STRATEGIC ORGANIZATIONAL; COMMUNICATION IN A GLOBAL ECONOMY: AN ANALYSIS (part 11)

SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT

BY

CHARLES LAMSON

The second group of people who helped develop the traditional strategy of organizing focused on scientific management. Like the bureaucratic theorists, they were concerned with accountability. In fact, Frederick Taylor, the father of scientific management, was very disturbed by a common managerial practice of blaming and punishing workers for management's bad decisions. That practice reduced organizational efficiency, because managers who are not held accountable for their own errors, have no incentive to improve. It also inevitably drove a wedge between labor and management. Management's primary goal should be to foster cooperative relationships with workers. For Taylor, accountability bred efficiency.

Although these attitudes may not seem to be all that radical today, they were startling to Taylor's contemporaries. They were palatable only because Taylor coupled them with a set of efficiency-enhancing techniques that had significant short-term economic benefits. Taylor believed that by using these techniques, firms would be able to increase their profits, and the incomes of all their employees, including managers. Over time, they would be able to increase their profits and the entire society would benefit. The best known of these techniques was the time-motion study, in which a supervisor or a consultant observes workers completing a task, breaks the process down into its elements or motions, and then redesigns it to minimize the number of movements necessary to complete it. By using the improved techniques, workers could increase their productivity and income and thereby increase the organization's profits. Today, a number of consulting firms, armed with sophisticated video technology, still conduct time-motion studies and make recommendations that improve efficiency and reduce worker strain and fatigue. For example, Charlie Conrad helped fund his college education by working summers and vacations in a metal-processing foundry. Initially, he operated a drill press. 

However, the company conducted a time-motion study, and could not efficiently operate the equipment. They had to bend over to reach some of the levers, and as a result got tired sooner than shorter workers did. Like every other operator who was taller than six feet, Conrad was transferred to a division that had tasks that could be efficiently performed by people of his height. Taylor stressed that time-motion studies, and all of the other techniques he developed, should be used in close consultation with workers, and in an atmosphere of cooperation and mutual gain. If they are used without first consulting workers, as they often are, they generate strong resistance, especially if there is a low level of trust between labor and management..

Today firms, such as the ones Taylor envisioned, are often viewed as sweatshops where workers are treated like parts of a giant industrial machine. In addition, the term bureaucracy carries negative images: inefficient bureaucrats producing little, except exhaustive expense accounts; customers and employees alike, being buried in red tape, and treated without dignity, in a vast administrative morass and stubbornness. These  types of pictures of the traditional strategy of organizing are really quite ironic, because the original purpose of this strategy was to create efficient and productive organizations in which people were treated fairly and equitably. The arbitrariness and capriciousness that Taylor and Weber observed in the organizations of their time, were to be replaced by policies and procedures that treated everyone - workers, customers and clients - in the same way. The infinite decision making of early firms was to be replaced by objective database considerations. Although the strategies focused on meeting the organization's needs for stability and autonomy. Bureaucratic structure is clear, stable and predictable. But the traditional strategy is also problematic in two ways. Perhaps most important, its key elements - specialization, hierarchization and centralization - place a great deal of pressure on an organization's formal communication system. Consequently, communication break downs are highly likely. Second, the strategy sacrifices flexibility and responsiveness for consistency and predictability. Although this is an appropriate trade off for some organizations, it creates serious problems for others.

*SOURCE: STRATEGIC ORGANIZATIONAL COMMUNICATION IN A GLOBAL ECONOMY 6TH ED; CHARLES CONRAD AND MARSHALL SCOTT POOLE;PGS. 70-71*

IN SUM

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Strategic ORGANIZATIONAL Communication: An Analysis (part 10)

Traditional Strategies of Organizational Design
by
Charles Lamson

A large number of people were involved in the development of the traditional strategy of organizing. One group, the bureaucratic theorists, attempted to improve organizations from the top down, by enhancing the effectiveness of administrative employees. These theorists are associated with sociologist Max Weber. A second group developed scientific management, an approach that tried to improve organizations from the bottom up, by reforming workers' tasks, efficiency and rewards. They were inspired by an engineer, Frederick Taylor. Both groups had the same primary concern - replacing the arbitrary, capricious and inefficient practices of contemporary organizations with systematically designed objective and fair systems of management and supervision.

