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Organization theory is a positive science; organizational design is a normative science “concerned with how things ought to be, with devising structures to attain goals.” The Organizational Consultant is a knowledge base expert system to help design organizations. That is, it takes facts about the environment, size, strategy, technology, ownership, and management preferences and applies the knowledge base to recommend the design structure and properties such as complexity, formalization, centralization, and span of control, among others.

Organization theory is comprised of numerous positive contingency theories, which are not integrated. The main issue is to create a comprehensive and consistent knowledge base from what we know, i.e., create a useful synthesis. We utilize four fit criteria as a guide: contingency fit, design parameter fit, situation fit, and total parameter fit. Contingency fit demands that the …