Special issue of Strategic Organization: “The question of intelligent technology: implications for strategy and organization”

Abstract

What are the implications of intelligent technology for strategic organization scholarship? The field of strategic organization has defined its core focus to be on “the design, administration, arrangement, or structuring of an event, activity, practice, process, group, or system so that it will be most useful or have the greatest effect” (Baum et al., 2022: 683). Although the role of technology is recognized as important in this research, the conceptual vocabulary and focus has been on issues such as how organizational structures and processes are adopted for legitimacy (Meyer and Rowan, 1977), choosing organizational designs that minimize transaction costs (Williamson, 1991) and questions of the division of labor and its integration architectures (Puranam, 2018). Today, it is clear that technologies occupy a central role in all organizing processes. And with the swift proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI), there are many new possible roles that technologies can play. Many existing studies of technology within the broader research area of strategic organization have focused on how to use the opportunities provided by technology development to conceive of new business models, take advantage of shifting market boundaries, to mount new alliances, and to lead strategic change (for a summary, see Duhaime et al., 2021). The core conceptualization of technology remains as something that develops predominantly in the environment and strategy is about how best to deploy to improve existing processes or to develop new competencies and business models (e.g. Adner et al., 2019; Volberda et al., 2021). We argue that the time is ripe to recognize how technology is more constitutive of strategy and organization than has so far been recognized. One reason for this is the steady ascendance of the so-called intelligent technologies that bring with them the potential of “intelligent organizing.” In particular, the promise of the current technologies is the emergence of more intelligent organizations, such as those where (1) machines could increasingly perform the tasks that previously relied on human intelligence (consider how large language models are already revolutionizing the generation of knowledge or how algorithms can coordinate distributed work activities), and where (2) human–technology hybrids, according to “augmentation thesis,” will be able to perform intelligent work with less effort and greater creativity; and where (3) technology may allow new forms of organizing to emerge. 1184670 SOQ0010.1177/14761270231184670Strategic OrganizationCall for Papers other2023