Organisationer emellan, En jämförande fallstudie av företagsinkubation

Sammanfattning: Business incubation is an important force of economic development but relatively unheard of in organization theory. This is partly due to the fact that in organization theory, meta-organization or the organization of organizations has been neglected or left lagging as much theorization has been focused on organizing individuals. With the growing number of business incubators, and meta-organizations in general, the need for understanding a relatively new type of organization is prevalent.This case study of the business incubator Global Business Labs Botswana (GBL) aims to clarify the organizational differences among meta-organizations and traditional organizations on a case level, as well as explain the underlying factors for these dissimilarities. With respect to the nature of this case study no general conclusions are drawn from the results. The inference, however, is that the organization of GBL and its incubated companies differs from the traditional organization in five elementary aspects: the weak hierarchical structure, the operational autonomy of its members, the strong focus on recruitment processes, the member identity and the lack of formal sanctions. The empirical findings regarding these differences do to a large degree connect to existing meta-organizational theory. However, the findings further suggest unexpected similarities to the traditional organization of individuals, proposing a hierarchy not usually seen within meta-organizations. The implication is that nuances appear in the previously black and white organizational landscape proposing and encouraging more research on the subject.