ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the contents used to define the concept of organizational form and presents an organizing framework that captures the essence of most existing and newly developing theories on the emergence and evolution of new organizational forms. The organizing framework proposed employs three dimensions: the underlying philosophy of system equilibrium/non-equilibrium, the source of new organizational forms, and the mechanism determining the process of organizational evolution. These three dimensions are chosen because they signify fundamental differences among various theoretical arguments. With these three dimensions, both researchers and managers can not only map out most arguments in the study of new organizational forms but also compare and contrast differences among various theories. For example, the co-evolution theory and the self-organization theory are very similar because they both emphasize interactive relationships between organizations and environments. However, according to this framework, these two theories are fundamentally different in their underlying philosophy as to whether organizations are in equilibrium or non-equilibrium systems.
