In a message dated 12/29/97 10:07:17 PM, Steve wrote:
>Some of us need to believe that human groups, teams, organizations,
>institutions, clubs, associations are alive and can be described by the
>sciences that have been developed for living creatures: this mental model
>resurrects itself regularly, is tenacious, and finds ways of moving
>concepts like "creativity is entropy" into the discussion. It is, of
>course, a metaphor with some utility, and properly used is of value: why
>it is taken to extremes by believers is a case history in the power of
>mental models to deceive.
Steve,
Before we can truly have a dialogue around this issue (however, it feels
more like a debate!), would it not be helpful to at least develop a shared
understanding of what people are referring to when they say an
organization (or whatever) is alive? I asked this question before, but
got no takers. I'm not saying I agree or disagree. I'm not clear about
what is opened and closed in this interpretation. But, I would like to
explore it before discarding it as a useless metaphor as you have done.
Perhaps being in the inquiry, rather than declaring it offers nothing just
because you can't see the value, will lead us to an interesting outcome.
I'd like to invite those who see something from this "metaphor" of
organizations as living to talk about what this interpretation opens for
them and what they mean by an organization being alive.
-- Margaret McIntyre MargMcI@aol.comLearning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>