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Patterns of organisational dictatorship hinder the resolution of organisational and societal problems
Abstract
This paper aims to demonstrate how patterns of organisational dictatorship exercised by management and a small group of 'infected' internal advisors can have disastrous consequences on the one hand for the leading public organisation itself and on the other hand for society at large. The official data collection for the single case study undertaken between 2007 and 2011, based on a soft systems methodology intervention, was followed up by the employee/researcher in 2012 and will continue in 2013. This enables the researcher to propose to management as well as government new ways of thinking supported by the results of the study, thus offering the possibility to reflect retrospectively on mental models and ingrained beliefs about hierarchical structures as well as command and control thinking. It is hoped that this will eventually encourage the organisational leader and consequently government to leave the path of pure authoritarian activities for more democratic approaches that fit the enormous challenges of the 21st century.
... However, proposing the model to the housing minister is dependent on the willingness of the chairman. Unfortunately, this is unlikely since he has created, in combination with his role as first governmental advisor, an almost intangible position regarding employees, citizens and even the minister concerned (Staadt, 2013) 39 . In order to monitor the performance of the model, the '3 Es' should be defined. ...
... He is surrounded by people he wants to talk to and to whom he has given official or unofficial power sometimes just by means of staying in contact or communicating with them. The thus created powerful/insider group has stigmatised the people from the weak/outsider group which has resulted, for example, in withdrawal and a lack of motivation (Staadt, 2013). This is a phenomena the chairman himself observed when the organisation suddenly started growing. ...
... The intervention brought about the sociopolitical system with regard to the employees and the chairman which could not be extended to the board due to insufficient contact. Nevertheless, the intervention indicates that the board members are also confronted with power issues (Staadt, 2013). According to Stacey (2007), people including board members are interdependent i.e. they need each other, some members more than others. ...
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This paper provides avenues for a broader engagement with the conceptual considerations of projects and project management with the aim of creating new possibilities for thinking about, researching, and developing our understanding of the field as practiced. Attention is drawn to the legacy of conventional but deeply rooted mainstream approaches to studying projects and project management, and implications of the specific underpinning intellectual tradition for recommendations proposed to organisational members as best practice project management. The identified concerns and limitations are discussed in the context of project management evolution where taken-for-granted advantages of project management as a disciplined effective methodology and its popularity are reexamined. The paper sheds light on a variety of voices from both scholarly and practitioner communities that have attempted to respond to this paradox and move the field forward. Taking issue with conventional labels of project success or failure, and drawing attention to alternative theoretical and methodological propositions, the argument turns toward critical management studies, outlining the implications of this intellectual tradition for studies of projects, project management, project performance, and individual skills and competencies to cope with social arrangements labelled “projects.”
As change becomes a constant in organizational life, middle managers charged with interpreting, communicating, and implementing change often struggle for meaning. To explore change and managerial sensemaking, we conducted action research at the Danish Lego Company. Although largely absent from mainstream journals, action research offers exceptional access to and support of organizational sensemaking. Through collaborative intervention and reflection, we sought to help managers make sense of issues surfaced by a major restructuring. Results transform paradox from a label to a lens, contributing a process for working through paradox and explicating three organizational change aspects-paradoxes of performing, belonging, and organizing.
What do business school graduates learn, and how helpful is it for managing in the everyday, messy reality of organisations? What does it mean to apply 'best practice', or to take up 'evidence-based management' and what kind of thinking does this imply? In "Rethinking Management", Chris Mowles argues that many management courses still largely assume a linear and predictable world, when experience tells us that the opposite is the case. He questions some of the more orthodox conceptual assumptions that underpin much management education and instead, encourages leaders and managers to take their everyday experience of working with others seriously. People in organisations co-operate and compete to get things done, and constrain and enable each other in relationships of power. Because of this there are always unintended consequences of our actions - uncertainty is inherent in the everyday. Chris Mowles draws on the complexity sciences, the sciences of uncertainty rather than certainty, and the social sciences to explore more helpful ways to think and talk about our lived reality. He takes concrete examples from contemporary organisations, to debate whether argue that understanding the radical implications of uncertainty is central to the task of leading and managing. "Rethinking Management" explores narrative alternatives to the ubiquitous grids and frameworks that are routinely taught in business schools, and encourages management professionals and educators to recognise the importance of judgement, improvisation and the everyday politics of organisational life.
