English

The website nieuworganiseren.nu is a Dutch online magazine on new ways of organizing work. It is based on the conviction that the common, hierarchical taylorian way of organizing is not flexible enough to face the fast changing and highly competitive global market place in which organizations operate. Signs of this can be seen in the bank crisis of recent years and in the fact that American and European companies are legging behind in innovation.

The only problem is that an old, successful habit is hard to change. There are a lot of people and institutions that profit from this old way of doing things. There’s also a very persistent image of man described by Douglas McGregor as Theory X: employees are inherently lazy and will avoid work if they can. But, as the former ceo of 3M, William McKnight pointed out: ‘If you put fences around people, you get sheep.’ In other words: if you treat people like small children, as is done in the taylorian organization, adult people will behave as small children. So to really change the behavior of employees, you have to get rid of the fences. That’s what we try to do with new organizing.

This magazine wants to put new organizations in the spotlight, show that it can be done and that the rewards are enormous. One example in the English literature (described in Hamel, The future of management, and in Brian Carney and Isaac Getz, Freedom Inc.) is W.L. Gore. In the Netherlands Buurtzorg Nederland is a well-cited and well-appreciated example of a new way of organizing work.

To find out more about this website or these examples, please contact the editorial staff: redactie@nieuworganiseren.nu.