The design of organizations has been a prime characteristic of management theory and practice over the past several decades. However, there has been little change in the fundamental theory, principles and concepts of Organization Design since the introduction of contingency theory in the 1970’s. Nevertheless, over the past 25 years organizational reality has changed dramatically with the advent of all sorts of communication systems, AI agents, information technology, knowledge management systems, and more. Therefore leading researchers in Organization Design – who understand the situation – have undertaken to address the problem.

Organization Design: The Evolving State-of-the-Art will be organized in four sections: (1) Theoretical and Practical Issues, (2) Fit, Contingency and Configuration, (3) Design and Performance, and (4) The Dynamics of Adaptation and Change. The book will be a broad discussion of topics in the field, but still each individual paper will provide in depth analysis of the topic. A common element and theme to all of the chapters is a focus on core theories in organization design and emerging perspectives.

The book will be a 2005-benchmark publication of organization design theory, principles and concepts, and on the basis of this benchmark publication, the editors will encourage researchers and students to further develop the field. The recent development in organization design has been sporadic; hence this book will be an important step in creating better theoretical models and stronger empirical analyses that take advantage of advances in estimation methods allowing for more complex causal modeling and stimulation technologies.