In the past five decades, complexity, and disorganization theories have had a significant influence in management debates. Traditionally mess, also known as ‘disorganization’ was considered damaging to firms. However, as firms became more complex, more nuanced understandings of the phenomenon have been developed facilitated by our growing knowledge of the ubiquity of disorganization in firms and the need to manage it. While the need for more advancement in this domain is called for in the corpus, currently very little has been said about the specific mechanisms needed to manage disorganization in businesses. In filling this gap, this paper extends our current understanding of the phenomenon by articulating specific design levers with an accompanying integrated disorganization handling model, outlining how disorganization can be leveraged to improve our organizing processes at a collective/firm level. This paper puts forth a proactive approach to disorganization which focuses on ‘using disorganization for gainful effect’ (leveraging). This paper has 3 main parts, the first positions this work; the second outlines the mechanisms, propositions, and an integrated disorganization handling model. The final part presents a discussion exploring practical and research implications.
