to no. 6
Cosmology/
Astrophysics
[7] Dynamic Organizations
ABSAdomain no.: 7
[Primary] Knowledge type: [mostly] Exoteric
Role in ABSAprime's worldview: Somewhat influential
ABSAlink(s): TBA [via ABSAdomain interaction]
Degree of Difficulty: Somewhat easy
"The best way to predict the future is to create it."-- Peter Drucker
"Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality." -- Warren Bennis
"Strategy is not a plan; it’s a pattern in a stream of decisions." -- Henry Mintzberg
"We cannot become what we need to be by remaining what we are." -- Max De Pree
So, organizations? Any "there" there?
On the organizational side of the domains, let us consider what can be collectively called “dynamic” approaches to understanding organization. Such views see organizations as in flux, vital, constantly in a state of emergence. Why is this of interest in our current training?
The oft-cited “magical view” of reality is that reality (at least as it is normally perceived) is plastic, that is, manipulable at will (that's basically the focus of every ABSAdomain). The way organizational specialists have changed our view of what constitutes “an organization” corresponds to the path we take in understanding how all of our reality is a general case of the specific practice of revising our view of organizations to reflect their dynamism. Same process, different targets…
Teaching about organizations--disappointingly
And that's not just about organizations--college professors do this all the time. It’s long been a complaint of ABSAprime that, in more than three decades of university professorship, she's consistently seen that we don’t emphasize how the discursive styles we are teaching them—does a research paper really do anything to prepare them for life in any organizations?—while valuable in themselves in teaching discipline, organization, and the like, nevertheless center on one very specific (didactic) way of discussing things. Yes, for college professors, being able to publish academic research is extremely valuable, maybe (except for computer literacy) the most valuable form of discourse you can master. If you want to teach higher education yourself, it’s just about unavoidable.
Even if you personally forswear “researchese” discourse as much as ABSAprime does (and she really hates it 😒) be sure that the academic administration you work under will impose rules that will demand that you embrace it, at least partially. ABSAprime had to fight tooth and nail to get her simulation courses taught (see “ABSAdomain08”). Moreover—and here’s a bit of inside faculty gossip—Dr. Phyllie Jo thinks one reason academics teach this way is simply that they are better at this kind of discourse than their students (who too often arrive in the university course woefully unprepared to think and to write [in that particular mode]) and are thus in a position to look down on them. When the discussion goes to other forms of expression, often the professor is left behind. And that, as we're sure you know from your school days, is something no teacher ever wants to be 😏
And this is why we are different...
We hope you see clearly the divergent path we take. In the didactic, conventionally-based approach to learning (and writing and speaking) you as student are assumed to be "in the dark," and therefore in need of instruction by the organization (i.e., the university).
Organizations in this sense are often considered quite literally as reified entities; a reified entity is assumed to have an independent existence which you must seek to understand. But here at ABSApundit, you are led to rely on all your experiences to create an organization dynamically (see ABSAdomain08) that you literally use to solve unbelievably complex problems, driven by the idea that organizations are dynamic creations of the people who work in (perform in) moment-to-moment.
Actually, the only reason ABSAprime got away with doing thirteen—thirteen!—simulation courses is that the students were so enthusiastic. But the dictatorial power of the ignorant sometimes reigns supreme: an administrator (who'll remain unnamed) ruled—while the class was in session—that it would not count toward their graduation. That’s outrageous, and ABSAprime thinks more than adequately answered by the fact that that particular simulation turned out to be the best of all of them.
But this clearly illustrates the trap that even experienced teachers can fall into: the preferred model of teaching is so pervasive, so powerful, that it never occurs to most people that there might be a better way of teaching/learning. That and if you do manage to engage them on this, best bring a lunch—it’s an all-day job to convince them that the most common way is not necessarily the best way.
In many ways this is similar to the position of the neophyte confronting “new” knowledge (remember: lots of times, it’s only “new” to you). You are taught, for example, about the supposedly “ironclad” reality of time and space. But is that reliable? That old soul song gives us a very good answer: “Believe half of what you see, and none of what you hear.” One very big reason we don’t look beyond what appears to be “real” is that it’s seemingly very scary.
Folks, meet "Mr. Dynamic," "Radar" O'Reilly
So, back to the dynamic views of organization. For the longest time in organizational studies the idea of “organization” was as a separate thing, a reified (from "res," latin for "thing") entity that the organizational actor is “in” or “belongs to.” If one needed to know who was responsible for what and when, one could just trust the lines and boxes on the organization chart.
However, as anyone who’s ever worked in any capacity in any organization knows, the “real” organization is defined by the patterns of interaction among living organizational members, whose actions may or may not—often, not—conform to what they are supposed to be. It’s like the "Radar" O’Reilly character from M*A*S*H, the guy who knows everything and yet holds a very low rank. Low rank or no, you simply cannot do your job without relying on him. It's "Radar," and his associates, who create and sustain the organization.
Why does Radar do this? Because he’s learned that the organization is not what it is, on its own, separate from "Radar": instead, he is an active, maybe the most active, agent in producing the organization “on the fly,” every day, even in the tiniest of quotidian activities. Karl Weick refers to this as “enactment,” and argues that organizations are truly coming into existence, in front of us, all the time.
True, there are sociocultural elements—lots of them, again, resulting from the same types of activities—that limit how and how much we can create our organizations. Indeed, in any given workday, you can feel insignificant and in an organization where the higher-ups don't know who you are and that you are less valued all the time.
Yeah, you know it's coming...
A-and, by now, you should be able to anticipate the next connection, the one that links to the esoteric ABSAdomains: that the working of, say, a ritual magician is in fact an example of a rather exotic form of organizational process, with its procedures and products linked in mutually self-sustaining interaction. Is Radar a magician? Darn right, he is, but so is every other employee who works in an organization...and so are you ! 🤩
"As Below, So Above"
