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The Foundations of a Theoretical Model for Organizational Configurations and Change in Online Collaborative Processes

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Book cover Structural Differentiation in Social Media

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Social Networks ((LNSN))

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Abstract

This chapter begins the process of intertwining the domains of organizational configurations and organizational change into a synthesized framework of configurational change motors. The goal is to articulate a comprehensive theoretical model that can bring the conversation about social structuration, covered in the previous chapters within a very broad and abstract terrain, to a more tangible and precisely specified reality. The first step is to identify specific types of system-level structuration, which in keeping with existing literature (e.g., Mintzberg 1979, 1989) we will call “organizational configurations.” Second, we will discuss the necessity and sufficiency of the configurations identified to date. Third, we will derive methods of translating the conceptual definitions of the configurations into specific operationalizable concepts. Fourth, we will lay the groundwork for the specific mechanisms by which configurations change and succeed each other over time (Van de Ven and Poole 1995), which will be further developed in Chap. 7.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA

    Sorin Adam Matei

  2. South Dakota State University, Brookings, SD, USA

    Brian C. Britt

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  1. Sorin Adam Matei
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Matei, S.A., Britt, B.C. (2017). The Foundations of a Theoretical Model for Organizational Configurations and Change in Online Collaborative Processes. In: Structural Differentiation in Social Media. Lecture Notes in Social Networks. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64425-7_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64425-7_6

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