Center for Organizational Research

COR facilitates research on new organizational forms and processes now taking shape in a variety of contexts.  As the 21st century unfolds, we increasingly find organizing that diverges from traditional bureaucratic structures.  Such possibilities can be found in global teams, web-based collaboration, network structures, collective threats to security and privacy, micro enterprises, international non-governmental organizations, and alliances across private, public, and non-profit fields.  These developments raise opportunities for alternative modes of decision-making, just as they present challenges for accountability and efficacy.  They also raise questions about how existing distributions of power both constrain and enable organizational experimentation. COR contributes to the development of organization theory by connecting scholars from many disciplines who bring their knowledge and methods to a common understanding of these issues.

UC Irvine has enjoyed a long tradition of innovative, interdisciplinary organizational research that dates back to the founding of the campus in the mid 1960s. COR continues and solidifies this tradition with affiliates from anthropology, business, computer science, economics, education, humanities, informatics, organizational studies, political science, public policy, public management, sociology, and urban planning.