Corporate manufacturing network: from hierarchy to self-organising system

Increased competition forces small and medium sized companies to collaborate in network settings. In this paper, we are investigating how direction and accountability is handled in a network setting consisting of four independent companies. The high level of inter-company integration has created conditions for the network to develop self-organising characteristics that are based on strategic conversation between companies at all organisational levels and participation of managers as well as engineers in the design of inter-and intraorganisational structures and processes. In self-organising systems direction comes from closeness to customers and strategic dialogue between management and engineers and accountability is a consequence of high level of situational visibility and information exchange on all hierarchical levels among companies.

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