Why do we create organizations? LO16194

CliffRH (CliffRH@aol.com)
Wed, 10 Dec 1997 11:21:27 EST

Replying to LO16135 --

On Sat, 6 Dec 97, Mike Jay wrote:

>What about all the control systems, the autonomic systems living things
>depend on for homeostasis while all of our cells change every three or
>four days? Yes adaptation, yes living, but let us not forget that most of
>"the living" is static homeostasis.

Mike:

One thing we must remember as organizations evolve the characteristics of
living organisms is that we are in early stages of this process. Life did
not just appear 3+ billion years ago in a fully advanced stage, autonomic
systems and all. (Most living organisms today don't have an autonomic
system either.) Organizations are beginning to take on living
characteristics in many ways similar to what, we can surmise, primitive
life forms did way back when. We can anticipate that advanced stages of
organizations will follow in good time but we certainly aren't there yet.
As for most living being static homeostasis, I guess that depends how you
define static. "Static homeostasis" (if the word "static" applies at
all) is a whole lot different in both current existance and future
response potential than being a rock.

>Living means--able to respond to the environment, otherwise, its dead, so all
>things are alive, yes?

No. It's not quite so simple as either dead or alive. Living things are
very different from the conditions of either the ordered or chaotic
regimes. The "phase transition" between the two regimes we call life has
properties of both that make it unique. Life is truely something balanced
"on the edge" between the two. Life is always a tenuous but tenacious
balance. So too are our organizations headed for a similar existance
balanced between being too static (ordered) and too chaotic to exist for
long enough to matter.

>We NEED static forces for stability and we NEED dynamic forces for
>stability and stability means alive--not dead! Trying running any
>organization without control on cash, receipts. Go ahead and let it be
>self-organizing!

Balanced pressures from static and dynamic forces may produce some forms
of stability or what some will interpret as stability. There are plenty
of folks who would prefer to define stability as static period! Others
accept the emerging dynamic approach to stability. What we all need to
understand - as Simon and others have recently so clearly reminded us - is
that we are leaving the static, ordered regimes behind and moving toward
the dynamic and less ordered ones. Some will interpret this shift as
unorganization, some will see it as chaotic and some will recognize the
dynamic "stability" as a new "steady state," learn to function in it and
seize the new opportunies it offers.

As for self-organizing, I think that note is taken out of the context it
was offered in - namely that organization tends to occur on its own, as a
natural order of things, within most every circumstance. Chaos seems to
have a self- organizing property - and humans continue (and I believe will
forever continue) to create organizations to meet needs. Which is why we
never seem to lack for someone to keep watch on the cash receipts.

Best wishes to all

Cliff Hamilton
Progressive Visions
Hillsboro, OR USA
<cliffrh@aol.com>

-- 

CliffRH <CliffRH@aol.com>

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