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This text develops a comprehensive theory of social collectives as complex systems.It uses ideas and frameworks that are already familiar to complex systems researchers, and then incorporates other perspectives (such as third order cybernetics, viable systems theory and social constructivism) some of which the reader may not already be aware of, and some of which the reader may be surprised to learn are not disparate and disconnected. This pluralistic synthesis results in a text that represents a review of the existing literature and its various interconnections, as well as a wealth of new and original insights that contribute to the development of the new paradigm of knowledge cybernetics.
This book is about social collectives, their behaviors, structures, processes, cultures, their ability to manifest and manage information, knowledge, and their capacity to communicate meaningfully. It is therefore a book on the theory of social knowledge. Some of the theory is evidenced, while some is postulated and therefore contributes to a research agenda. Overall my approach will hopefully provide a convincing frame of reference through which to examine social communities and their sociality, behaviour, properties and attributes of coherence. Its conceptual base sits on that of my earlier cybernetically oriented book on Management Systems, published in 1999. As such it also adopts a cybernetic perspective through its exploration of viable complex systems.
Cybernetic interest lie in viable systems, and concerns here are with the management of autonomous human activity systems. While following the constructivist approach in systems (sometimes referred to as soft systems) the text takes the system as a metaphor for the phenomenal dimension of the social collective. However, there is more to the social collective than its phenomena, suggesting that this terminology is inadequate. After Koestler in his book The Ghost in the Machine published in 1967, Another concern is with practice, important to all social communities, because it is through practice (a pseudonym for behaviour) that autonomous organisations behave and survive. Connected with this is the way that collectives control their own behaviours, which is ultimately a function of their cognitive processes and their intelligence. A substantive interest here lies with knowledge and knowledge processes, because if autonomous social collectives are to be seen as intelligent, then they must maintain an awareness of their own knowledge and the use of that knowledge to direct themselves and maintain their viability.
Dissatisfied with the approach of systems engineering, Checkland set himself the task of seeing if system ideas could help tackle the messy problems of management. In the course of doing so, he developed a new, soft systems approach. It differs from the hard approach, first, in the nature of its methodology and, second, in its use of the word system. Messy problems can best be handled by a soft systems methodology (SSM). And the word ‘system’ is no longer applied to the world, but to the process of our dealings with the world: the word ‘system’ does not refer to real systems in the world. The aim of this contribution is to show that the realism that is presupposed by and implicit in the practice of model application in SSM contradicts the ‘philosophical theory’ of SSM, in which it is denied that we refer with our concepts and conceptual models to concept-independent things in the world. A central tool in achieving this aim is the Wittgensteinian distinction between language (‘how we speak’) and discourse (‘what we say’), between the meaning of the words we use and the truth of the statements we make. This tool enables us to avoid both the semantic objectivism of the metaphysical realist, according to whom the meaning of our words is determined by the things we refer to, and the ontological subjectivism of the constructivist, according to whom we do not think and speak about mind and concept-independent things in the world. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
The emergence of critical systems thinking has allowed the transdiscipline of systems thinking to mature by setting out how the variety of systems methodologies available can be used together in a coherent manner to promote successful intervention in complex societal problem situations. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
The 49th Annual Meeting of the International Society for the Systems Sciences had, as its theme, ‘the potential impacts of systemics on society’. As my contribution to this, I want to discuss why I think a critical systems approach called ‘creative holism’ can help managers address complex problem situations. As is frequently stated, managers today face increasing complexity, change and diversity. Furthermore, the solutions they are offered to help them cope in this situation rarely seem to work. In this paper, it is argued that those solutions fail because they are not holistic or creative enough. The benefits to be gained from holism and creativity (in a systemic sense) are outlined, and a practical approach, ‘creative holism’, is specified which aims to better equip managers to deal with complex problem situations. If the argument is right then systemics has the potential to have both a significant and a beneficial impact upon society in the years to come. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
In the "Project-oriented Company (POC)" project management (pm-)competences are not just required by individuals, but also by project teams and by the organisation overall. These competences have to correlate. The pm-competences e.g. of individuals performing project roles, such as project owner, project manager, or project team member, have to be in accordance with the organisational pm-competences of a company. The pm-competences of individuals, project teams, and organisations can be described, measured, and further developed. As project management has to be considered as a core competence of the POC, in the further development of this competence has to be explicitly invested. 1. Strategy, Structure and Culture of the Project-oriented Organization A Project-oriented Organisation is an organisation, which • defines "Management by Projects" as an organisational strategy, • applies temporary organisations for the performance of complex processes, • manages a project portfolio of different project types, • has specific permanent organisations to provide integrative functions, • applies a "New Management Paradigm", • has an explicit project management culture, and • perceives itself as project-oriented.
