Ever since humankind began to act in concert in pursuit of its goals, some principle of organization has been at work in applying structure to the enterprise at hand. Task specialization along lines of capabilities, divined or observed, was early to be established as a principle of organization.

Technology has always played a critical role in both facilitating and demanding change in the organization structure. Functional representations of organization has been pretty much the dominant principle and very specially so since the advent of the industrial age.

In later years, when the vertical stovepipes of functional specialization have proven to be limited in their capacity to respond to changed technological and economic environments a new perspective was brought into the defining principle of an organization. A process view was considered more relevant as it avoided the ingrained alleyways of vertical specialization and the vested interests that infested those alleyways.

In using a horizontal principle however, we soon discovered that moving the supporting infrastructures of information dissemination, decision-making, strategy determining and other processes was not automatic. Instead of now moving smoothly across functions, process have begun in reality to meander through a maze of points on the horizontal and vertical planes of organizations. We have discovered that it was never the intention to do away with the vertical hierarchy. This perhaps with good reason. The human factor in any decision making and relationship process is essentially 'arational'. Meaning it is not bound to the laws of rationality. Rationality is at best only a part of the schema. Defining organizations along only one dimension of either function or process is not enough. One forces an essentially organic phenomena, that of self-interested clustering into a non-organic format of atomic and/or tabular events.

The arithmetic of events do not make an organization. The synergy/symbiosis of organic phenomena however can.

Fig 1 Vertical or Horizontal stovepipes. The one dimensional organizing principle

Today's environment and especially business environment is characterized by having to deal with issues of multiple change, at times conflicting change, simultaneously. For example, many global institutions are having to both expand and downsize in different geographic and/or business centers. This is placing unprecedented strains on the processes existent within organizations. Human resource development, financial resource development, sales and marketing processes must both expand and shrink simultaneously. Breaking such problems down to national tactics or Business unit tactics has led to nothing but corporate suboptimistaion. The dream of creating an enterprise model of the corporation in the global era is doomed beforehand because the one dimensional organization principle is incapable of encompassing multidimensional phenomena.

In recent months however, a new metaphor has entered our conceptual vocabulary. In the midst of the explosive emergence of new information technologies the seeds of a new organizing principle have been sown and the time has come to explore this principle.

If the challenge is to manage changeability, scalability and competencies of an organization in an environment defined by simultaneous multi-dimensional change then the organizing principle must be closer to the characteristics of organic phenomena than to the austere clarity of an engineering event. It must be closer to the amorphism and differentiation of quantum phenomena than the mechanics of Euclidean geometry, it must be closer to the self-organizing phenomena of Chaos theory than the static building block metaphors of the factory.

Object Orientation is a metaphor describing the newest concepts of organizing information. It portrays information systems as clusters of capabilities which can interact in various ways given varying environmental triggers. The same capability can manifest itself differently and interact with its environment differently depending on the environment within which it is invoked. An object is an encapsulation of some data and behavior that are associated with one another. An object as an encapsulated bundle of potentiality can then be ascribed a set of interactive capabilities depending upon the universal set of usages it can survive in. This information object can then inherit and pass on its attributes from and to other objects.

Without engaging in a long discussion of Object technology let us just use the above description as a sufficient fundament to apply this metaphor to the issue of the organizing principle itself.

The Object Oriented Organization is a natural extension of Object Oriented Information systems. The OO Organization model will have a natural and direct correspondence to an OO information model thereby allowing, for the first time, the much sought after Enterprise model to achieve the state of self consistence required for its viability and stability. Without such correspondence, an enterprise model is ripped apart by the static nature of existing enterprise models and the dynamic capabilities of multidimensional OO based information models pulling in opposing directions.

The Object-Oriented Organization model bases itself on self-organizing and self-consistent competency constructs that can go through phase and state changes without losing its inherent definition. It is a competency definition that can interact in both the functional plane and process plane depending upon contextual demands and also move from plane to plane without having to compromise its integrity to the vested interests of either plane, as the competency definition would be at a level that would encompass those interests. The political power of hierarchical command and the technical power of process expertise would both be modeled in this higher level organizational object. It would thus provide a 'wormhole' pathway for the task being processed to move from one plane to another and do so in a time continuum without creating a fundamental breakdown in the functional and/or process organizations. The matrix is resolved at a higher dimension, that of the Organizational Object.

