ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at how changes in organizational structure can lead to the emergence of new forms of organization. Organizations come in all shapes and forms, from large and complex bureaucracies to operations run by a single person. Changes in organizational form have been a constant of business life through the ages, with market forces mandating new ways of arranging assets and resources to respond to customer needs and expectations. Knowledge is a form of organizational architecture, and knowledge-intensive organizations are those dependent upon activities such as collaboration and social networking for the creation of long term business value. In responding to the demands of markets, customers and other stakeholders, knowledge-intensive organizations are generally regarded as being less bureaucratic and more responsive to change than traditional industrial-age organizations. The business literature documents an extensive range of knowledge types, from explicit, implicit and tacit knowledge, to knowledge what and knowledge how.
