Revisiting adhocracy: From rhetorical revisionism to smart mobs

Journal of Futures Studies

Volumn 15, Issue 2, 2010, Pages 33-50

  Dolan, Timothy E ^a  

^a The Catholic University of Korea   (South Korea)

Author keywords

Adhocracy; Emerging organizational forms; Mintzberg; New adhocracy; Organizational change; Organizational forms; Smart mobs; Types of organizations

Indexed keywords

EID: 78650871062     PISSN: 10276084     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (32)

1. See, Travica, Bob. (1999). New organizational designs: Information aspects, Ablex, p 1.
2. Congressional Record, March 6, 2009, Senate S2871. Retrieved July 29, 2009 From CongressionRecord. com, (http://www.congressonrecord.com/page/S2871)
3. Congressional Record, March 17, 2009, Senate S3132. Retrieved July 29, 2009 From CongressonRecord.com, (http://www.congressonrecord.com/page/S3132)
4. Congressional Record: March 25, 2009 (Senate), p.S3752. Retrieved July 29, 2009 From CongressonRecord.com (http://www.congressonrecord.com/page/S3752)
5. Walter J. Olezek, The Use of Task Forces in the House, CRS Report for Congress, Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress, Order Code RS20421. Retrieved December 28, 1999
6. Ritholtz, Barry, Fleckenstein and Task, Bailout Nation: How Greed and Easy Money Corrupted Wall Street and Shook the World Economy, John Wiley and Sons, 2009, p. 178.
7. Retrieved July 29, 2009, from http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O12-adhocracy.html
8. Robert Waterman, Adhocracy: The Power to Change, W Norton & Co Inc., 1992.
9. Jonathan Grudin, "Groupware and Cooperative Work: Problems and Prospects" in Brenda Laurel, ed., The Art of Human-Computer Interface Design, Addison-Wesley, 1990 (page 183)
10. Darrell Ince. "adhocracy." A Dictionary of the Internet. 2001. Retrieved July 17, 2009 from Encyclopedia.com: DARREL INCE. "adhocracy." A Dictionary of the Internet. 2001. Encyclopedia.com. (December 27, 2009). Retrieved July 18, 2009, from http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O12-adhocracy.html
11. "Emotional Intelligence" was popularized by Daniel Goleman (1998), but was preceded by work in the multiple intelligences theory associated primarily with Harold Gardner, (1983).
12. The musical ensemble as adhocracy is true more for formal orchestras and perhaps recording industry "session" players. As will be detailed later, freelance musicians who might form or join bands and then move on to other groups are better described as part of the "new adhocracy".
13. Pinchot, Gifford III, Intrapreneurship: why You Don't Have to Leave the Corporation to Be an Entrepreneur, Harper and Collins, 1986.
14. The term, "infomating technology" was coined by Shoshana Zuboff, Associate Professor at the Harvard Business School in her book, In the Age of the Smart Machine. 1988. She was one of the first to write on the liberating potential of technology in organizational contexts, its threat to traditional middle management and its inevitable dominance in assuming not only the routinized tasks of bureaucratic process, but its power in guiding decision-making and of ultimately opening greater imaginative latitude in organizational behavior.
15. Retrieved July 19, 2009, from http://www.12manage.com/methods_mintzberg_configu-rations.html#userforum
16. Graphic downloaded from 12manage website: http://www.12manage.com/methods_mintzberg_configurations.html
17. Figure from, http://www.12manage.com/methods_mintzberg_configurations.html
18. See, http://www.valuebasedmanagement.net/methods_mintzberg_configurations.html
19. I sought verification of the paragraphs above pertaining to Mintzberg's definitions and my interpretations of his typology by contacting Dr. Mintzberg directly with a draft of this piece. His response indicated agreement with my premise that adhocracy has developed the patina of being derogatory never intended by the scholars who coined and developed it as a concept. He went on to comment on my sports analogy with this: "I must, however, complain about baseball. That strikes me as the professional bureaucracy, football as machine bureaucracy, rugby as adhocracy, and our beloved hockey as (sometimes) a political arena."
20. Recent efforts at post-secondary education reform in France were resisted not only by educators and university administrators, but by students as well leading to the initiative being abandoned. Retrieved July 18, 2009, from http://www.france24.com/en/20090210-teachers-students-march-against-education-reforms-france-paris. It is a testament to the institutional might of what can be called, The educational-industrial complex, that reform is so difficult.
21. For a fuller elaboration on the bureaucratic vs. professional orientations, see Blau and Scott, Formal Organizations: A Comparative Approach, Stanford University Press, 2003, pp. 60-74. (Originally published by Chandler Publishing, San Francisco, 1962)
22. Bookings are being taken at, Retrieved July 16, 2009, from http://www.virgingalactic.com/
23. Lam, Alice, Two Alternative Models of Learning and Innovative Organizations: «J-form" vs. "Adhocracy", in Fagerberg, Mowery, Nelson, The Oxford Handbook of Innovation, Oxford University Press, 2006, p.127.
24. Bilton, Chris, "The New Adhocracy: Strategy, Risk and the Small Creative Firm", Centre for Cultural Policy Studies, University of Warwick, CV4 7AL, 1999.
25. Vass, George, "The wide world of baseball: foreign-born players are filling major league rosters, showing the true measures of global talent in the American pastime", Baseball Digest February 1, 2003.
26. Schrag, Peter, "Baseball and Immigration", California Progress Report. Retrieved July 9, 2009, from http://www.californiaprogressreport.com/2007/10/schrag_baseball.html
27. Count of foreign players active for the 2009-2010 season listed on the Wikipedia site for foreign born players (those not from England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland or Ireland), divided by the active roster capacity for each of the 20 premier league teams. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_foreign_Premier_League_players
28. For a fuller treatment of new media journalism a good point of departure would be Reingold, Harold, Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution, Pegasus Books, 2002.
29. Clay Shirky's presentation on institutions versus collaborative communities. Retrieved August 7, 2009, from http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/clay_shirky_on_institutions_versus_collaboration.html
30. While this sounds as though it is explicitly describing Islamic fundamentalism, it can be just as plausibly applied to the underlying narratives underlying Christian or Vedic fundamentalism as well.
31. It is hopefully not lost on the linguistically inclined that "wiki" sites were so coined by programmer Ward Cunningham from the Hawaiian word for "quick".
32. A particularly good example of this is TED.com; a site of video presentations by leading thinkers and cutting-edge masters of their crafts. Their presentations are posted often within days with subtitles ranging from Arabic to Chinese (simplified and traditional).