Traditional Structure and Communication

All organizations are structured. It is structure that distinguishes organized enterprises from disorganized ones. Structure is important to members of organizations, because it clarifies each member's areas of responsibility. It makes formal authority relationships clear to everyone involved in the organization, and it lets everyone know where different kinds of organizational knowledge are located. It makes life predictable, and with predictability comes a feeling of stability and trust. However, the specific structure that emerges in an organization depends on a series of choices that employees make.

Bureaucracy and Structure   Both the scientific managers and the bureaucratic theorists believed that organizations should be segmented into a matrix of formal positions defined by the specific tasks for which their occupants are responsible. The labor that must be performed in the organization is divided among various groups of employees who have the specialized skills necessary to complete their assigned tasks efficiently and effectively. The organizational chart also shows how the various positions are arranged so that lines of authority are clear to all. Usually this arrangement is hierarchical; supervisors are directly responsible to their own immediate supervisors for their own actions and for those of their immediate subordinates. It also implies that decision-making and control are centralized. This means that all the major decisions facing the organizations are made by the people who occupy the positions at the top of the organizational hierarchy. Of course all members of the organization are responsible for making routine decisions in their areas of responsibility. 

In an organization that is structured bureaucratically, the positions are arranged in a hierarchy, Applicants are hired solely because they demonstrate the social expertise needed to perform their required tasks. Employees base their decisions solely on the policies, procedures and rules of the organization, and all their actions are to be documented in writing. Employees are empowered to make decisions in their areas of expertise. 

The bureaucratic theorists valued this kind of structure primarily because they thought it would bring fairness and accountability to organizations, although they also believed that it would increase organizational efficiency. People would be hired based on their abilities -not on their political or personal connections. Everyone involved in the organization ---- if those tasks were performed well, the correct perople wouldf be rewarded well; if not the responsible people would be punished. Every employee would also be held responsible for communicating relevent information up and doown the chain of command. After they completed a probationary period, employees would be guaranteed a job for life and an adequate pension. As a result, they could not be pressured to show favoritism to powerful clients or supervisors. Organizations and all their members, would be accountable for their actions, and the organization would be efficient.

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Strategic Organizational Communication: An Analysis (part 9)

CASE STUDY

Working in the Virtual Future: An Optimistic View
by
Charles Lamson

As her train picked up speed on its trip from Philadelphia and Boston, Tara Rodgers linked her personal digital assistant to the onboard computer via the connection in the armrest of her seat. Tara was on her way to Boston to facilitate a meeting for a scientific team that Worldwide Consulting Group was organizing for IntuitAid International. IntuitAid International (IAI) was a network organization of social service and health agencies that was being developed to address a health crisis among the Innuit peoples of Northern Canada. For the past three years, starting in 2008, Innuit children and elders had been contracting respiratory infections at three times the rate of 2007. Deaths in both groups had increased sharply, and a number of native American tribes and organizations had urged the governments of Canada and the United States and the United Nations for help with this crisis.

Tara had a degree in communication, with a specialization in intercultural and group communication and seven years experience working with international scientific teams. She had started with a major accounting firm, but soon left to set up her own private agency with two of her colleagues. They had begun working with medical research teams in Boston and later expanded to include the entire East Coast. They developed expertise in helping teams whose members worked in several locations develop virtual organizations. Tara specialized in teamwork and facilitation, and her partners were experts in contract law and information technology. The partners learned from each other, and each pitched in to help with all sides of the business. However, having these three deep specialties enabled the partners to cover most of the important aspects of scientific collaboration. Tara's firm affiliated with Worldwide's group of consulting agencies three years ago, and had worked on several contracts for Worldwide. Tara and her colleagues liked having their own independent firm because it gave them flexibility to work on projects they believed in, like this one. Being one of Worldwide's affiliated partners had brought their firm a great deal of business.

Tara's immediate job was to facilitate the organizing meetings of the diagnostic group of IAI. She envisioned that the first set of meetings for this group would take about two months. Following this, Tara (and her associates, if they were needed) would continue to work with the IAI to facilitate meetings, assist with problems, and help manage conflicts, and help to keep project teams on schedule for the remainder of the project.

