Replying to LO28496 --
Today i learned that Prigogine warned that the maintenance of organization
in nature is not and cannot be acheived by central management; order can
only be maintained by self-organisation. He states that self-organizing
systems are superior to conventional human technology. The only difficulty
is that self-organizational systems have no goals or desired outputs!
There is no reference to intention. McWhinney adds that pro-moters of
self-organization have simply their own organizing purposes, although
perhaps anti-hierarchical - and therefore - because of the intention - are
unable to create what they want.
I suggest each organisation only has one real leader. This business of
delegated authority can be quite destructive. Because an organisation has
workers who self-manage, that doesn't mean it is leaderless or
uncontrolled. A well organised and documented management system can give
control at a previously unknown level. However, because the system is
documented it is also open to criticism by all. The audit function can
easily be used to improve methodology.
The issue which many middle managers cannot cope with is 'democracy and
control in the workplace'. The whole thing is as Mary Parker Follett put
it, 'power with rather than power over'.
So I think the above quotation (McWhinney's) seems dismissive of something
which can be very beneficial, to maintain the status quo.
Best Regards,
Alan Cotterell
--"Alan Cotterell" <acotrel@cnl.com.au>
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