Re: Organisational thinking LO3280

Jan Lelie (100730.1213@compuserve.com)
19 Oct 95 08:17:10 EDT

Re: Organisational thinking LO3235 and LO3142 and ..

Hi Michael,

I would like the challenge,

>Jan says "organisations don't think". She says that only people do
>that. I challenge the assumption that organisations don't think.
>What is "to think" that organisations can't and/or don't do?

but I don't consider it to be one. Because it is a paradox. You can
have either way. The essence of thinking, I would think, is organizing,
organizing the activities of elements (as you said) and organizing the
observable reality, including the elements and systems created as a result
of this organizing. In order (!) for thinking to occur these elements have
to organize themselves. So any person is an organisation ... and I've said
a person thinks, so, yes organizations think. On the other hand, supposing
organisations think: what do they think of? To use your own words,
slightly modified,

My challenge first of all requires that an operational definition of
"organisation" be created. (It does not require that we get the *correct*
definition of "organisation".) I can imagine that you can come up with an
operational definition that I can demonstrate as existing in "thinking" by
people. You attempt the first and I automatically attempt the
demonstration.

So I completely agree with you: organisations are manifestations of our
thinking them into exsistence. We might attribute things to them, like
thinking and learning, but, and I confess I didn't state this clearly, I
do think we should not talk about organisations but about organizing
processes. Learning is an adjective which takes on a different meaning.
In this light, it means a way of (self-)adapting processes. As one becomes
aware of learning processes, these can be used to speed them up.

As Humpty Dumpty said:

[...Host's Note: Jan's quote of Humpty Dumpty got messed up and I had to
delete it...]

We are all enslaved by the words we use. But we will master them in the
end. Thanks again for generating these thoughts,

--
Jan Lelie
100730.1213@CompuServe
Words about words are about words

PS: If I had been a woman, I would have been called Alice (I hope).