Strategy in Dynamic Information-intensive Environments

Strategic alliance, partnerships, network and outsourcing relationships, team-based virtual firms and self-designing organizations are among the names given to ad hoc, temporal structures seen to define many new organizational arrangements. Three issue areas which help identify the strategy that influence sustainability are addressed: structural linkage, the challenge of the increasingly dynamic information environment, and the organizational capacities, either in place or created in the processes of experimenting with new organizational arrangements. Shifts in strategic thinking and behavior, which appear to underlie much of the experimentation in new forms, are considered. Several organizational problem areas which are potential weaknesses in the sustainability of new forms are discussed. The importance of information as an organizational design element in today's dynamic, information-intensive environments is considered.