Designing Inter-Organisational Collectivities for Dynamic Fit: Stability, maneuvrability and Application in Disaster Relief Endeavours

Abstract

The rich armamentarium of contingency theory can help to overcome the challenges of interorganizational design. However, its predominate focus on static fit is incommensurate with the fundamentally dynamic nature of organizations and their environments. This problem is exacerbated in the context of interorganizational design, particularly where the membership of participating organizations is discontinuous. Alternatively, recent research focusing on dynamic organizational fit and misfit elucidates novel design issues and engineering techniques even in the very complex interorganizational context. In this article, we begin with a focused summary of dynamic fit and misfit, and we illustrate the use and utility of this view through empirical application to a very complex interorganizational case involving thousands of participating organizations attempting to provide multinational disaster relief. The article concludes with an agenda for continued research along the lines of this investigation.

Open PDF

Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jan 01, 2011
Accession Number
ADA554593

Entities

People

  • Mark E. Nissen

Organizations

  • Naval Postgraduate School

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms
  • Biomedical
  • C4I
  • Space

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Aircrafts
  • Business Administration
  • Command And Control
  • Commerce
  • Control Systems
  • Disasters
  • Engineering
  • Environment
  • Government (Foreign)
  • Governments
  • Humanitarian Assistance
  • Indian Ocean
  • Information Processing
  • Information Systems
  • Knowledge Management
  • Maneuverability
  • Organizational Structure

Readers

  • Emergency Management and Homeland Security.
  • Organizational Process Management (OPM).
  • Systems Analysis and Design