"Organization" is a great word. On the one hand, it stands for the practice of being organized -- that is, having processes by which you get things done and places to put the things you create. Take, for instance, your mail (electronic or paper): How do you manage it? An organized person has a system, with ways to spend the least possible time on the least valuable tasks, to sort through the rubbish to find what's important and then stash it someplace where it can be found later.
An organization, then, is a collection of these moving parts: processes, systems and people knit together by culture and artifacts. Though IBM and Dell are both computer makers, for example, their organizations are very different.
CIO Research Library
