W.M. Deijmann wrote:
> Can organizations think?
> Do organizations have a will?
> Can organizations feel?
> Can they act and look around?
I personally don't believe that organizations are human and that they
behave like humans. Your questions appear anthropomorphic to me,
Winnfried. I suspect that there are many kinds of living organisms that
exist for which we might have difficulties answering these questions in
quite the way that you've phrased them.
Using Capra's suggestions--
Do some organizations exhibit "an activity involved in the continual
embodiment of the system's pattern of organization?" This is the
cognitive element in the key criteria for living systems.
Do the same organizations exhibit "a physical embodiment of the system's
pattern of organization?" Do these organizations have a dissipative
structure? This is the structural element in the key criteria for living
systems.
Do the same organizations exhibit a configuration of relationships that
defines the systems's essential characteristics . . . and are these
patterns autopoietic? This is the pattern, or network, element in the key
criteria for living systems.
If we can answer yes to each of the three questions, then there is a
reason to accept the organization as a living system.
Most human communities exhibit all three of these elements.
> If we want to treat organizations as Learning and therefor LIVING
> organizations, we have to accept them as living entities, with a living
> soul, not as a metaphor but as a FACT and treat them that way. If so, we
> have to use human concepts, perceptions, idea's etc. that are in coherence
> with that. IMHO most of the literature on management and organizational
> issues can be trashed as a consequence of this.
Many people speak of organizations and communities in terms of "spirit,"
"culture," "soul," "heart," and so forth. These are metaphors for what
people sense in entities that may indeed be living. It has taken modern
science a long time to accept that it isn't just the tree in the forest
that lives--it is the entire forest that is alive, interacting with all of
the other living systems that co-exist within its' structure. Why is it
so surprising that the human collectives that we form should be alive?
regards,
Doc
-- "Technology is a way of organizing the universe so that man doesn't have to experience it." --Max FrischRichard C. "Doc" Holloway Your partner for workforce development Visit me at http://www.thresholds.com/community/learnshops/index.html Or e-mail me at <mailto:learnshops@thresholds.com> Mailing Address: P.O. Box 2361 Phone: 01 360 786 0925 Olympia, WA 98507 USA Fax: 01 360 709 4361
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