I like this piece and the comments. I'm not so sure the organization is the one that can drive a restructure. But, when organizations with hierarchies and silos flatten they reform ad hoc due in part to Reed's Law where the larger the group the greater there are going to be like individuals to group and cluster with as the largesse of the whole of the organization the individual starts loosing connection and bonding to that.

In early social platforms being rolled out organization wide, the common story from large multinational organizations was small clusters of like minds around the globe (2 to 10 people) finding each other and creating a space to discuss. To a tee each of the individuals felt they were alone with this knowledge, interest, or something they saw as a need for improvement and felt alone and wanted to leave the company to find more cohesion. Many times these ad hoc small clusters had something of value to the organization as a whole, but it was lost in the sea of many. I continually hear about these bondings today even in smaller virtual organizations as the interaction platforms provide the means to bond.

In another direction much of this restructuring has been happening for years through downsizing or organizations with not great workable environments. Employees move from being employees to contractors, but often bonding with others to form small company to have benefits and collectively sell their services back to the organization. The outside organization allows them to work in the manner that fits their strengths and have tools that enable them to be more efficient for their work. I ran into this a lot around Seattle, make that Redmond in mid-2000s with many Microsoft employees doing just that. I've been talking the last few months with a consulting company that is mostly former colleagues at one institution that now consults back to the organization they left as well as others in the industry, doing mostly the same work they did and loved. This group also has people in organizations running their groups to help them get things sorted out and restructure in a manner that is sustainable.

When situations call dismantling structure what happens after often depends on the culture around the organization and the cultures with in it. Some organizations have wide variance of cultures and others are tighter.

The key to a more ad hoc approach as a whole or at the edges is tools that enable this more open structure. Large orgs will re-silo naturally, but sorting who knows what, finding that easily, finding the skills that are more quiet gets really hard. Also finding people for the boring or less pleasant jobs gets tough.