* What are important contextual influences and constraints on organizational architectural choices? How are the choices about organizational architecture shaped by social processes such as diffusion, imitation and bargaining among key stakeholders?
* How do choices of organizational architecture shape the development of organizational capabilities? Does the adoption of a particular organizational architecture have consequences for the creation of certain kinds of capabilities (or disabilities)? What are the dynamic aspects of this relationship?
* How can the different elements of an organizations’ architecture enable or impede adaptation? More generally, how does organization design look different when the goal is ongoing dynamic adaptation by the organization to its environment, rather than a series of periodic adjustments?
* How can we extend what we know about organizational architectures to the inter-organizational context (e.g. the organization of joint ventures and alliances)? What are the architectural elements of such ties? What are the antecedents and consequences of architectural choices for those ties? How is the architecture of firms that are increasingly connected to others
changing? What are the consequences of such shifts and the enabling and disabling conditions related to these shifts?
* What role can organizational architecture play in supporting new and complex business models that disrupt the traditional bases of competition in an industry? When does business model innovation co-occur with changes in organizational architecture, and when are these independent?
* How can our knowledge of different elements of an organizations’ architecture help to refine our understanding of specific phenomena, such as subsidiary-parent relationships in MNC’s, ambidextrous organizations, product and organizational modularity, value chain unbundling and M&A integration? What does the study of these phenomena offer in terms of the refinement of core concepts in the study of organization design, such as interdependence, information
processing, organization differentiation and integration, the basis for grouping etc.?