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Organizations (and organizing) are a technology that humans know very little about

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Organizational Design and Enterprise Engineering

Abstract

The human-made technology that is used by organizations has played a crucial role in enabling humans to accomplish impressive endeavors. Despite the critical importance that organizations (or organizing) have played (and still play) in shaping the modern world, they are a technology that humans know very little about, and are still struggling to design and use adequately. The crux of the problem is that the study of organizations (including their design) does not fit neatly into the boxes that are modern academic disciplines. Another important series of issues concerns conducting multidisciplinary research across the silos of academic discipline. Crossing these silos is especially difficult when trying to cross-pollinate ideas as well as publish because of terminological, political, and social challenges. As such, the OD&EE journal is a necessary and important step in the right direction for addressing these issues by promoting research that is both multidisciplinary as well as oriented towards the proactive stance of design and engineering.

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Correspondence to James Lapalme.

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This comment refers to the editorial paper available at doi:10.1007/s41251-016-0005-9.

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Lapalme, J. Organizations (and organizing) are a technology that humans know very little about. Organ Des Enterp Eng 1, 27–31 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41251-016-0004-x

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