“Understanding Organizations … Finally!” by Henry Mintzberg is a book that will transform how you think about organizations, not because it says anything radical, but because its conclusions are so robust, you’ll wonder at how you ever got along without it./1/ With this book Mintzberg has reworked and updated his 1979 classic “The Structuring of Organizations”./2/ Given that Mintzberg has studied organizations as professor of management at McGill University for over fifty years, its title is quite modest. If he has “finally” understood organizations, we ought to pay attention. I nevertheless waited in vain for a discussion of lean and agile methods and how they fit within his framework. So, in this review, I will try to figure out why, as the readers of Teamworkblog may have similar questions.
Mintzberg’s Four Basic Forms
The cornerstone of Mintzberg’s organizational theory are the four forms/3/, which I will come to shortly. In exploring the four forms, Mintzberg is pitching explicitly against the likes of Frederick Taylor, who thought scientific management could find the one efficient form. Mintzberg neither believes that one form exists nor that it’s a matter of science—art and craft play major roles, too. Thus, Mintzberg arrives at his four forms empirically by looking at how companies pursue strategy, how they are structured, how they coordinate work, how roles are assigned, how people, information and action are managed, their age, their environment and the technologies they use. His discussion of these factors is in itself useful for understanding what makes organizations tick the way the do.
The four forms are ideal-typical. Virtually no organization belongs exclusively to one or the other. But, an organization will show a specific tendency. In the course of its lifespan, it may also evolve from one to another type. It may also be consciously directed toward a different type, as it adapts to changing conditions.
The four forms are:
- Personal Enterprise
- Programmed Machine
- Professional Assembly
- Project Pioneer
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| Mintzberg’s four forms with their four primary forces |
The personal enterprise
The personal enterprise tends to a simple structure because it follows the vision and instructions of a single chief. His frequent example is Apple under Steve Jobs. These organizations favor flat hierarchical structures and little bureaucracy, as the visionary chief is immersed in (and decides) the details. They are often younger and smaller and respond well to dynamic environments. Start-ups typically fall in this category. Its primary force is consolidation (around the chief).
The programmed machine
The programmed machine operates by hierarchy, rules, controls, systems and processes. These organizations are usually older and larger, having evolved and grown. Their technocratic structures have highly developed divisions of labor, especially between the regular workers and management. Furthermore, they often employ a class of analysts to design the processes and the architecture. They thrive via cost efficiency, size and standardization. As such, their stability makes them vulnerable to dynamic marketplaces. Its primary force is efficiency.
The professional assembly
The professional assembly occurs where highly-skilled, professionals work separately at their specific tasks, and yet achieve coordination of their actions via the standardization of their skills. These skills are normed through education and may require extensive on-the-job training. Mintzberg names hospitals, universities and orchestras as examples. The expertise of the professionals dictates how they work together, and each knows her role. Its primary force is the professionals’ proficiency.
The project pioneer
The project pioneer is a dynamic, decentralized organization. It coordinates work mostly through mutual adjustment. Such organizations tend to have fluid power-decision structures, adhocracies that may be temporary or permanent. They emerge and thrive in environments with high complexity and they need sophisticated expertise. They are usually highly inefficient, while nevertheless being effective at creating extraordinary things. Its primary force is collaboration.
How do lean and agile methods fit Mintzberg’s framework?
I found the four basic forms compelling as a way to think about the different organizations I have encountered. None of them exhibits all of the characteristics. Mintzberg nonetheless clearly states that most companies will mix them, while nevertheless falling broadly in to one category. But, as I read along, questions arose. Are start-ups really more typically personal enterprises? Why not project pioneers? (Maybe it depends on the startup.) Is there a point where programmed machines crumble under their own bureaucratic mass?
My biggest questions arose, however in the realm of lean and agile methods, as much of my work involves introducing them to teams and whole organizations. Unless I missed it, Mintzberg never mentions either concept. On first thought, I might have expected “lean” to appear within the chapter on the programmed machine, just as I imagined “agile” (or a specific method like Scrum) to show up with the project pioneer. It is likely the case that Mintzberg is merely describing the forms and showing their pros and cons. The details are not important for his argument.
On closer look, however, tensions emerge. The programmed machine, according to Mintzberg, strives for efficiency, and Lean’s goal of eliminating waste fits well within this concern. Programmed machines also exhibit strong divisions of labor. Their large sizes allow them accommodate whole teams of analysts to design the enterprise’s processes and architecture. Like the management, these experts are frequently detached from the workplace and the workers. By contrast, Lean (and the Toyota Production System) highlights the value of decentralized innovation gained through continuous improvement by everyone. Furthermore, the Toyota emphasis on “Genchi Genbutsu”, i.e. seeing for oneself what is happening where the work is performed, applies especially to management. It would appear that Toyota has long understood the weaknesses in the programmed machine and found ways at mitigating against those dangers.
By highlighting the project pioneer’s embrace of complexity, ambiguity and dynamic environments, the lack of discussion about agile methods seems even more of an oversight. Methods like Scrum are highly collaborative and strongly recommend the fluidity of cross-functionality to sustain high productivity within the team. Mintzberg’s project pioneers are adhocracies with a lot of managers running around in matrices to sustain the mutually adjusting connections. Scrum, however, has no “managers” in this sense. And, decisions lie either with the (single) product owner or with the scrum team. Like with lean, the Scrum doesn’t fit that well within this form because it is not ambiguous about the team organization, even if the other environmental characteristics—complexity and dynamism—seem to apply.
I have not resolved these tensions. I would be interested to hear others’ thoughts about them. I nevertheless highly recommend “Understanding organizations”, as it did help me do just that. I shall not say “finally”, however. Moreover, I trust that a good social scientist like Mintzberg uses the word in his title with a good dose of self-irony.
Notes
/1/ Henry Mintzberg, Understanding Organizations ... Finally! Structuring in Sevens, (Oakland, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc, 2023); A useful summary of his four forms may be found in Henry Mintzberg, “Four Forms That Fit Most Organizations,” California Management Review 66, no. 2 (February 1, 2024): 30–43, https://doi.org/10.1177/00081256231214816.
/2/ Henry Mintzberg, The Structuring of Organizations: A Synthesis of the Research (Englewood Cliffs, N.J: Prentice-Hall, 1979).
/3/ In this book, Mintzberg adds three further forms, that he considers common enough, but less fundamental than the other four. They are:
- The divisional form
- The community ship
- The political arena.
I list them here for the sake of completeness. The interested reader should consult Mintzberg.
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