ABSTRACT
A new kind of institution, the Multi-Organization Enterprise (MOE), is increasingly being used to respond to large-scale societal concerns. The MOE is generally a collaboration of organizations in government, industry, and other sectors. The global rise of MOEs will almost certainly continue and will probably intensify. The relationship between the government's top manager of an MOE and the private sector has become more complex. The top MOE manager must explicitly establish procedures for tracking and assessing early warning signals. The appearance and increasing importance of civilian-oriented MOEs severely complicate the task of successfully managing such endeavors. Like the SST program, the American effort to develop coal-based synthetic fuels grew both in complexity and in number of participants. A vigorous and viable synthetic fuels industry may be emerging, or in the face of new disappointments, a new wave of protest and backlash may again limit synfuels as a feasible energy alternative.
