spaghetti organization

Extremely flexible organizational structure. The concept of the spaghetti organization was introduced by Danish businessman Lars Kolind at the company Oticon. Kolind took over the company when it had stagnated and restructured it along radical lines. He rethought the organization, placing interaction, collaboration, and connectivity of people, customers, suppliers, and ideas, at its heart. Kolind called it, ‘a spaghetti organization of rich strands in a chaotic network’.

The key characteristics of a spaghetti organization are: choice – staff initiate projects and assemble teams, and individuals invited to join a project can decline; multiple roles – the project approach creates multidisciplined individuals; and transparency – knowledge is shared throughout the organization.