Hypertext organizations are comprised of knowledge-base, business, and project layers. Work routines are enacted by a formal organization in the business layer. The project layer provides a field of interaction where project teams create knowledge. Hyperknowledge organizations have a set of business units on the business layer. Business units compete internally and are rewarded for their performance, process innovations, and the adoption and development of these innovations by other units.
Project teams share knowledge within and between business units to redesign work processes.
I divide each business unit in the business layer into a set of functional work groups. While the business layer is always organized as a bureaucracy, the groups relax some of the characteristics of bureaucracies. In a hyperknowledge organization, agents cannot be mere executors of pre-defined tasks. The gap between the business and project layers would be too wide if agents in the business layer had no discretion over their work and suddenly had to make decisions in the project layer about their business unit as a whole. Therefore, the groups have broad authority to manage their own work routines.