Dear LO' ers
For the readers who have not the time or patience to read long
contributions, I have prepared a summary. Maybe this symmary will trigger
further curiosity and will lead to reading the contributions on 'Learning
from Organisations'.
[Host's Note: This summary will be followed by two msgs, Part I and Part
II with the full text. Leo's images are of natural minerals, and they are
gorgeous works of art. I especially like Fig 10-11. Thank you, Leo, for
this contribution. ..Rick]
Human organisations are complex. Other and more simpler organisations
could serve as examples for their behaviour during a changing environment.
For this purpose rocks and minerals are taken as examples. Minerals are
particularly interesting because they have a perfect internal organisation
(the crystal lattice); the study of change in this internal organisation
due to changing environmental conditions is the main issue of this
contribution.
Figure 1 shows a colourful mineral. A few individual crystals
could be recognised. One of the larger has been bended by external forces.
It shows that this crystal has a certain amount of flexibility before
breaking. The bending means that also the crystal lattice is bended and
this state of increased stress and strain in the crystal could lead to new
organisations.
http://www.learning-org.com/graphics/LO28063_fig1.jpg
Whereas fig. 1 shows a situation where external pressure and deformation
has its impact on an organisation, figure 2 shows a situation where
various types of organisations live in peace together. Most minerals are
free of strain, their mutual boundaries are sharp. The large yellow nearly
picture-filling crystal shows straight faces in a hexagonal configuration
and partly includes a black coloured hexagonal crystal. Both live on their
own. They have been grown because of ideal environmental conditions.
http://www.learning-org.com/graphics/LO28063_fig2.jpg
In figure 3 a simmilar peaceful situation could be observed: various types
of minerals show straight boundaries indicating that none of them is
either victim, or agressor of neighbours.
http://www.learning-org.com/graphics/LO28063_fig3.jpg
Figure 4 shows a scene where continuous deformations have created a
'society' with permanent struggle for life and birth of newcomers. As soon
as a crystal has a certain age and is big enough it has suffered already
so much from deformations of its internal lattice, that nuclei develop and
new crystals start to grow; the old one will disappear completely in
favour for the new growers. In the beginning these babies are still
without, or with only little deformation, but after some time deformations
become greater and greater, until they start to recrystallise again and
this process repeats itself. In the illustration you could observe all
stages of this process.
http://www.learning-org.com/graphics/LO28063_fig4.jpg
Figure 5 shows what temperature could do as changed condition of the
surroundings. The brown elongated crystals are 'consumed' by the grey
coloured crystal. The brown minerals have the perfect composition to be
prey of the grey one. Due to a rise of the temperature this grey crystal
started to grow and although the brown ones could still live under these
higher temperatures, they could not withstand the agressor. Figure 6 shows
a detail of the front line of preditor and prey.
http://www.learning-org.com/graphics/LO28063_fig5.jpg
http://www.learning-org.com/graphics/LO28063_fig6.jpg
So far we have seen that deformation and temperature both as environmental
characteristics could trigger recrystallisation, thus the formation of new
organisations.
Sometimes deformations could involve the whole environment. This is seen
in figure 7. Here the whole rock is visibly deformed in a more or less
regular pattern of wavelets. You could see that the wavelets develop well
in most of the rock due to the mineralogical composition. If this
situation becomes too stressy for the minerals (organisations) in the
rock, these minerals start to recrystallise. In figure 8 this
recrystallisation has happened. The same type of wavelets as in the former
figure, but now colourful crystals are developed. They are in such way
arranged that also a new type of layering in the rock becomes visible.
Thus the organisation of the whole has been rearranged due to deformation
and crystallisations.
http://www.learning-org.com/graphics/LO28063_fig7.jpg
http://www.learning-org.com/graphics/LO28063_fig8.jpg
If environmental conditions are favorite for a next generation of new
organisations (minerals), these new players in the field could 'consume'
hungrily nearly everything. In figure 9 one large ochre-yellow coloured
crystal has overgrown all former minerals. These former minerals are
either inclusions in the new crystal, or they have been completely used as
food for the new crystal (and thus disappeared completely, only the form
of the consumed minerals is still observable, in this case the wavelets in
the whole rock).
http://www.learning-org.com/graphics/LO28063_fig9.jpg
If deformations are so strong that minerals are not able to cope with by
means of recrystallisations destructive immergences could happen. In
figure 10 a large blue coloured crystal has been broken due to stretching
in the rock. Other minerals in the rock have been recrystallised and the
stretching has not lead to a fracture through the complete rock. The blue
mineral shows a colour zonation with a light coloured core. The pattern of
this zonation indicates that after fracturing the growth of the crystal
continued. In figure 11 you could see that the darker colours of the rim
are also present along the fracture plane.
http://www.learning-org.com/graphics/LO28063_fig10.jpg
http://www.learning-org.com/graphics/LO28063_fig11.jpg
All these illustrations show much of what At de Lange has put forward in
many contributions, such as the Digestor, the Dance of LEP on LEC,
homeostasis and rheostasis, his 7 Es and so on.
There are a lot of parallels between the behaviour of minerals during
changing environment and the behaviour of human organisations.
Leo Minnigh
--Minnigh <minnigh@dds.nl>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <Richard@Karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>
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