All Edge

All Edge: Inside the New Workplace Networks looks at the complex and innovative networking and communication practices of a new kind of work group defined primarily by its transience and flexibility and found most commonly in the knowledge industry. These nimble teams organize together around a specific project, recruiting personnel, assigning roles, establishing project plans and objectives, and then disband once the work is done, with the individuals moving on to their the next projects, with different personnel, different roles, and different objectives, all with little hierarchical oversight. Author Clay Spinuzzi calls theses groups all-edge adhocracies; all-edge is meant to invoke the notion of boundaries, which for these groups are ever shifting and are where much of their work takes place, and adhocracy offers a counterpoint to bureaucracy.

Drawing on workplace studies he has conducted, Spinuzzi looks at three different environments in which these groups are common: nonemployee firms, coworking spaces, and traditional hierarchical organizations. He offers for the first time a comprehensive framework for understanding how these groups function, what conditions they require to thrive, and what their strengths and weaknesses are. The author shows across the case studies that these groups are consistently flexible, creative, and innovative but are also temporary, tactical, and reactive. These groups have come to play an important role in today’s knowledge economy, and All Edge defines and delimits that role for the first time.