New Companies, New Organizational Forms?

The concept of scientific management introduced by F. W. Taylor (1914) was based on the idea that the setup of internal rules on task management was “the” solution for coordinating the workforce and achieving managerial control. More than a century later, rules as coordination mechanisms are still embedded in metaphoric and visual artifacts, like organizational forms and their representation in organization charts. Theory and practice of organization design have stated and refined such rules (as organization forms), so that despite the identification of some new emerging forms (Spaghetti organization, Organizational Improvisation, etc.) the contingency approach to organization design has always been able to explain them, both at the inter-and intraorganizational level (see Burton & Obel, 1998). Nevertheless, the joint effect of globalization and economic downturn have boosted the emerging of “modern startups” that, differently from the traditional Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) see to be designed to grow –not just to survive. In fact, while Dodge, Fullerton & Robbins (1994) found that no matter what their stage of life cycle is, the main aim of SMEs is “survival”, these “modern startups” seem to be designed to grow. Their novelty probably seek for new rules of internal design.