Adhocracy
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 An organizational system designed to be flexible and responsive to the needs of the moment rather than excessively bureaucratic.
"This is a picture of the coming Ad-hocracy, the fast-moving, information-rich, kinetic organization of the future, filled with transient cells and extremely mobile individuals […]"
- 2 an organization with little or no structure wordnet
Example
More examples"This is a picture of the coming Ad-hocracy, the fast-moving, information-rich, kinetic organization of the future, filled with transient cells and extremely mobile individuals […]"
Etymology
From ad hoc + -cracy, by analogy with bureaucracy; coined by American organizational consultant Warren Bennis (1925–2014) and American sociologist Philip Slater (1927–2013) in The Temporary Society (1964), and popularized by American futurist Alvin Toffler (1928–2016) in his book Future Shock (1970).
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.