‘The changing core of organization and organizations: from contingency to combinative’

The essay explains how organization as a discipline can distinctively contribute to the understanding of organizations as objects “today”, i.e. under the challenges of a volatile and knowledge based economy. It is maintained that “design” is the core interest of organization science, and it is argued how the traditional “contingency theory” formulation of the design problem falls short from explaining “todays” organizations. An alternative ‘combinative' approach to the problem, emerging in forefront organizational research, is described and advocated.