Self-organization of the product and organization relationship – A processual perspective on the mirroring hypothesis

This paper builds on several studies of the mirroring hypothesis and specifically develops the idea of an emergent mirroring hypothesis, being the processual mirroring leading towards a one-to-one relationship between the product system and the organization. By assuming that operative product development organizations have an inherent self-organizing capability, we develop a hypothesis of an emergent mirroring process. A process where uncertainty arising from misalignment between the product system and the organization sparks the self-organizing creation of both organizational order and product definition leading to new alignment between the two. Through a participative case study, we provide an illustrative example of how this process is enacted to solve a hardware integration issue spanning across intra-organizational borders and suggest conditions that need to be provided for developers to self-organize the development of product and organizational order