Michael McMaster said
>I agree IF there is such a thing as this homogeneity. As a relative
>term, it is less at most (corporate) centres. There may even be a
>few who have completely isolated themselves. But they are dead and
>don't know it yet.
Yes, precisely
>The heart of our disagreement is his statement "organisations and
>even people can be at equilibrium".
>There is no such thing as a living entity - human or human
>institution in particular - which is not structurally coupled to its
>environment and continually evolving that structural coupling. Some
>are developing couplings that will fail. All are developing
>variations and different levels and qualities. No human institution
>can "uncouple".
>
>Why not? Because they exist in a linguistic environment and the
>people and their language are continually evolving the coupling.
yes, we are a history of conversations
>I do not consider it a trival point here. If we are talking about
>matters of degree - which I think we are - then our approach is very
>different than if we are talking about the nature of the entity
I do think we are talking about degrees of equilibrium and homogeneity.
The equilibrium is dynamic. When an organization (which almost by
definition is always structurally coupled to its environment because the
org. and the environment specify each other), ceases to or is slow to
react to the changing environment (as many are), it can be said to have
remained at a previous point of equilibrium. This equilibrium is with an
environment that no longer exists and is therefore delusional. This is
common in my experience, and unless new ways of couplings are manifested
the organization withers.
An interesting issue is how to ensure that this situation does not occurr
or persist long enough to destroy the organization. We beleive this
requires inter alia "listening" to the "concerns" of the environment and
being an observer of the observer that you are.
Thank you for your excellent conversation. As always it has helped me to
(re)examine and (re)consider my assertions.
Roberto Reichard
emergent@sirius.com
-- emergent@sirius.comLearning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>