ORGANIZATION as a system 1)4)
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So many definitions have been given for "organization" in so many different senses that it seems convenient to qualify different meanings
C. ARGYRIS gave the following descriptive definition:
"An organization is a plurality of parts, each:
1. achieving specific objective(s);
2. maintaining itself through interrelatedness with the other parts;
3. simultaneously adapting to the external environment, and;
4. maintaining thereby the interrelated states of the parts" (1959, p.124).
These characteristics are of course describing a "whole" or a "system".
According to W. BUCKLEY a "morphogenic" model of the organization would be useful to emphasize its progressive build up as it emerges from the interaction of the elements and the flow of information among them.
F. ROBB considers that: "Organizations are social systems purposely designed and constructed by men to achieve specific goals and to perform some explicitely defined functions. They are defined initially by their human designers, and, at least in principle, are controllable systems" (1993, p.3 – Italics by this compiler).
As human organizations imply a great variety of necessary, recommendable, merely tolerable or downright forbidden interactions, they are based on rules of conduct, either tacitly known and admitted, or legally stated and recognized by their members. Some of these rules are prescribing the behavior of the members within the organization, while others are directed at the interactions of the organization and its members with other systems, or the environment in general.
ROBB adds:"… at the macroscopic level the institution expends much more lifetime in sustaining itself. It does this by employing its distinctions, values and definitions in communications, by ritualizing the reiteration of its sacralised "truths", and by collecting anomalies and ambiguities arising from incoherent and inconsistent conversations and actions for redistribution as "problems" to be solved by further conversations" (p.4).
These views are synthetized by J.van GIGCH, according to whom "The organization is an information system which functions like an Intelligent Artifact" (1993, p.52).
Practically, organizations acquire promptly their own systemic logic and a degree of autonomy respect of their designers, become more or less unpredictable and even, sometimes, lead them to some unforeseen situations, as their control turns illusory. This imply that design must be a reiterative process.
Categories
- 1) General information
- 2) Methodology or model
- 3) Epistemology, ontology and semantics
- 4) Human sciences
- 5) Discipline oriented
Publisher
Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science(2020).
To cite this page, please use the following information:
Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science (2020). Title of the entry. In Charles François (Ed.), International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics (2). Retrieved from www.systemspedia.org/[full/url]
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