Organizational Innovation and Interactive Technology among NGOs in Postsocialist Eastern Europe

这项雄心勃勃的建议是由一位在东欧集团调查方面经验丰富的研究人员提出的，目的是在当地现场同事和外国对口调查人员和东道主的合作协助下，审查后社会主义东欧非政府组织（ngo）的组织创新和互动技术使用情况。根据组织理论的最新发展，特别是圣菲研究所关于自组织、非等级系统作为组织形式的工作，这些组织形式具有在快速变化的环境中持续适应所需的灵活性，研究人员建议通过集中研究四个东中欧社会的非政府组织，收集来自波兰、捷克共和国、斯洛伐克和匈牙利。数据收集将包括实地调查，并对其中20个组织进行深入的人种学研究，以提供研究中关键变量之间因果关系的更细致的说明。非政府组织特别适合作为研究对象，因为它们正日益被推动超越其现有的作用，促进经济和社会的活力，协助其社会发展创新的来源和产生创新的能力。这种能力取决于丰富的社团生活（在共产主义下严重萎缩）和必要的各种组织形式（在共产主义下不存在）。信息技术可以在促进生成能力的两个方面发挥重要作用。通过研究该地区各国组织类型的差异，研究人员将绘制出组织形式如何塑造采用和使用互动技术的创新，以及新技术如何促进组织创新的图表。这项研究的坚实和现代的理论基础及其多学科，多元文化的背景保证了特别有趣的见解，特别是在如此多的先前的组织理论已经被北美偏见和普遍性假设所影响的情况下。

This ambitious proposal by a researcher experienced at Eastern Bloc investigation seeks to examine organizational innovation and interactive technology use among Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in Postsocialist Eastern Europe, with the collaborative assistance of local on-site associates and foreign counterpart investigators and hosts. Drawing upon recent developments in organization theory, especially work at the Santa Fe institute on self-organizing, non-hierarchical systems as organizational forms that have the requisite flexibility for continuing adaptability in rapidly changing environments, the researchers propose to study the coevolution of organizational forms and interactive technologies by focusing on NGOs in four East Central European Societies, gathering data from 100 NGOs in Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary. Data collection will include field surveys augmented by in-depth, ethnographic studies of 20 of these organizations to provide more nuanced accounts of the lines of causation among critical variables in the study.NGOs are particularly appropriate for study because they are increasingly being pushed to move beyond their existing roles to facilitate economic and social dynamism, assisting their societies in developing sources of innovation and the capacity to generate it. Such capacity depends on both a rich associational life (badly atrophied under communism) and a requisite variety of organizational forms (which did not exist under communism). Information technology can play an important role in facilitating both aspects of generative capability.By examining variation across types of organizations among countries in the region, the researchers will chart how innovation in the adoption and use of interactive technologies is shaped by organizational form and, in turn, how new technologies facilitate organizational innovation. This study's robust and contemporary theoretical grounding and its multidisciplinary, multicultural setting promise especially interesting insights, especially as so much of prior organizational theory has been colored by a North American bias and the assumption of universality in findings.