New organizational forms: Deconstructing and reconfiguring the literature

Abstract

Less hierarchical, self‐managing, agile, alternative: so‐called “new organizational forms” draw interest from scholars and practitioners alike. Despite an abundance of both conceptual and empirical research, the “new organizational form” concept remains elusive, capturing a growing diversity of phenomena and labels. This paper reviews 180 articles to clarify the “new organizational form” concept. First, the “new forms” literature is deconstructed into the main characterizations ascribed to new forms across three main research streams, illustrating the literature's richness and diversity. Then, the articles are reconfigured into a heatmap of newness, showcasing both the organizational elements that can be different compared to established forms (such as decision‐making), and the operators of how these elements can be changed (such as decentralized). Based on a two‐phased analysis of the literature, five main features associated with new organizational forms are identified: community‐based organizing, decentralized decision‐making authority, self‐organizing teams, networking, and flexible work. The article further proposes an integrative framework of new organizational forms research, which synthesizes perspectives and insights from the economic, institutional, and critical management streams into a shared conceptualization of new forms as discrete configurations of organizational features , and of new form emergence as a change process with respective triggers and outcomes . Providing a shared conceptual language and holistic view on the new forms concept yet clear insights into their specific features, the proposed framework provides common ground for communication, collaboration, and cross‐fertilization across research streams and substantiates three pathways for investigating and theorizing “new organizational forms” in future research.