All Edge: Inside the New Workplace Networks by Clay Spinuzzi

Author:Clay Spinuzzi [Spinuzzi, Clay]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780226237015
Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
Published: 2015-03-04T16:00:00+00:00

Lone Wolves: The Case of Search Engine Optimization

This chapter is based on Spinuzzi (2010).

Up to this point, I’ve been discussing all-edge adhocracies as they form among relatively independent workers. But adhocracies can form wherever work is organized within networks and around projects—including hierarchies with organizational charts and payrolls. Yes, bureaucratic hierarchies and adhocracies are very different things, optimized for very different outcomes, but they aren’t necessarily antithetical: networks can overlay and interact with hierarchies. When they do, we see some interesting interactions.

That’s certainly true in this case. When I first began studying the work at Semoptco in fall 2008, I expected to learn about how it managed projects. But what I found in this study, which spanned 2008–2009, was adhocracies—adhocracies that crystallized around specific projects, involved collaboration among specialists with a high degree of autonomy, and were built on networks of activity. Those adhocracies overlaid a bureaucratic hierarchy and were anchored by common texts and tools. And although the adhocracies were mostly along the lines of the institutional adhocracies I discussed in chapter 2, every once in a while they pulled in people from other organizations to swarm projects, becoming all-edge adhocracies. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s back up and talk about what Semoptco does and why it needs adhocracies to do it.

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