Organizational Innovation and Interactive Technology among NGOs in Postsocialist Eastern Europe

这一雄心勃勃的建议由一位在东欧集团调查工作中经验丰富的研究人员提出，旨在通过当地现场合作伙伴和外国对应调查人员和东道主的合作协助，审查后社会主义东欧非政府组织(NGO)之间的组织创新和互动技术使用。借鉴组织理论的最新发展，特别是圣达菲研究所关于自组织、非等级制度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，研究人员建议通过关注中东欧四个社会的非政府组织，收集来自波兰、捷克共和国、斯洛伐克和匈牙利的100个非政府组织的数据，研究组织形式和互动技术的共同进化。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微的描述。非政府组织特别适合研究，因为它们越来越多地被推动超越其现有的角色，以促进经济和社会活力，帮助其社会开发创新来源和产生创新的能力。这种能力既取决于丰富的社团生活(在共产主义时期严重萎缩)，也取决于必要的各种组织形式(共产主义时期不存在)。信息技术可以在促进这两个方面的生成能力方面发挥重要作用。通过考察该地区各国不同类型组织的差异，研究人员将绘制出采用和使用互动技术的创新如何受到组织形式的影响，进而新技术如何促进组织创新。这项研究强大的当代理论基础及其多学科、多文化背景带来了特别有趣的见解，特别是在之前的组织理论被北美偏见和研究结果的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.