Triarchy of Organizational Forms

= From Federico Iannacci and Eve Mitleton–Kelly’s paper on heterarchies (networks) as lying between hierarchies and markets

Graphic at http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_u1GIE0NHH8g/ShNsi7Zw5vI/AAAAAAAAACM/mMqlMlnE4bk/s400/iannacci.jpg

Commentary

David Ronfeldt:

"This table (online, unpaginated) is from two scholars at the London School of Economics interested in complexity theory, information technology, and open-source networks. It represents their effort to add heterarchies to the usual dichotomy about their being two major forms of organization. What’s unusual here is that they locate heterarchies in between hierarchies and markets. Moreover, they claim that many heterarchies consist of nested hierarchies bound together by loosely coupled networks. So, heterarchies are networks, but not simply so. Indeed, they suggest in a couple spots that “Networks might just be sets of social practices rather than meta– or new organizational forms.” In any case, the table makes the point that heterarchies offer coordination processes different from what’s offered by hierarchical firms or autonomous market actors. And they see this as a boon for developments like open-source software." (http://twotheories.blogspot.com/2009/05/organizational-forms-compared-my.html)

Source: http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/1237/1157