Future Organizing: Connecting Self and Systems Transformation (original) (raw)
Related papers
2015
Former Associate Partner with traditional organization consulting firm McKinsey & Company Frederic Laloux has accomplished what many developmental psychologists have been eagerly awaiting: Identifying the next stage of social collectives, especially work organizations. Cultural and organizational theorists have previously sketched the evolution of collectives from small groups, such as hunter-gatherers, clanand tribal-based societies, to civilizations that provide law and order through hierarchy and social roles, a pattern reflected in most large organizations today. Beyond that, capitalistic societies or meritocracies, and socialistic-communistic societies or participatory organizations appeared. Theorists have posited that such collective forms reflect stages of individual development, but until now no one has identified a collective form parallel to Maslow’s self-actualized stage, the jumping-off point from ‘‘doingness’’ to ‘‘beingness’’ and from the personal to the transpersonal.
the future of organizations musings of a manager
Dominant forces of the last century, developments in science and technology, the presence of ideological rigidities and the complexity of organizational environment will continually shape the future. Developments in human skills can readily catapult organizations to their future. Four views of the future highlighted include: the future is an extension of the past; the future is new; the future is now; and the future is somewhat "past". In our attempt to (re)invent the future, we need a leadership skill that will propel the organization to its future.
Organizing for Alternative Futures
Journal of Critical Realism
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Reinventing the future: A study of the organizational mind
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing, 2006
This paper describes the concept of the self-and metarepresentation capabilities of the organization, a constituent of what we call the organizational mind. Our claim is that these capabilities are responsible for the emergence of a collective self that is of central importance in the formation of the organizational identity. These capabilities are relevant to the information systems field, as Information Technology applications play a central role in the support of those representational capabilities. The paper presents a summary of a theoretical perspective that supports a research project aimed at developing a fi'amework to guide managers diagnosing identity dysfunctions resulting from impaired representational capabilities of the organization.
Dissertation: Organizational Futurity
2021
What does it mean for organizations to be strategic? This question of the relation between organization and strategy is central in the field of strategy theory and is a matter of high practical significance for organizations. Yet, this relation has not been treated thematically in ontological terms. In theory, strategy is universally understood as an accidental property of organizations and is thus not accorded ontological significance. On the other hand, in practice, strategy is ubiquitous among organizations and is generally understood as normatively and existentially necessary, albeit in an unthematized way. It is in understanding organizations as temporal that brings out most clearly that they incorporate an inherent engagement with the future. Approaching strategy as inherent to organizational being entails a shift from only thinking about organizations being strategic in behavioural terms, to admitting the possibility that organizations are strategic beings in ontological terms. Thinking along this line of questioning leads to the focal question of this study: what is the nature of organizational strategic being as an ontological unity? This question is addressed in a hermeneutic phenomenology of organizational strategic being. Heidegger’s analytic of Dasein is aimed at interpreting the full-fledged temporality of human being and is thus an ontological analogue for interpreting organizational strategic being in terms of its distinctive and equally full-fledged temporality. It is also an alternative to the prominent Whiteheadian-inspired and Weickian process perspectives, which also espouse the temporality of organizing as a central tenet. However, whereas these retrospective process perspectives lead to the relegation of strategy to epiphenomenal status, hermeneutic phenomenology is eminently suited to giving a futural processual account which takes strategy seriously in ontological terms. In this study I develop, defend and explore the implications of the theses that organizational being (sein Gefragtes), as temporal, is an inherently strategic kind of being, and therefore, that organizational strategic being (ein Befragtes) is an ontological unity that is constituted in its distinctive temporality: organizational futurity (das Erfragte). The interpretation of organizational futurity discloses a productive new perspective at the intersection of organizational ontology and organizational strategy theory. Organizational futurity is a conception that helps us to better understand the gap between strategy theory and practice, and avails a new basis for theorizing that might help to ameliorate this persistent gap. The descriptions of organizational futurity, and especially of its modes, will be practically relevant to organizations that exist as strategic beings under the contemporary condition of higher-order contingency. However, it also avails more incisive potentials for the critique of both strategy practice and theory in an age of organizational strategy.
The multiplicity of organizing visions
Industrial Marketing Management, 2017
Research has shown that information systems adoption decisions are often influenced by organizing visions. Organizing visions provide a legitimation for technology related decision-making and involve a range of influences and perceptions from consultants, industry bodies, policy makers and other firms. This paper is concerned with identifying the mechanisms that underlie the structure of an organizing vision. A range of case studies and a morphogenetic approach, underpinned by critical realist philosophy, are used to demonstrate how organizations respond to organizing visions and how different response communities emerge. We identify and explain the characteristics of the shaper, resistor, coerced, follower and ambivalent communities, their relationship with an organizing vision and the importance of pre-existing conditions.
The quest for the self-actualizing organization
2005
This is a book about trying to live as fully as possible as oneself and participating in processes of organizing in everyday life. I have since a long time wondered whether it was possible to feel as a whole unique individual and yet engage in mundane organized activities with other people, notably–work. The free is often pictured as the lonely in legend, literature and film. The collective is often seen an antonym of individualism be definition. However, I do no longer believe in such definitions. They are among the most ...