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Organizations are currently defined as streams of organizing processes. Organizing is a process of patterning interactions and communications by subjecting them to formal constraints and controls. Most organizations in contemporary societies are professional bureaucracies. Organizations impose a rigid division of labor, establish chains of command, and operate through hierarchy by assigning responsibility and accountability to their human members. However, functioning among unpredictable contingencies often requires breaking the formal rules. This is how flexibility enters the definition of organizations and organizing. Flexibility is measured in an improved ability to cope with unpredictable challenges emerging from complex, evolving environments and in development of hybrid forms. Complexity of continuously changing environment, reflexivity of human...
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Magala, S. (2016). Flexible Organizations. In: Farazmand, A. (eds) Global Encyclopedia of Public Administration, Public Policy, and Governance. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31816-5_132-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31816-5_132-1
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