By adding the dimension of capabilities as separate from function or process we are able to postulate an organizing principle that transcends all three. For we are now suddenly in the realm of pure competency. Competency definitions at this level can manifest themselves, depending on the context as function, process or capability. These are competency definitions far beyond an inventory of skills. These are competencies that deal with an organizations' self-organizing and self-consistent integrity.

Fig 2 The shape described by a sphere moving through space is a tube. A 'wormhole' temporarily connecting dimensions with openings at both ends, since the Object encompasses the attributes of all dimensions. A matrix is a closed path. At the meeting point of the matrix, the organizational instance, an individual or team, must chose between functional or process behaviors.

These competencies are not easy to define. After eons of one-dimensional organizations our conceptual vocabulary has to struggle to define competencies which are universal as against those which are expediency based. One example of the kind of Organizational Object we are discussing here could be the Relationship Competency. It has some specific elements and psychologies that are associated and which together can engage in a diverse set of contextual interactions without losing the inherent integrity of a relationship competency. Another example would be the Heurism competency. As we have seen with Object Technology, specially at the level of Business Objects, Organizational Objects can be notoriously difficult to define and may require several iterations before autonomy, precision and relevancy are achieved.

Fig 3 The Organizational Object will encapsulate specific Functions and Process depending on the particular Organizational Competency it represents. The analogy to the ORBs (Object request brokers) represents the Organizational Objects symbolizing the competencies required to sense the environment, to communicate / interact with it and to establish interaction between organizational objects.

Like Object Oriented Information systems, Object Oriented Organizations will bring together the relevant Organizational Objects (which then turn out to be Meta objects / Universal Objects) to serve the purposes of the chosen institution, be it a commercial enterprise, a social institution, a military or other organization. In an ideal world, so to speak, a 'library' of Organizational Objects (Pure Competencies) will be invoked and selected from to assemble a solution to the Organizational Problem / Need.

The question of implementation then becomes not so much a question of inventing exotic new forms of teams or imparting exotic new skills to the people who in the end make up organizational objects. It is the principle and competency around which the teams get built that is the innovative element here. The competencies that form the fundament of such teams are universal in nature as against functional. They are highly elemental / abstracted skillsets as against multiple or multi-disciplinary skillsets. That does not preclude or render obsolete any of the other more functional and/or event bound skillsets, it simply makes them instantiations of the universal.

Workflow Models are in many ways proto-examples of Organizational Objects manifesting themselves. Event sequencing is not the primary benefit of a Workflow Application but competency and hence capability rationalization is. Parallel processes and decision paths that can be enabled using Workflow applications are not merely effectivisation measures but incursions in the organizing principle of the organization in question. The continuous 're-engineering' capability inherent in a Workflow application transcends both function and process and brings a whole new dimension of changeability and scalability into the organization structure. Hence in its abstract form a Workflow Competency can be an example of an Organizational Object.

The purpose here is to bring a new organizing principle into the structure of organizations just as OO brings a new organizing principle into the structure of Information systems. The architecture of the organization then takes on as crucial a role as it does in designing Object Oriented Information Systems. The critical question becomes not what data are we working with or what functional goal are we serving but what systems do we need to shape the future (of our organization) not administer it. The wherewithal to create such systems exist today and we now need the organizational infrastructure to support it. If this seems a heretical reversal of roles then that is because it is beginning to dawn upon us that perhaps information / knowledge is the universally existent and our organizations / structures mere manifestations of our current insights into that knowledge.

The Object Oriented Organization structure allows us to address the full potential of the architectural question, why is this structure being created ? As in the architecture of dwellings the answer lies not in the goal of dwelling but in the experiencing of it and more the enrichment of it. Commercial enterprises are despite appearances not very different.

The businesses that shape the future address the question of why, not with the goal of profit but with the motivation of enriching the future by creating it. Profit is an essential but mere means to that end.

Object Orientation is a metaphor and like all metaphors its power lies in our vision not in our engineering skills. The Object Oriented Organization is yet another level of that vision and its power lies simply in the fact that it unshackles the Organizing Principle from the bonds of one dimensional engineering and gives it back to our creative instincts.