The IAI had been quickly assembled by Posi Sistrunk, the broker from the UN Agency for International Relief. She succeeded in getting commitments from the Centers for Disease Control, the UN Health Service, the Canadian Health System and the Novosibirsk Hospital in Russia. The Center for Disease Control; and the Canadian Health System first docomented the problem that would be in the frontline of care provision. The Novosibirsk Hospital had dealt with a similar incident among native peoples in Siberia four years before. In that case, the cause had been found to be heavy metals from industrial sites in southern Siberia. Two major drug companies had agreed to provide medicines for the network, if any were needed. As with all network organizations it was important that all partners commit themselves fully and develop good working relationships and clear ground rules from the beginning.

Using the onboard computer, which had a larger and brighter display screen than her personal digital assistant, Tara downloaded her e-mail and found that she had received biographies of the seventeen people who would attend the workshop. This was a diverse group, and Tara knew that their different nationalities and scientific backgrounds would make coordinating the group a challenge. From hard-won experience, Tara knew that it was particularly important that everyone agree on definitions of key concepts, such as quality control. Scientists from different disciplines often assume that others assigned the same meanings that they did to terms. As a result, needless disputes could arise; one scientist might disagree with another's quality, for example, because the two had different definitions of the type of data needed to measure quality. Tara knew that it was important to spend several meetings establishing agreement on definitions and standards, even though the scientists might grumble that all they were doing was talking about words.

Tara knew three of the scientists well, and had heard of several others. She patched through a video call to Stanley Marsh, an epidemiologist with another firm in Worldwide's network, who knew most of the scientists. After inquiring about each other's families. Tara and Stanley dismissed the members of the group. Tara realized that Stanley was getting more and more interested in the project, so she asked him if he would like to come on board as a cofacilitator. His scientific expertise and evident trust in Tara would give extra weight to Tara's attempts to guide this group. Tara then put in a video call to Scientific Associates International, a nonprofit group dedicated to promoting scientific cooperation among nations, and downloaded case studies of effective scientific health teams and statistics on how long start-up periods for multidisciplinary scientific groups typically were. These would help her make her case for a slow but thorough start-up period for IAI.

In Boston Tara walked from the train station to Worldwide's telecommunication station. Participants would be linked into a virtual meeting tomorrow and Tara wanted to familiarize herself with the meeting room. On one side of the room was a video screen that could hold pictures of up to eighteen separate meeting sites; the three dimensional holographic technology made them seem as though they were just different parts of the same room. She knew that not all sites had this technology; the Russians in particular had two dimensional video conferencing walls with a capacity for four meeting sites. She knew she would have to make sure to indicate carefully who wanted to be recognized to speak in the  meeting so that the Russians could switch to that site if it was not up on their screen already. Tara also spent some time setting up the conferencing software that would link the group's work over the next year. It allowed textual and data transfer, online data analysis, and video links for impromptu meetings of a few of the scientists in the network. This conference environment would be the team's virtual home for the next year. Finally Tara arranged for a direct video interview of several Inuit leaders. She planned to lead off the meeting this way to highlight the plight of the Inuit, thus providing a common ground for fast and cooperative action in IAI.

Tara walked out of Worldwide a happy woman, looking forward to the meeting tomorrow. Sure there would be some problems and unpleasant arguments, but she was eager to tackle them. Making IAI work was a challenge, but it would help so many people.

*SOURCE: STRATEGIC ORGANIZATIONAL COMMUNICATION 9TH ED BY CHARLES CONRAD AND MARSHALL SCOTT POOLE; PGS. 52-55*

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Strategic Organizational Communication in a Global Economy: An Analysis (part 8)

Trends in the Development of Information and Communication Technologies
by
Charles Lamson

Everyone is aware of how ICT (information and communication technology) is changing. As consumers, we are amazed at the variety and increasingly sophisticated functionality of devices like camcorders, televisions and personal computers. The diffusion of ICT into organizations has been equally rapid, though sometimes we are not as directly aware of it. Although the process began rather slowly in the 1970s and 1980s, it has consistently picked up speed through the 1990s and early 2000s and shows no sign of slowing The increasing rate of ICT implementation and its growing impact on organizations, and society, can be traced to several developments.