This article investigates the relationship of systems thinking to action research by reviewing the main developments in systems
thinking and relating these to action research. There are two main lines of thought in systems thinking that lead to wholly
different conceptions about action research. The first (systems thinking) advocates thinking about real social systems that
it assumes exist in the world. The second (systemic thinking) supposes only that the social construction of the world is systemic.
Greater emphasis is placed on systemic thinking consistent with its greater importance to contemporary action research. The
article concludes that systemic thinking when taken to its practical conclusion from a critical perspective offers to action
research a somewhat unique liberating praxis. Concern that any liberating praxis could remain hollow is addressed through
a certain kind of ‘spiritual’ awareness that is suggested by wholeness.
KeywordsAction research-Systemic practice-Holistic practice-History of systems thinking-Complexity theory-Systemic spiritualism
This study examines the leadership competency profiles of successful project managers in different types of projects. Four hundred responses to the Leadership Development Questionnaire (LDQ) were used to profile the intellectual, managerial and emotional competences (IQ, MQ and EQ, respectively) of project managers of successful projects. Differences by project type were accounted for through categorization of projects by their application type (engineering & construction, information & telecommunication technology, organizational change), complexity, importance and contract type. Results indicate high expressions of one IQ sub-dimension (i.e. critical thinking) and three EQ sub-dimensions (i.e. influence, motivation and conscientiousness) in successful managers in all types of projects. Other sub-dimensions varied by project type. Comparison was made to existing profiles for goal oriented, involving and engaging leadership styles. Implications derived are the need for practitioners to be trained in the soft factors of leadership, particular for their types of projects. Theoretical implications include the need for more transactional styles in relatively simple projects and more transformational leadership styles in complex projects.
The point of this paper is to provide an account of the last 50 years of systems thinking applied to management that is insightful and useful to those interested in the theory and practice of operational research (OR). In seeking to fulfil this purpose, it employs Boulding's well-known ‘hierarchy of complexity’ to think through the reasons for the emergence of different strands of applied systems thinking and to detail their strengths. In theoretical terms, operational researchers will find a number of the key issues that have engaged their field (eg, hard versus soft approaches) mirrored in debates that have taken place between systems thinkers. They may discover new theoretical avenues to follow to advance their discipline. OR practitioners may also be surprised by the nature and scope of the systems applications described and conclude that systems approaches should be added to their own intervention strategies. At the least, the paper is designed to reinvigorate discussion around the relationship between OR and systems thinking that has occasionally surfaced over the last half century but has never been satisfactorily concluded.Journal of the Operational Research Society (2009) 60, S24–S32. doi:10.1057/jors.2008.176 Published online 4 February 2009
Authors of interpretive information systems (IS) work are claiming more frequently to be drawing upon action research as a means of undertaking IS research. The literature, while containing many useful discussions about the fundamental concepts of action research and case studies reporting its use, has little to offer the IS researcher in terms of practical guidance about conducting an action research study. The intention in this paper is to draw upon personal experiences to offer some practical guidance and warnings for the would-be IS action researcher. To do this we use Checkland's description of research (what we refer to as the FMA model) as a way of helping us to consider the action research process of our own formal IS studies and to report our experiences and lessons. We attempt to set out these experiences and lessons in a way that is consistent with an action research study.
