Where Are the New Theories of Organization?

This Special Topic Forum was inspired by the observation that most of the theories of organization used by contemporary management researchers were formulated several decades ago, largely in the 1960s and 1970s, and that these theories have persisted, largely intact, since that time.This is so, in spite of massive growth and change in the size, prevalence and influence of organizations in modern society.Organizational theory, as Davis (2010: 691) has observed, can sometimes appear like a "living museum of the 1970s."Where, we asked, are the new theories of organization?Few of the papers we received in response to our call actually offered new theories of organization.In retrospect, this was perhaps an overly ambitious expectation on our part.The papers that comprise this Special Topic Forum, however, offer an arguably more interesting interpretation of our call.Rather than generating new theories, they collectively make two unique contributions.