Valve’s Organization: Opportunities and open questions

Authors

  • Georg von Krogh Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich
  • Nina Geilinger Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7146/jod.20159

Keywords:

new forms of organizing, organizational forms, non-hierarchical organizations, self-organizing teams, boss-less organizations

Abstract

Valve is a very interesting case study! The company shares many features with open source software projects. In Valve, as in the open source world, the focus is on creating advanced technologies and letting developers self-select projects and tasks. Self-selection seems to work particularly well in an environment where technology development itself has a coordinating function. In software development, people have a strong bond of common knowledge based on design philosophies and approaches, language and terminology, and engineering tasks. In most cases, they also share a similar educational background and/or development experience that helps them implement creative ideas in physical machines and graphic environments. Developers rarely rely on detailed instructions from higher-level managers because they already have the implicit knowledge of what needs to be done. When inconsistent views about development come to the forefront, they are best reconciled where the knowledge resides: with the experts. Moreover, it appears that Valve has uncovered how developers’ self-selection of projects and tasks can be a powerful motivator to unleash their creativity.

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Published

2015-06-23

How to Cite

von Krogh, G., & Geilinger, N. (2015). Valve’s Organization: Opportunities and open questions. Journal of Organization Design, 4(2), 18–19. https://doi.org/10.7146/jod.20159

Issue

Section

Organization Zoo