Decentralization Is the New Center of Command

For almost three decades, MIT Professor Thomas W. Malone has been researching the enormous impact of information technology on organizations. Against the backdrop of the global economic downturn, Malone discusses how new forms of communication are increasingly empowering workers, and consequently, loosening the structures of corporate hierarchies. This situation will eventually lead to the widespread use of what he calls the coordinate-and-cultivate approach to management. With this approach, coordination focuses on the activities that need to be done within the firm and the relationships among these activities. Cultivation, meanwhile, focuses on the people doing the activities: what they want, what they’re good at, how they can realize their potential. While top-down control is needed at certain times, the author argues that it will also become increasingly imperative to help people find and develop their own natural strengths. Looking at the sweep of human history, the author unearths signs that the business world may be returning to our smaller, loosely constructed, hunter-gatherer roots of yore. This organizational evolution opens up a whole new range of business possibilities, which companies would do well to exploit and embrace before they find themselves the dinosaurs in a new age.