A Typology of Organization Typologies: Toward Parsimony and Integration in the Organizational Sciences

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Abstract
Numerous typologies have been offered for sorting the major contingencies of organizational functioning. Types of effectiveness, environments, technologies, structures, controls, strategies, goals, decision-making processes, leadership styles, job designs, and cognitive preferences, are just some examples. This paper proposes that the variations in each typology tend to follow a pattern, and that this pattern can be captured by the broader dimensions of closed versus open systems and technical versus social systems. It is argued that greater parsimony and integration of the organizational sciences are achieved by defining, sorting, and researching contingency variations according to the four resulting categories: closed-technical system, closed-social system, open-technical system, and open-social system. This paper concludes with suggestions for new research directions that follow from this metatypology.