Topic: “Spider Webs and Organization Design”
Thursday, June 19th, 2025 at 10:00 am to 11:30 am Pacific time.
Since before the 9/11 attacks in the United States, physical and cyber security experts have been warning us about our vulnerabilities to decentralized networked organizations that seek to disrupt more traditionally structured command and control, hierarchical, bureaucratic organizations. And we have seen the growth of such decentralized networked organizations in all types of settings, and with a wide range of purposes (some ‘good’ and some ‘not so good’).
We are now living in the age of the full throated, distributed, networked “spider web” style of organization. The ‘spider web’ metaphor pops up frequently – it has been used twice in the last few days to describe organizing efforts for major strategic plans – see, for example, the BBC’s article on the Ukrainian drone attack on Russia (BBC – Ukrainian Drone Attack) and the ongoing references to Scattered Spider, a hacking group that has caused disruption around the world (Wikipedia on Scattered Spider or America’s Cyber Defense Agency). Both relied upon ‘spider web’ organization to carry out specific missions.
Today, we encounter these new webbed networks (as well as the hybrids of these newer organizations and the more rigid, monolithic, legacy organizations) across the spectrum of organizations with which we work. The ‘webbed network’ could be a single organization or a group of organizations. In some cases, the ‘spider web’ analogy is used to describe how to achieve specific strategies; in some, it is used to describe how the organization will work to achieve its purpose; and in others it is used to describe how the organization and its work are designed. There is not always agreement about what is a webbed network, how it works, or how to develop one. And this can create confusion and conflict as we work to sort it out. As organizational designers, our challenge is to make sense of it all.
So, in this water cooler deliberation, let’s take on the questions surrounding organizations as webbed networks, and consider the following:
-What has changed with the advent of webbed networks?
-What assumptions, forms, and styles do they take on?
-How do we design organizations in the midst of these contrasting organization design assumptions, forms, and styles?
Join us at 10:00am (pacific time) on Thursday, June 19, 2025 at the Virtual Water Cooler for another stimulating discussion with friends and colleagues. Register
Best wishes,
Pam Posey and Pete Sorenson (on behalf of the STS Roundtable)
