ABSTRACT

In this book, we see organizations as social systems that continuously experiment with meaningful survival. Moreover, we have argued that, in order to be able to perform these experiments, organizations should have low parameter value structures. However, for all kinds of reasons, the parameter values of an organizational structure may be ‘high’, undermining that organization’s capacity for both continuous experimentation and meaningful survival. In this case, an episodic intervention in the organization’s structure may be required. It is the goal of this chapter to explain what episodic interventions in organization structures are and what characteristics they have. Based on these characteristics, a model, the 3-D model, can be developed that can support the design of episodic interventions that aim to reduce the parameter values of high parameter value structures, thereby restoring the organization’s capacity for continuous experimentation.