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Learning to Design Organizations and Learning from Designing Them

Stern School of Business, New York University, New York, New York 10012-1118
Lundquist College of Business, University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon 97403-1503
rdunbar{at}stern.nyu.edu
starbuck{at}uoregon.edu

The academic focus of organization studies has unfortunately drifted over the years from the issues that organizations pose for their members and their societies, and the issues that confront people who seek to improve organizations. However, studies of efforts to design organizations can help us to better understand organizations and may also help us to improve them. The papers in this special issue of Organization Science describe several specific efforts to design organizations, telling why people wanted to make changes and what happened when people sought to make them.

Key Words: organization design; evolution; fit; learning; research issues

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