Their focus was on Scottish electronics companies operating in increasingly competitive and innovative technological markets. A new edition has been recently published published. Mechanistic form appropriate to conditions of relative stability. Communication is similarly vertical. The organisation insists on loyalty and conformity from members to each other, to managers and to the organisation itself in relation to policies and methods.
Communication is lateral as well as vertical - with emphasis on a network rather than a hierarchy.
Moving from mechanistic to organismic Burns and Stalker highlighted the problems of moving from mechanistic to organismic forms. Their conclusions - in 1966 were remarkably predictive. Burns T and Stalker G, The Management of Innovation, Tavistock, 1961. Burns T, The Management of Innovation, OUP, 1994.