Some have to, and some want to: Why firms adopt a post-industrial form

A number of organizational scholars have suggested that to compete in a “post-industrial” world firms must adopt specific structures and approaches to managing. In this article, we explore the why of post-industrial forms, as opposed to the what. Often work in this literature speaks as though in the future only a post-industrial form will allow firms to compete successfully. We argue instead that adoption of a post-industrial form is a contingency: some firms have to operate in this fashion, some firms may want to, and some firms never will adopt a post-industrial form. Based on Thompson’s (Organizations in action, Transaction, New Brunswick, 1967) conception of production processes, we suggest factors that, if present, require firms to be post-industrial as well as strategies that make them want to adopt this relatively new form.