The new team organization:: Learning to manage arbitrariness

Bureaucracy, in its most advanced form, was designed to hold personal discretion and political manipulation in check. In reorganizing around teams, firms have eliminated the structures and rules which kept arbitrariness at bay. My research shows that finding new approaches to dealing with arbitrariness is critical to helping the team organization reach its vast potential. Successful post-bureaucratic managers have rebuilt their organizations upon objectivity as a central value. By stressing respect for team autonomy, making decision processes public, and encouraging challenge and gamesmanship at all levels, these managers have created novel, non-bureaucratic ways of addressing arbitrariness.