Moving Forward
R enewed attention to the study of organiza- tional design would be timely in part because of the emergence of organizational forms not
yet understood. However, given the daunting complexity of contemporary organizational de- signs, how might the task of studying them be approached? We make two suggestions. First, the study of organization design can be simplified and rendered more feasible by restricting attention to a type of organization. Here we are returning to the tradition of March’s (1965) Handbook, where no fewer than nine chapters were devoted to par- ticular types of organizations, ranging from unions and political parties to military organizations, pris- ons, and business organizations. Despite some risk of oversimplification, by focusing on organiza- tional types we can be respectful of organizational differences and represent organizations through rich rather than specialized characterizations. Sec- ond, we argue for the conjoint application of current theories that are especially applicable to design challenges of the organization type in ques- tion. In doing so, we run counter to prevailing approaches, in which theories are usually pursued and developed in isolation (McKinley & Mone, 2003; McKinley, Mone, & Moon, 1999; Tsoukas & Knudsen, 2003) and theoretical “purity” is de- fended as providing “better” accounts.