Wow, Roy, a blinding flash of insight arrived as a result of reading:
>And, of course, the argument about variety can be extended internally
>within a business. The business now becomes the management team and the
>environment the employees. If the desire is to control is paramount, the
>management team will try to reduce the variety presented by the
>employees. I wonder what the effect of this on the ability of the
>business's ability to generate variety to control the external
>environment and how long will it take for the effect to be observed.<<
What an interesting way to look at the rise of bureaucracy in the 1950's
and 1960's, and the failure of bureaucracy to cope with the changes of the
subsequent decades!
I recall a famous of study of General Motors, done when GM was the largest
and most successful company ever built, that discovered one of the guiding
beliefs was that "good management consists of strict financial
control."!!! This was shortly before the first Arab oil crisis and the
rise of Japanese automobile competition, to which GM was structurally and
philosophically unable to respond.
--"John Gunkler" <jgunkler@sprintmail.com>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>