The convergence of formerly separate technology, such as computers and telephones has been hastened by the development of digital technology. Once information like text, audio and pictures has been converted into digital form - as it is - for instance, when we type into our computers or take a picture with a digital camera or camcorder - it can be easily moved from one kind of ICT to another. For example, a digital picture can be sent along with an e-mail message or to a printer to make a paper copy. Convergence makes it possible to link together and sometimes even merge separate applications which makes integration of information in organizations much easier. For example, electronic medical records can combine textual notes made by physicians with digitized radiological pictures and other types of documents in a single database. Another example is the cell phone that has a personal digital assistant (a small computer for personal use) built in. Still another is the growing number of organizations that are moving their telephone systems to the Internet, rather than relying on the phone companies' lines.

Internetworking, the use of the internet to deliver and access information and communication technology (ICT) has grown beyond anyone's expectations. Organizations have implemented intranets, internal private Internets that operate essentially in the same way that the public Internet operates. Extranets are private Internets that allow authorized people outside the organization to use them. Both intranets and extranets are typically protected by firewalls, hardware and software systems that allow only authorized users to access them and prevent unauthorized use.

Intranets, extranets and sites on the public Internet are usually accessed through portals, gateways to the website that have an index of what is available through the site and other features. When you brouse the Web, the first page you find for a site is its portal. Many times, in order to access this portal, it is necessary to enter an approved account name and password.

The growth of the internet has also been driven by the increasing bandwidth it offers. There have been continuously more and more upgrades to the internet, and in the next few years there will be even more upgrades to the Internet that will provide adequate bandwidth for almost any type of communication that can be envisioned. This will fuel still further growth.

Another major development has been the emergence of wireless technologies that allow ICTs to connect without cables or wires. The infrastructure of wireless systems is much easier to build and maintain in less-developed areas. Wireless communication is truly integrating the world.

The advent of wireless ICTs, combined with their ever-increasing miniaturization, is likely to fuel the spread of ubiquitous computing, in which computers are embedded in almost everything. Computers are being developed that can be sewn into clothing, incorporated into sheets of paper, and painted onto almost any surface. Envisioned applications of these devices range from the mundane (keeping track of inventory and preventing theft, monitoring a diabetic's blood sugar level continuously) to the exotic (triggering changes in room temperature and lighting as a person walks from room to room). Although most applications of ubiquitous computing are only ideas at this point, it seems safe to assume that ubiquitous computing will have major impacts on the way we live and on organizations over the next decade or two.

*SOURCE: STRATEGIC ORGANIZATIONAL COMMUNICATION IN A GOBAL ECONOMY; 6TH ED; CHARLES CONRAD, MARSHALL SCOTT POOLE*

                                             

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Analysis of "Strategic Organizational Communication in a Global Economy" (part 7)

Understanding Technology: A Radical Force for Change
by
Charles Lamson

Peter Drucker, an astute observer of society and organizations, wrote in 1994:

No century in recorded history has experienced so many social transformations and such radical ones as the twentieth century. . . . In the developed free-market countries - which contain less than a fifth of the earth's population - but are the model for the rest. Work and work force, society and polity are all in the last decade of this century. They are qualitatively and quantitatively different not only from what they were in the first years of this century, but also from what has existed at any other time in history: in their configurations, in their processes, in their problems and in their structures.

Perhaps the most far-reaching change has been the transformation of the United States and most of the developed world into a knowledge society. For most of this century and the previous one, the economy focused largely on production, on the laborious work in farm and factory that resulted in tangible products. Before World War I, farmers were the largest single group of workers in most countries. From 1920 to 1950, the farm population declined, although the production of food increased. In the 1950s, blue-collar workers accounted for 40 percent of the American workforce, representing the emphasis of that period on factory production through manual labor. However, by 1990, blue-collar workers accounted for less than twenty percent of american workers and farmers for less than five percent. The largest classes of workers in 1990 were those employed in what Drucker terms "knowledge work" and what has also been called "information work."

Knowledge work involves creating and applying knowledge. Examples range from the work done by research, scientists, engineers, attorneys and financial analysts on the high end of the scale to that of teachers and X-ray technicians on the low end. Several things differentiate knowledge work from production work. People who do knowledge work perform abstract operations, and the product - knowledge - is intangible. The only tangible outcome of  much knowledge work is a document. However, despite its intangible nature, knowledge is the critical factor in the development of new products and the delivery of services such as legal and financial advice. Knowledge work adds value to materials and to information, making them more useful or desirable or effective. An engineer's designs turn sand, copper and aluminum into computer chips; an attorney's interpretive and negotiation skills create business partnerships from indecipherable (to any ordinary person) legal tomes and discussions among the parties involved. Knowledge-based work requires format, education (as opposed to apprenticeships or trade school), and ability to acquire and apply abstract theoretical and analytical knowledge. It also requires a commitment to continuous learning.

