We tend to think of corporations and organizations as having a fixed and defined boundary around them — people inside are staff, people outside are constituents, objects inside are property or assets, objects outside are resources or potential inputs. Yet this metaphor has always been more of a convenience than a fact.
Consider the nonprofit organization, for example: its governing board is simultaneously ”in” and ”out” — representing the organization but also the community and the public trust. Or, consider your unpaid workforce (volunteers), or the many contracted partners of artists, unions, technical staff, consultants, ticketing providers, and the like. In all cases, you could consider the participants both inside and outside the organization’s boundary. And you would likely manage them differently depending on your designation.
Further, you may own some of your assets (a building, theater, gallery) and rent, lease, or share others, making even your physical boundary a bit squishy.
In his new book, The Future Arrived Yesterday, Michael S. Malone gives a name to this soft-edged corporate form — the ”protean corporation” — and he labels it the next wave in business structure. As Philip Delves Broughton describes this shape-shifting corporation in his book review in the Wall Street Journal:
At the center is a small group of employees who understand the company’s history, philosophy and culture and who oversee its infrastructure, training and strategic planning. Outside the core is the “inner ring”: salaried employees with benefits and flexible working arrangements. Beyond these is an outer ring — or, to put it another way, a cloud of contractors, consultants and free-lancers who allow the company to respond nimbly to change. In such an organization, the chief executive is answerable to the core…. But the CEO is principally charged with directing all the ring-inhabitants to a common purpose, then re-directing them again and again.
While Malone may well be describing a corporate form that has existed for centuries (even though our persistent metaphors and management strategies didn’t acknowledge it), it’s nonetheless useful to consider. Where are the useful boundaries of your organization? Are you managing the enterprise as if it were self-contained or semi-permeable? And how might you adjust the edges of your organization as its resources contract and its energy needs to be redirected?
