Concluding Remarks

Abstract

The chapters in this book have chartered the ways in which various types of organizations, from political parties to semi-public organizations and financial organizations, have strived to adapt to environmental and technological changes. They have examined, using the twin concepts of responsiveness and empowerment, the relationship between organizational design and new technology, comparing processes in a variety of organizations in order to highlight the increasing convergence of organizational models, mainly through the adoption of business-inspired change management techniques and tools. Indeed, in many of the cases presented in this volume, new technologies and their potential for inclusion have provided a way to put into practice more market-oriented organizational goals. As ‘the market’ and business practices were hailed and called upon to revamp efficiency and profitability in the wake of the neo liberal revolution of the 1980s, many political organizations as well as corporations were reorganized around those new central concepts. Hence, former public bodies such as Arts Council England (Doustaly, Chapter 2) or London Transport (Théron, Chapter 3) were clearly refurbished along the lines of a newly conceived mixed governance whose goal was to integrate old, vertical, hierarchical practices, in which members and employees were the core constituency, into more open, flexible organizations.