Clay Shirky on the four primary factors motivating participation

Piotrus, Wikipedians never cease to amaze me: who are you, that you know Henry Mintzberg? I know him because I am 1) Canadian and 2) a bit of a management-theory geek. But he is not really really widely known.

Here are the characteristics of an adhocracy, according to our article. Not sure how useful it is, but FWIW :-)

• highly organic structure
• little formalization of behavior
• job specialization based on formal training
• a tendency to group the specialists in functional units for housekeeping purposes but to deploy them in small, market-based project teams to do their work
• a reliance on liaison devices to encourage mutual adjustment, the key coordinating mechanism, within and between these teams
• low standardization of procedures, because they stifle innovation
• roles not clearly defined
• selective decentralization
• work organization rests on specialized teams
• power-shifts to specialized teams
• horizontal job specialization
• high cost of communication (Dramatically reduced in the Networked Age)
• culture based on democratic and non-bureaucratic work