In order to handle increased competition small and medium sized companies are collaborating in networks, strategic alliance, or partnership etc. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how direction and accountability is handled in network settings. The authors have performed an extensive case study of one collocated network consisting of four independent companies. This networking has enabled the companies to accept larger customer orders than no single company could handle on their own. It has also made them capable of reaching a high level of adaptation to customer demands regarding development, manufacturing, delivery, and support of the complete product. The high level of inter-company integration has created conditions for the network to develop self-organizing characteristics in terms of autopoietic and sympoietic systems. While the first focuses on the relations between companies within the network, the second focuses on relations between the network and the environment. This self-organizing approach is based on strategic conversation between companies at all organizational levels and participation of managers as well as engineers in the design of inter-and intra-organizational structures and processes. In self-organizing systems direction comes from closeness to customers and strategic dialogue between management and engineers and accountability is a consequence of high level of situational visibility and information exchange on all hierarchical levels among companies in this network.