Preface.Acknowledgements.PART I: MODELLING IN MANAGEMENT SCIENCE.Models as convenient worlds.Management science - making sense of strategic vision.Problems, problems...Some principles of modelling.PART II: INTERPRETIVE MODELLING - SOFT MANAGEMENT SCIENCE.Soft systems methodology.Cognitive mapping, SODA and Journey Making.System dynamics.PART III: MATHEMATICAL AND LOGICAL MODELLING.Optimization modelling - linear programming.Visual interactive modelling - discrete event computer simulation.Heuristic search.PART IV: MODEL ASSESSMENT AND VALIDATIONModel assessment and validation.Index.
The increasing complexity of interdependence between people in modern life makes it more important than ever to understand processes of human relating. In the West we tend to base our understanding of relating on the individual. Complexity and Group Processes suggests an alternative way of understanding human relating. The key questions covered in this book are: who am I and how have I come to be who I am? who are we and how have we come to be who we are? how are we all changing, evolving, and learning? These are fundamental questions in the study of human interaction, and the answers explored in Complexity and Group Processes are highly relevant not only for therapeutic groups but also those who are managing, leading and working in organizations.
Much of the ‘mystery’ of organizational life is hidden in plain sight in individuals’ everyday communications and everyday practices. Ethnographic approaches provide in-depth and up-close understandings of how the everyday-ness of work is organized and how work organizes people in everyday organizational life. Organizational Ethnography brings contributions from leading scholars in organizational studies that help to develop an ethnographic perspective on organizations and organizational research. The authors explore the special problems faced by organizational ethnographers, from questions of gaining access to research sites to various styles of writing ethnography, the role of friendship relations in the field, ethical issues, and standards for evaluating ethnographic work. This book will be a useful resource for organizational scholars doing or writing ethnography in the fields of business and management, public administration, education, health care, social work, or any related field in which organizations play a role.
In response to criticism that they do not train students to be effective decision makers, many business schools have attempted to modify their graduate management programs. We suggest that a primary ingredient missing from these attempts is a comprehensive treatment of systemic thinking. While most business functions teach about the systems housed within them, we suggest that few teach their students to think systemically. We propose a 3-part description of systemic thinking and provide results of a survey that investigates the claim that students are not being taught to think systemically.
This is the text version of a Plenary Address to the Annual Conference of the International Society for the Systems Sciences (ISSS) held at the University of Hull, July 2011. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Purpose
A concept of culture as a solid black box of mental software is gone from serious research surviving in consulting modules and undergraduate teaching. Cultural values evolve and are more frequently examined in public through filters of institutional patterns and frames. The new, emergent cluster of sustainability values dominates and realigns all other values in unpredictable ways. One of the most relevant consequences consists of reinventing democracy, even within business corporations, Large Hadron Colliders and office work floors. The paper aims to define and interpret the cultural dimension of the emergent value of sustainability, which migrates towards the center of core values in the management of organizations.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper presents a theoretical interpretation with cutting‐edge empirical reports on the most complex research projects and their management based on negotiating values, goals and pragmatics. The paper also applies Boisot's information space model.
Findings
It is through continuous organized renegotiations that we learn how to construct a multiple, multilevel, ongoing platform for a global governance in the face of serious challenges.
Practical implications
The practical implications of the paper include a possible redesign of complex research projects with diverse organizational members (public authorities, business companies, NGOs, communities of knowledge) and a revision of the curricula of business schools from the point of insertion of the humanities.
Originality/value
The paper is the first attempt to draw a road map for a multidimensional information‐space inspired approach towards organizational change as a renegotiated process.
