The Coordination Mechanisms of Self-Managing Organizations : An Explorative Case-Study of Three Pioneers

After many years of limited activity in the field of coordination research, new organizing forms with the aim to abandon managerial hierarchies have caused a renaissance in the research of new solutions to this universal organizing problem. An emerging stream of research about Self-Managing Organizations (SMOs) which eliminates formal hierarchies and managers completely, have left researchers wondering about SMOs new coordination solution as antecedent organizing forms have their coordination solution strongly dependent on managers. The aim of this thesis was to explore and identify the mechanisms that SMOs utilize to coordinate work output, how these mechanisms are configured and how they correspond to the settings of SMOs. Due to the nascent state of knowledge development within this field, the aim was operationalized with the help of coordination conceptualizations and theory from nearby fields. A multiple case-study was conducted, using deep, semi structured interviews, triangulated with internal documentation, external documentation and archival records. The study identified the mechanisms Planning based on ‘sense and respond’, Competence driven and partially fluent roles, the merged category of Familiarity peer-trust and transparency, Digital infrastructure, Cultural content and finally, Content of repeated procedures. Through a self-composed analytical approach, the study revealed that traditionally mechanistic coordination mechanisms were of less importance to SMOs and had an added organic and group-dependent dimension to their configurations, compared to similar mechanisms in hierarchies. Furthermore, the findings suggested that Digital infrastructure, Cultural content and Content of repeated procedures were configured in a way, particularly useful and important to SMOs. The reason was that the three mechanisms constituted a mechanistic but editable framing, which both aligned and encouraged organic efforts in a certain direction. They also corresponded well to SMOs settings as they could be exercised and edited by anyone, they facilitated coordination cross-teams without managers and they were scalable in theory.