Designing high commitment — high performance organizations

In this paper the author suggests a number of reasons why in recent years there appears to have been a shift in thinking away from traditional bureaucratic-scientific forms of organization to alternative types of organizational design. In most cases, that thinking has yet to be translated into practial action. Experiments in organizational design are taking place but progress appears to be hindered by the lack of a sufficiently well understood design theory, a clearly existing model to emulate, and not least by a failure to know how we get from “where we are” to “where we want to be”. The author describes some of the basic characteristics of what have been called “high commitment—high performance” organizations, and concludes by offering a step-model towards the creation of such an organization.