Properties of Emerging Organizations (Katz & Gartner, 1988) | AMR FT50

#VSSER25 #Session01

Welcome to Revise and Resubmit—the podcast where we break down groundbreaking research, one paper at a time.

Today, we’re diving into a classic from the Academy of Management Review, a prestigious FT50 journal—one of the world’s top business research publications. We go back to 1988, when Jerome Katz and William B. Gartner asked a fundamental question: What makes an organization, an organization?

Their paper, Properties of Emerging Organizations, challenges the way we think about new businesses. We often study organizations once they are well-formed, with employees, processes, and profits. But what about when they are just an idea—a name on a napkin, a pitch deck, or a garage startup? Katz and Gartner argue that emerging organizations have four defining properties: intentionality, resources, boundary, and exchange. These elements, they claim, separate a real business in the making from just another ambitious dream.

So, how do we define an organization before it fully exists? And what can this tell us about the next great companies being built right now?

A huge thank you to Jerome Katz and William B. Gartner for their incredible work and to the Academy of Management for publishing this landmark paper.

If you enjoyed this breakdown, subscribe to Revise and Resubmit on Spotify, Amazon Prime, and Apple Podcasts. And for more insights, check out Weekend Researcher on YouTube. Who knows? The next emerging organization we study might just be yours.

Reference

Katz, J., & Gartner, W. B. (1988). Properties of emerging organizations. Academy of management review, 13(3), 429-441. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.1988.4306967

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