benefits of self-organizing systems, organizational structures have to be renewed: the divison of labour among the subunits has to be changed, the hierarchies have to be flattened while self-coordination by non hierarchical communication among the subunits has to play a more important role.