An alternative paradigm to that currently used in OR is proposed, one based on imbedding problem solving in planning. The operating principles and content required of an appropriate type of planning are presented, and the role and advantages of redesigning the system planned for are considered in some detail. Then the practice of OR is examined with suggestions made for fundamental changes in the relationship between servers and served, for returning to interdisciplinarity, and for involvement in the research of all those affected by it. A redesign of the role of professional societies is also proposed. Finally, a radical transformation of the way OR is taught and learned is described.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the possibilities of workplace democracy in contemporary organisations. While organisational democracy is a popular theme in contemporary management literature, it is often asserted that participatory democracy is impractical and thus representative forms of governance constitute a more appealing and “realistic” option. Such views not only fail to picture workplace democracy beyond procedural principles (e.g. periodical elections), but they also block one of its promising features: its openness to change. In this context, direct democracy that is guided by horizontality and prefiguration may offer more promising grounds in the search for workplace democracy.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper exposes the contradictions and limits of representative democracy and traces the debates around hierarchism and horizontality, size and democracy with the aim to focus on its core theme – workplace democracy.
Findings
This paper argues that although representative democracy is considered a “realistic” alternative to hierarchical forms of governance it, in fact, reproduces and legitimizes hierarchism. Therefore, organisations can effectively coordinate collective action, without representatives and strict hierarchical structures, by giving emphasis to decentralized networks guided by horizontality and prefiguration.
Originality/value
The paper shows that the current demands for workplace democracy through representation constrains one's imagination of organisational democracy and therefore, one's perception of workplace democracy has to be broadened and radicalized by giving emphasis not only to who rules but also to the process of governance, that is, how to rule.
theory is a branch of philosophy that has relevance for anyone interested in human behavior (including buyer behavior) since its subject matter is the analysis of the whole process by which human action originates and how it is explained, whether in the social sciences or in folkpsychology. Some of the issues of interest are (1) marking the boundary between action and the rest of behavior, (2) the role of reasons as causes and explanations of action, and (3) the question of free will and individual responsibility. The bookoffers the reader an opportunity to question much that we take for granted in researching buyer behavior. Juarrero starts her bookby drawing on the frequently cited contrast (the “wink ” versus the “blink”) used to distinguish action, which, like the wink is voluntary, intentional behavior, from involuntary behavior like the blink. Action is voluntary
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the usability of systems thinking in the process of redesigning a leading public housing provider within a problematic situation. The paper attempts to describe the influence of evolving negative internal socio‐political arrangements on the further development of the whole organization and suggests a purposeful activity model based on constant improvement and collaborative learning for the ongoing intervention.
Design/methodology/approach
The study combines soft systems methodology, as the leading or guiding methodology, with case study research and action research. This rather pluralistic approach made it possible to adequately respond to the varying tasks and intricacies of the different research phases within a power‐laden environment. Each phase or part of the process was informed by the analysis of the preceding one, thus creating a documented learning process.
Findings
The results reveal that further development within the project‐oriented organization was hindered or blocked by failure to address the oppressive socio‐political system. The proposed new design, based on systems thinking, allocates an important role to project management and its ability to cope with different paradigms and to address tame, messy as well as wicked problems. Consequently, the discipline of project management should further develop towards an equal appreciation of hard as well as soft systems thinking which emphasises a critical systems thinking approach.
Practical implications
The project management capabilities needed in the complex housing system go beyond the strategic and operational level since a greater understanding of complex social systems as well as their behaviour is of major importance. This puts emphasis on problem structuring methods and methodologies, as well as their combination, so as to support the debate about the nature of organizational as well as societal problems rather than to focus on their solution.
Originality/value
The paper describes the first soft systems methodology intervention in a predominantly francophone country within the European Union. It proposes a new avenue to the management of organizational as well as societal problems.
Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to show that changes in social systems do not occur randomly. They are consistent with what has gone on before, with the history and identity of the system. As long as the organizing principles of a dominant culture remain unchallenged, behavior of all the social‐units originating from this culture will remain unchanged.
Design/methodology/approach
– The concepts developed in this paper are the results of 30 years of real life experimentation with organizations and cultural transformations in different cultures. The paper demonstrates how an analytical culture, despite its well‐known shortcomings, keeps reproducing the same set of non‐solutions all over again.
