Chapter 3 --  Images of Organization
Nature Intervenes
Organizations as Organisms

Bureaucratic organizations tend to work most effectively in environments that are stable or protected in some way.

Organizational theorists identify and study different organizational needs and focus on the following:

• Organizations as "open systems"
• The process of adapting organizations to environment
• Organizational life cycles
• Factors influencing organizational health and development
• Different species of organization
• The relations between species and their ecology

The idea that organizations are more like organisms has guided attention toward the more general issues of survival, organization environmental relations, and organizational effectiveness.

A new theory of organization is built on the idea that individuals and groups, like biological organisms, operate most effectively only when their needs are satisfied.

Abraham Maslow's theory suggested that humans are motivated by a hierarchy of needs progressing through the physiological, the social, and the psychological.

Attention was focused on the idea of making employees feel more useful and important by giving them meaningful jobs and by giving as much autonomy, responsibility, and recognition as possible.

Human resource management has become a major focus of attention and the need to integrate the human and technical aspects of work.

Sociotechnical systems -- There is a tendency in management to fall back into a strictly technical view of organization.

Recognizing the importance of environment:  organizations as open systems

Systems approach builds on the principle that organizations, like organisms, are "open" to their environment and must achieve an appropriate relation wit that environment if they are to survive.

Open-systems approach usually focuses on a number of key issues

• The emphasis on the environment in which organizations exist
• Organization is defines in terms of interrelated subsystems
• The attempt to establish congruencies or "alignments" between different systems and to identify and eliminate potential dysfunctions

Homeostasis-  Refers to self-regulation and the ability to maintain a steady state.

Entropy/negative entropy-  Closed systems are entropic in that they have a tendency to deteriorate and run down.

Structure, function, differentiation, and integration-  The relationship between these concepts is of crucial importance.

Requisite variety-  Related to the idea of differentiation and integration is the principle of requisite variety.

Equifinality-  the idea that in an open system there may be many different ways of arriving at a given end state.

System evolution-  Capacity of a system to evolve depends on an ability to move to more complex forms of differentiation and integration.

Contingency theory-  Theories of organization and management that allow us to break free of bureaucratic thinking and to organize in a way that meets the requirements of the environment.

Contingency theory:  adapting organization to environment

• Organizations are open systems that need careful management to satisfy and balance internal needs and to adapt to environmental circumstances.
• There is no one best way of organizing.  The appropriate form depends on the kind of task or environment with which one is dealing.
• Management must be concerned, above all else, with achieving alignments and good fits.
• Different approaches to management may be necessary to perform different tasks within the same organization.
• Different types of species of organizations are needed in different types of environments.

The Lawrence and Lorsch study thus refined the contingency approach by showing that styles of organization may need to vary between organizational subunits because of the detailed characteristics of their subenvironments.

Lawrence and Lorsch indicated that certain organizations need to be more organic than others.

The variety of the species

Henry Mintzberg identifies five configurations of species of organization:  

• The machine bureaucracy
• The divisionalized form
• The professional bureaucracy
• The simple structure
• The adhocracy

The term matrix organization is used to capture a visual impression of organizations that systematically attempt to combine the kind of functional or departmental structure of organization fond in a bureaucracy with a project-team structure.

Team-based organization typically increases the adaptability of organizations in dealing with their environments.

Successful organizations seem to share "configurations" or "patterns" of distinctive characteristics that are appropriate for dealing with their particular environment.

Contingency theory:  promoting organizational health and development

The organization consists of interrelated subsystems of a strategic, human, technological, structural, and managerial nature which need to be internally consistent and adapted to environmental conditions.

Natural selection:  the population-ecology view of organizations

Organizations, like organisms in nature, depend for survival on their ability to acquire an adequate supply of the resources necessary to sustain existence.

The population-ecology and contingency views of organization both view organizations as existing in a state of tension or struggle with their environment.

Organizational ecology:  the creation of shared futures

Organizations do not live in isolation and are not self-sufficient.

Organizations and their environments are engaged in a pattern of cocreation, where each produces the other.

Strengths and limitations of the organismic metaphor

Most modern organization theorists have looked to nature to understand organizations and organizational life.

The main strengths of using the organismic metaphor:

• The emphasis placed on understanding relations between organizations and their environments
• The management of organizations can often be improved through systematic attention to the "needs" that must be satisfied if the organization is to survive.
• In identifying different species of organization we are alerted to the fact that in organizing we always have a range of options.
• It stresses the virtue of organic forms of organization in the process of innovation.
• Organismic contributions to the theory and practice of organizational development
• The making of important contributions through a focus on "ecology" and interorganizatinal relations

Limitations of the organismic metaphor:

• We are led to view organizations and their environments in a way that is far too concrete.
• Organizations, unlike organisms, have a choice as to whether they are to compete or collaborate.
• The assumption of functional unity-  The believe that the unity and harmony characteristic of organisms can be achieved in organizational life.
• The danger of the metaphor becoming an ideology.

When we take the parallels between nature and society too seriously we fail to see that human beings, in principle, have a large measure of influence and choice over what their world can be.

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Morgan, G. (1997). Images of organization.  Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.