What Is an Organisation?

Stakeholders in a business enterprise will seek transparency about how their stake is being progressed. Investors, those responsible for strategy, stewardship, policy, and operations, the workforce, customers, and clients and suppliers will expect a fair return for their capital, belief in a product, or service or talent, and to be treated professionally, fairly, and reasonably. Increasingly, enterprises will also be aware of and try to meet their social obligations through diversity and equality of opportunity and environmental obligations through sustainability goals. In all cases, the entity behind these objectives will have as its principal aim the legal, profitable conversion of materials or intangible assets into saleable products or services. But what is the best way to achieve such laudable goals? The entity that emerged from practice, later refined by theory, was that of the business organisation deemed to be an association of persons grouped together in pursuit of specific goals, where individuals were able to achieve more as a collective than if they were to operate alone. This chapter will provide a summary of theory, practice, and design of organisations across Four Industrial Revolutions.