Information work supports knowledge work. It involves gathering, entering, formatting and processing information. Examples of information workers include those doing clerical jobs, data entry and telemarketing. These jobs are generally lower paying than the lowest rungs of knowledge work. They have been called "pink-collar" work, because they are often office positions staffed largely by women.

Some scholars argue that information and communication and communication technology (ICT) does not really change organizations. They regard it as simply another variable that influences organizational communication by increasing the speed accuracy and efficiency of information exchange. However, the experience of the past five years indicates that this position vastly underestimates the potential of ICT to transform organizations and communication. A great many organizations could not operate effectively without ICT. For example, Wal-Mart could not deliver such low costs without its computerized supply chain management systems. And many organizations could not even exist without ICT. Amazon.com and Ebay are examples of organizations that exist only on the internet. Take away ICT and these organizations would disappear. In most large businesses and a growing portion of small ones. ICT has become so much a part of everyday operations that it is difficult to imagine how the work would get done without it. The countless examples include farmers who rely on ICT to sell their crops, law firms that do their research through online services and local government agencies that collect bills and taxes through online payments. 

We use  the abbreviated term ICT to refer to computerized systems and advanced telecommunication systems. Relevant computerized systems include those used to manage databases containing budget, order or inventory information; to provide information through electronic mail and conferencing; and to coordinate work processes. Advanced telecommunication systems include voicemail systems, fax technology, proprietary telephone systems, teleconferencing, video conferencing and wireless communications. All these systems enable organizations to operate much more rapidly and to adapt more quickly than they could if human communicators and traditional modes of communication (memos, letters, phone calls) made up the entire communication system. ICT gathers and transmits information so quickly, thoroughly and reliably that it enables human links in the communication system to focus more on quality thinking reasoning and service - the tasks for which they are best suited.

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Analysis of "Strategic Organizational Communication in a Global Economy" (part 6)

Thinking Globally: The Challenges of Globalization
BY:
Charles Lamson

More and more, new technologies and the elimination of cold war barriers to economic activity mean that organizations also are becoming globalized. Increasing levels of education in the non-Western world, especially among women, have combined with the creation of a truly global flow of capital and trade to create a new environment for organizations the world over. The increasing diversity of employees of contemporary organizations challenges traditional modes of operating from the inside. The globalization of major organizations is challenging them from the outside. Workers and organizations compete directly with people half a world away, as well as with people down the street. The insulation, comfort and predictability provided by traditional barriers is rapidly disappearing. Others who once were so far away, are now right next door. When multinational organizations, based in Western societies, enter a new geographic area, they bring with them a distinctively Western set of values - individualism, commercialism, separation of church and state, liberty and laissez-faire economics. These things are alien to Islamic, Confucian, Daoist, Hindu, Buddhist, or Orthodox Christian cultures. Many of their products, from rock music, to fast food, to cosmetics,  are also distinctively Western.

Some observers argue that these trends will lead to cultural homogenization, a bland world in which the rich cultural diversity that correctly exists, will be squeezed into a single and standardized Western, or U.S. pattern. Different writers have created their own cliches for these trends - McWorld, Coca-Colinization, McDisneyization. The challenge imposed by globalization is for countries and individuals to find a healthy balance between preserving a sense of identity, home and community, while living and acting within a global economic system.

Western consumerism is distinctively oriented toward consistency and name-brand identification.  Everyone who discusses globalization has his or her own story. Sociologist, Peter Berger talks about a visit to Hong Kong. He went into a Buddhist temple and found a middle-aged man in a business suit and stocking-feet, standing in front of an altar, facing a large statue of Buddha, burning incense and talking on a cellphone. Cultural homogenization is fueled by mass advertising and the status that accompanies Western or U.S. products in much of the world. In fact, the phenomenon seems to be closely linked to the emergence of a global economic elite, people who have become wealthy as a result of the global economy and who are increasingly tied to one another, and increasingly isolated from non-elite people in their own societies. In the long run, homogenization will minimize the challenges faced by global organizations - once the process is complete, differences will be minimized. 

When the world becomes a smaller place, cultural differences become more visible, and potentially more alienating. 

