Organizations As Systems

Systems approach builds on the principle that organizations, like organisms, are “open” to their environment and must achieve an appropriate relation with that environment if they are to survive.(Morgan, p. 39)

Characteristics of Open/Living/Organic Systems:

•Exchange with environment

•Homeostasis – self-regulation, maintenance of “steady state,” negative feedback

•Entropy – self-sustaining, don’t “run down”

•Structure, function, differentiation, integration

•Complexity

•Requisite variety – diverse internal regulatory mechanisms; can’t isolate from diversity in environment

•Equifinality – many different ways to get to “end state;” flexible patterns of organization

•System evolution – cyclical process of variation, selection, retention of selected characteristics

Focuses:

• Emphasis on the environment in which the org exists

“Task” or business environment

(Classical management theorists treated org as closed system, with no relationship to environment)

2.Interrelated sub-systems “Chinese boxes” – key patterns and interconnections – importance of interdependency

3.Establishing congruencies, “alignments” between different systems; identifying and eliminating potential dysfunction

(principle of requisite variety)

Applies to different tasks

Contingency Theory: adapting organization to environment

•Satisfy and balance

•Alignments and “good fits”

•Different management approaches for different tasks

•Different types of organizations for different types of environments

Five configurations of organizations:

•Machine bureaucracy

•Divisional form

•Professional bureaucracy

•Simple structure – works best in small entrepreneurial orgs

•Adhocracy temporary by design – project teams

System: a complex set of relationships among inter- dependent parts or components

Orgs must

•Continually scan environment

•Work with (communicate with) environment

Compare “addictive system” (closed):

•Confusion

•Self-centeredness

•Dishonesty

•perfectionism

Interdependence:

Failure leads to “tragedy of the commons” (Garrett Hardin) – people with access to common resource use it for personal needs rather than needs of the whole – pollution, rain forest destruction…

Interdependent division of labor

Organizational Goals:

Goals of individuals vs. goals of organization

Goals can differ across system levels

Processes and feedback:

System as interdependent processes interacting over time

Feedback – series of loops connection communication and action

Feedback contains information about message and deviation from what sender intended (no 100% communication)

Cybernetic feedback: (“steersman”)

Seeks to reestablish goals/guality levels initially established

Today’s businesses need both deviation-counteracting and deviation-amplifying feedback for success

Openness, Order, Contingency

Openness helps organizations see themselves as part of a dynamic system of intricate interdependencies and relationships

Equifinality – same goal can be reached different ways

Contingency Theory:

•There is no one best way to organize

•All ways of organizing are not equally effective

Imply need to match organization and environment

Implications of Systems Theory for Organizational Communications:

Wheatley (New Science – 1992)

•No “things” only networks of interactions

•Information, not matter, is creative energy of the universe

•All living things engaged in self-renewal; orgs do this by making creative use of environment

•Search for machinelike control by management is counterproductive

•“disorder” is part of natural process of order making

•Desire to make meaning is “strange attractor” which keeps humans in constant tendency toward self- organization

Senge (1990) “Learning Organizations”

•Systems thinking – holism, interdependence, for one to succeed, all must succeed

•Personal mastery – commitment by all to learning, self-reflection

•Flexible mental models (patterns of belief) – must understand and change mental models that guide thinking

•Shared vision – members act in concert because they share a common vision and understand how their work helps to build on that vision

•Team learning – team members communicate to lead the team toward intelligent decisions, with emphasis on dialogue as key