Changing to Self-Organization: An exploratory study into the change process of organizations towards self-organization

Abstract: Self-organization has become an interesting organizational paradigm for many of today's practitioners. While the workings of self-organizing organizations have been described in many case studies and synthesized in popular management literature, all those who consider transforming their organization towards this new organizational paradigm are left without any theory or insights into how such a change can be conducted. This empirical exploratory study explores the change process of organizations towards self-organization and establishes core elements of a change theory. In particular, it establishes how change is driven and the role of the change driver. It identifies interventions that move the organization closer to the desired state as well as analytical frameworks that are deemed helpful during the transformation.