Effective organizational communication and organizational effectiveness depend on taking globalization into account.

*SOURCE: STRATEGIC ORGANIZATIONAL COMMUNICATION IN A GLOBAL ECONOMY 6TH ED - BY CHARLES CONRAD AND MARSHALL SCOTT POOLE; PGS. 44-47*

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Analysis of "Strategic Organizational Communication..." (part 5)

CASE STUDY
There Go the Lights, Here Come the Babies
by
Charles Lamson

In 1984, Yale University organizational sociologist Charles Perrow published a vary influential book entitled Normal Accidents. Perrow's interest in accidents started in 1979, when he testified before a presidential commission established to examine an accident in the three-mile island nuclear power plant, near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The committee concluded, as most of these investigations do, that the accident had resulted from operator error. Perrow disagreed with the findings of the committee, because the available evidence indicated that the power plant operators acted in completely sensible ways, given their training and information that was available to them. 

Perrow contended that accidents in complex organizations occur as a result of unique combinations of events, pressures and incentives. The more complex a system is, the larger number of possible unique accident-producing combinations there are. In retrospect, it is easy to see how all of the elements came together to create a particular situation, and to determine what the operators should have done. However, it is virtually impossible to anticipate all of these unique combinations ahead of time, or even to recognize that they are taking place, when one is in the middle of a crisis. When the systems are already tightly coupled (which means that when something goes wrong in one part of the system other parts are affected almost instantly), operators have no chance to obtain the information they need to correctly diagnose the problem, much less to intervene and stop the process.

In some cases systems actually encourage the errors that lead to accidents. For example, in the maritime industry, getting a ship to ts destination on time can mean thousands of dollars to the company. Most shipping companies share the windfall with the captains of the ships that arrive on time. As a result, on the one hand, shipping companies and ships' captains have a financial incentive to take risks. On the other hand, they have few disincentives to do so. Unlike automobile insurance rates, which go up significantly if a driver has an accident, shipping insurance rates are not based on accident records. Although some countries use safety records in decisions about licensing of ships, other ships or companies, other countries do not. So shipping companies can simply obtain licenses in the least demanding countries. Traditionally, these have been Panama and Liberia. 

In addition, the costs of accidents usually are shared with many people outside of the company. Also, the companies can limit their liability through a variety of legal tactics. Consequently, the occurrence of accidents like the 1989 wreck of the Exxon Valdez in Prince William Sound, Alaska, is virtually guaranteed. Preventing them would require a complete redesign of the "accident-inducing" system, to use Perrow's phrase.

The 2003 electrical blackout in the northeastern United States and and southern Canada is an example of a systems error. It was not the first blackout - similar events took place in 1965 and 1977 - and a systems level analysis suggests that it almost certainly will not be the last. And the initial investigation, concluded that no one could have anticipated a massive power outage on a calm warm day - an event that could only happen if multiple safeguards broke down simultaneously.

5:06 PM: August 14, 2003 

Ohio, USA

A power line owned by FirstEnergy of Ohio came into contact with untrimmed trees and shorted out. Power was automatically redirected to another line, which could not handle the load, overheated, and failed...

...(long story short) In January 2004, FERC chairman Pat Wood announced that his agency would act to force the utility companies to comply with standards that currently are voluntary. As predicted, industry spokespersons opposed the plan.

*SOURCE: "STRATEGIC ORGANIZATIONAL COMMUNICATION... (6TH ED0" BY CHARLES CONRAD AND MARSHALL SCOTT POOLE*

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Strategic Organizational Communication in a Global Environment: An Analysis (part 4)

Principles of Systems Thinking
by
Charles Lamson

Several principals of systems thinking help in understanding organizations and developing strategies for organizational communication.

