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Follow on Google News | How Companies Work (Austrian Science Fund FWF)By: Austrian Science Fund FWF The last twenty years have seen, alongside companies organised in the traditional manner, the emergence of new forms of organisation which are mainly driven by developments in information technology (IT). Examples include open-source projects such as Wikipedia or innovative start-ups. At the same time, a host of new approaches have appeared in management literature to describe and better understand this new world of work. Does that mean that everything done yesterday is obsolete? Is it true, for instance, that new organisational forms increasingly get by without authority and hierarchy and that staff members choose their tasks according to their own skills? Do the most recent theories really deliver on their promise or are they perhaps only myths of a brave new world of work? These are the issues investigated by the economist Markus Reitzig from the University of Vienna in a large-scale research project supported by the FWF. "I don't think recent phenomena make our entire existing knowledge obsolescent" Empirical Investigations of New Forms of Organisation In an important part of the project Reitzig and his team use the Sourceforge Research Data Archive (SRDA) where data from the sourceforge.net website are archived. Supporting companies in the implementation of projects by providing free software, this website already boasts more than 400,000 projects and 3.7 million registered users. "With the help of the archived data we can model what exactly happened in these projects, who took on what task at what point in time and what the result was", explains Reitzig. On the basis of several thousand observations, the researchers assess whether open-source software projects are actually co-ordinated without a classical authority structure. Additionally, they study the effect of mechanisms of self-selection. Traditional Values vs. New Forms "Authority and hierarchy have been and remain extremely relevant structural aspects in organisations" IT is just one trend that differentiates the world of yesterday from that of today. Reitzig identifies other phenomena that lead to the emergence of new organisational forms, such as exploding demographic growth, cross-border exchanges of goods and services or resource shortages. "New organisational structures will emerge wherever these new trends result in tasks being defined differently or entrusted to other entities than in the past, for instance in crowd sourcing, or if they lead to new remuneration patterns." Basic Principles of Organisations In another central section of the project, the researchers from the University of Vienna explore how certain basic principles of organisations emerge in the first place, "specialisation" Personal details: Markus Reitzig (http://strategy.univie.ac.at/ Article and photo will be available as of Monday, 20 April 2015 from 10.00 am CEST at: http://www.fwf.ac.at/ Scientific Contact: Univ.-Prof. Dipl.-Chem. Dr. Markus Georg Reitzig, MBR University of Vienna Department of Business Administration Oskar-Morgenstern- 1090 Vienna, Austria T +43 / 1 / 4277 - 37970 E markus.reitzig@ W http://strategy.univie.ac.at Austrian Science Fund FWF: Marc Seumenicht Haus der Forschung Sensengasse 1 1090 Vienna, Austria T +43 / 1 / 505 67 40 - 8111 E marc.seumenicht@ W http://www.fwf.ac.at Distribution: PR&D – Public Relations for Research & Education Mariannengasse 8 1090 Vienna, Austria T +43 / 1 / 505 70 44 E contact@prd.at W http://www.prd.at End
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