A Future for the Science of Organization Design

Rather than the future of organization design (academics make justifiably reluctant futurists), I want to discuss a possible future for the science of organization design – one that I hope will come to pass. I understand organization design to refer to a particular form of human problem solving in which the problem is one of getting multiple individuals with diverse knowledge and interests to collectively achieve something that they could not by acting individually. Because bounded rationality affects not only the members but also the designers of organizations, solutions may be imperfect and unsuccessful, and many may have arisen almost unintentionally. But clearly there are better and worse solutions, and given the predominantly organizational nature of our economy, many good solutions exist in the form of the organizations that surround us.