1. The whole is more than the sum of its parts. Systems are more than just the parts that make them up. A cake is created from separate ingredients, but the cake is totally different from the assembled raw ingredients. In much the same way, an organizational system is more than the sum of its individual members and units, or their particular relationships to one another. For example, most charitable fund-raising agencies are composed of office staff, telephone and personal fundraisers, advertising and promotion staff, accountants and bookkeepers, managers, and a board of directors. Each individual member has particular values, strengths, and weaknesses. Joined into units, such as the accounting department, individuals skills and strengths can compensate for others' weaknesses, and together they can achieve things they could not do separately. The units become wholes in their own right; they evolve their own goals and operating procedures, and they develop a set of values and a culture of their own. Joined into an organization, the units too can achieve different outcomes and have different values than they could on their own. Accounting units keep the fund-raisers honest. Advertising and promotion keeps the whole charity visible in the community, increasing revenues. But advertising and promotion would have no budget for their operations without the fundraisers (nor would the accountants be paid without those they monitor). In a very real sense, the charity functions as it does only because of its entire configuration of people and units. However, the people and units would not be what they are without the whole. It is through their place in the charity that they realize their potential. This process, through which a dynamic interdependence of parts and whole creates a unique overall system, has been called emergence by systems researchers.

Wholeness also applies to process systems. The variables can be defined independently, but their influence is due to how they interact with each other in the system. The variables act as a set, and if the organization is altered to introduce another variable, the entire system changes its character.

2. Cause-effect relationships in systems are complex. Because all of the parts of a system are interconnected, it is not possible to find a single, simple cause for events or problems in the system. In the People Express process system, service quality affects the reputation of the airline. However, is it the ultimate cause of reputation? Quality is influenced by the number of passengers carried and by service capacity, which are themselves influenced by the flight schedule and additions to service capacity, which are themselves influenced by service quality. Where is the cause for the system's behavior? The answer is: In the entire system. Because all variables are linked together, it is impossible to find a single ultimate cause for a problem, or for that matter, for success. Systems thinking warns against trying to find a single variable or process to blame for a problem or to attribute success to. Although individual variables or processes certainly play an important role in the organization, problems or success stem from the system as a whole.

3. It takes time to find the right levers. Because indirect effects are hard to uncover and often overlooked we often fail to find the really important variables, people or units of the system. Although systems are wholes and their parts are interdependent, some variables, people and units, are particularly important. These parts stand at central points in the system where they are in a position to influence a number of other variables. If we cannot change or control some element of a system, it cannot serve as a lever.

4. To understand a system, do not just focus on the system itself. Every system is embedded in a group of larger systems (suprasystems) and every system is made up of another of smaller interdependent subsystems. For example, the landing crew of a freight company is a system made up of a number a number of subsystems (workers, their interpersonal relationships and so on), which are made up of smaller subsystems. Information is input into a system through one or more of its subsystems. As information moves through the system it is interpreted, acted upon and communicated to other members of the system and subsystems.

5. Systems must adapt or they perish. To thrive, and sometimes to survive, organizations must adapt to their environments. If an organization's environment changes, or if it moves into a new environment, the organization must change as well. During the early 1990s, fast-food chains adapted to the healthy lifestyles movement adding salad bars and vegetarian burgers, and by moving into high-schools and colleges, where their customers were less concerned with health issues, and regularly went through french-fry withdrawal. Some chains shut down their outlets in health-conscious areas, and reopened new ones where health was not such a hot issue. Now that the healthy lifestyles movement has faded, many of the salad bars and almost all of the veggie burgers have disappeared (except in a number of different varieties in India).

In adapting to environmental pressures, an organization must balance the need for change with the stability provided by the older systems. Organizations that successfully adapt are able to acknowledge that stability as well as change as needed.

6. History is important in organizational systems. It is important to remember that organizational subsystems and suprasystems are made of people not things. These beliefs, values, histories have an important effect on how members interpret, respond to and communicate the information they obtain. for example, if employees believe that dishonesty is the normal way of conducting interpersonal relationships in their organization the inevitable communication breakdowns are likely to be interpreted as dishonest manipulation. In an organization whose employees value openness and honesty the same breakdown might be interpreted quite differently, employees will act differently on that information and they will communicate it to others in very different ways. From the position they occupy in their organizational system, their choices probably make perfect sense to them, but they may not make sense to someone in a different position.

  

7. Systems must continually learn and renew themselves. A vigorous adaptive organizational system remains so because of the processes of learning and self-renewal. How new members can be integrated into organizational relationships, and how cultures can be produced and sustained are important topics.

However, an organization must learn too, and this is also an important part of self renewal. It is important not only to maintain, but to expand perspectives, to try out new things, to experiment. Opening up organizational systems to learning is critical to their growth and survival. Remaining open to new ideas and opportunities to learn is not always easy or very pleasant. But the organizations that are able to do so reap great benefits.

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