Complex Organizations

There's been a lot written about social media and modern organizations, but publicly available research in this fast-changing area is relatively scarce. Which makes this HBS Working Paper interesting.

The fact that Micheal Tushman is one of the authors makes it interesting to me...he's one of the main popularizers of the Exploitation-Exploration contrast.

The focus is on coordination across the organization, and has some interesting observations of the single large company studied. Here's one that caught my eye: "...the category spanners in the firm are women concentrated in the upper-middle management ranks and in a few functions, most notably sales, marketing, and general executive management."