Comparative Study of Emerging New Forms of Flexible, Global Organizations in Japan and the U.S

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The PI proposes to develop mid-range theories of new forms of business organization. He will perform ethnographic case studies of organizational re-design episodes in Japan and the United States. Primary targets of the study will be the enabling effects of information technology on the design of new organizational forms and a comparative study of American and Japanese transnational corporations. The NSF portion of the funding will support a subset of the research which includes German, Japanese, and American corporations. The research program has two phases. During Phase I, the PI will perform comparative surveys of the organizational design challenges facing managers in companies in the three cultures. In Phase II the PI will study organizational heuristics invented and implemented in order to achieve critical capabilities.