Tom wrote:
>If indeed, LO practioners want to include general systems theory and
>chaos/complexity in their models, they will have to transcend micro
>management. If these models of complexity/chaos and systems tell us
>anything it is that one can not just isolate the organizatin from
>what appear to be factors too far removed.
I agree with this conclusion. There are a large number of factors that
influence the behavior within an organization that are not generated from
internal sources.
My wife is a former banking exec & she was constantly complaining about
the resources required just to make sure the bank was complying with
federal regulations. I saw this up-close in Boston, as one of my clients
was one of the larger banks in the New England area.
My wife also complained about the laws governing Credit Unions in the
US, and how much more freedom they had due to the difference in
regulations and other factors that go way over my head (something to do
with how deposits were insured).
So here you could have a bank and a credit union both doing essentially
the same thing, but with entirely different rules imposed upon them by
federal regulators. Both behave in fundamentally different ways within
the organization due to these external factors.
The banks were trying to get laws passed that forced credit unions to
play by the same rules, and obviously the credit unions wanted to
continue with the status quo. The bankers scream that the S&L debacle
would be repeated with credit unions due to the regulations they were
following, while credit unions were saying "market dynamics will protect
us from such a debacle."
Both were trying to change the rules of the pond, to use Tom's metaphor,
because both understood how much the "rules" generated by external
forces, dictated & controlled their internal behavior (as well as their
profitability).
I remember one evening my wife and I were out with the president of the
bank, and he spent the entire evening fussing about these issues and how
he was trying to get his congressmen to take some type action to correct
the problem before it got out of hand.
--"Benjamin Compton" <bbc_rc@hotmail.com>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>