Findings
– To change, systems need to go through an active process of unlearning. Unlearning is an iterative and collective process of the second‐order learning. A participative and iterative design process with the aim of replacing the distorted shared images is the most effective learning tool to produce a second‐order learning and a desired change in the behavioral pattern of a social system.
Originality/value
– The value is to appreciate the real source of resistance to change.
We present a four-year ethnographic study of a public-sector organization and use narrative to describe its development in terms of four complexity theory concepts: sensitivity to initial conditions, negative and positive feedback processes, disequilibrium and emergent order. Our study indicates that order emerges at the boundary between the organization's legitimate and shadow systems. We suggest that the underlying dynamic leading to the emergent order is the need to reduce anxiety. Our findings cause us to question the assertion that organizations are naturally complex adaptive systems producing novel forms of order. We propose an alternate view that in social systems, equilibrium-seeking behaviour is the norm; such systems can self-organize into hierarchy. We draw attention to some of the difficulties we found in applying complexity-theory concepts to a social system and conclude by advocating the development of complexity theory through the incorporation of insights from psychology and social theory.
This paper is a personal account by Peter Checkland of his correspondence with Geoffrey Vickers in the years before Vickers' death and the discussions they had about the relationship between systems ideas and real-world experience. Professor Checkland demonstrates how the model he created of the appreciative process reflects those discussions, and how it may be used as a basis for making sense of the world we live in. He provides numerous examples to demonstrate the way in which the model may be applied in very different situations. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
After describing machine and complex adaptive systems (CASs), we define thinking system as a CAS with two additional, unique characteristics: (1) having goal(s) separate from survival, and (2) having the capability to structure its own learning and to innovate purposefully. Thinking systems always learn. Healthcare can be considered a paradigm of the thinking system and is repeatedly plagued with unintended, adverse outcomes, particularly fixes that fail. Systems thinking can dissolve such dysfunction in healthcare and by extension in any thinking system. Specific recommendations follow from this rationale. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
The search for scientific bases for confronting problems of social policy is bound to fail, becuase of the nature of these problems. They are wicked problems, whereas science has developed to deal with tame problems. Policy problems cannot be definitively described. Moreover, in a pluralistic society there is nothing like the undisputable public good; there is no objective definition of equity; policies that respond to social problems cannot be meaningfully correct or false; and it makes no sense to talk about optimal solutions to social problems unless severe qualifications are imposed first. Even worse, there are no solutions in the sense of definitive and objective answers.
I frequently talk to groups of managers on the nature of systems thinking and its radical implications to management. In doing so I use several case studies involving prominent American corporations. At the end of the presentation I am almost always asked, "If this way of thinking is as good as you say it is, why don't more organizations use it?" It is easy to reply by saying that organizations naturally resist change. This of course is a tautology. I once asked a vice president of marketing why consumers used his product. He answered, "Because they like it. " I then asked him how he knew this. He answered, "Because the use it. " Our answer to the question about failure of organizations to adopt systems thinking is seldom any better then this. There be many reasons why any particular organization fails to adopt systems thinking but I believe there are two that are the most important, one general and one specific. By a general reason I mean one that is responsible for organizations failing to adopt any transforming idea, let alone systems thinking. By a specific reason I mean one responsible for the failure to adopt systems thinking in particular. First
Too often, today's managers are sold simple solutions to complex problems. But, as many soon discover, simplicity is rarely effective in the face of complexity, change and diversity. Despite apparent promise, quick-fix panaceas fail because they are not holistic or creative enough. They focus on parts of the organization rather than the whole, take little account of interaction, and pander to the notion that there is one best solution in all circumstances. As instances of such failure escalate, intelligent managers are increasingly seeking to improve results through Systems Thinking.
Whatever stage you are at in your study of Systems Thinking this book will help. If you are new to the field then it will serve as a solid introduction. If you are familiar with a few concepts but not with how they can be linked and used by managers, then it will give you a greater understanding of how holistic ideas developed and how to use them in practice. And if you are expert in some approaches but not in others, then it will expand your knowledge and provide you with more choice. In all cases you will achieve competency in creative holism, emerge better equipped to solve complex problems, and ultimately become a more effective Systems Thinking manager.