Some have to, and some want to: Why firms adopt a post-industrial form
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Some have to, and some want to: Why firms adopt a post-industrial form Chris R. Meyer1 • David G. Cohen2 • Sudhir Nair3
Published online: 21 May 2016 Springer Science+Business Media New York 2016
Abstract A number of organizational scholars have suggested that to compete in a ‘‘post-industrial’’ world firms must adopt specific structures and approaches to managing. In this article, we explore the why of post-industrial forms, as opposed to the what. Often work in this literature speaks as though in the future only a postindustrial form will allow firms to compete successfully. We argue instead that adoption of a post-industrial form is a contingency: some firms have to operate in this fashion, some firms may want to, and some firms never will adopt a postindustrial form. Based on Thompson’s (Organizations in action, Transaction, New Brunswick, 1967) conception of production processes, we suggest factors that, if present, require firms to be post-industrial as well as strategies that make them want to adopt this relatively new form. Keywords Post-industrial Organizational structure Knowledge management Technology Services
1 Introduction In his seminal work, Bell (1973) suggested that society was transitioning from capitalist and Marxist forms of industrial society to what he referred to as a ‘‘postindustrial’’ society. He also forecast that over ‘‘the next thirty to 50 years’’, post& Chris R. Meyer [email protected] 1
Gabelli School of Business, Fordham University, 45 Columbus Ave., New York, NY, USA
2
Department of Management and Business, Skidmore College, 815 N. Broadway, Saratoga Springs, NY 12866, USA
3
Peter B. Gustavson School of Business, University of Victoria, P.O. Box 1700 STN CSC, Victoria, BC V8W 2Y2, Canada
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industrial social forms would become ubiquitous. Beginning in the mid-1980s, management scholars began researching the effects of a post-industrial age on business organizations (Huber 1984), characterized by both an increase in the number of service firms relative to manufacturing firms (Ford and Bowen 2008) and by increasing environmental dynamism (Eisenhardt 1989a) associated with (indeed, self-reinforcing with) technological change. Because, as Bell (1973) noted, business would change from a ‘‘game against fabricated nature’’ (a manufacturing dominant paradigm) to a ‘‘game between persons’’ (a service dominant paradigm), the focus of management would shift to the customer from manufacturing (Ford and Bowen 2008). This customer-focused, service driven, post-industrial culture (Vargo and Lusch 2004), would require firms to adopt an organizational form that is flatter and more flexible than the hierarchical ‘‘command and control’’ structure of the typical industrial age firm. Because these flexible firms in a dynamic environment will both be more complex and face greatly increased uncertainty when compared to their industrial age peers, they must also concentrate on knowledge development and management, particularly so, of course, in professional s
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