A Research Guide

Management Theory


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  Introduction       
1 “Managing at any time, but more than ever today, is a symbolic activity.
2 It involves energizing people, often large numbers of people, to do new things they previously had not thought important.
3 Building a compelling case – to really deliver a quality product, to double investment in research and development, to step out and take risks each day (e.g.
4 make suggestions about cost-cutting when you are already afraid of losing your job) – is an emotional process at least as much as it is a rational one.” Tom Peters “The achievement of stability, which is the manager’s objective, is a never-to-be-attained ideal.
5 He is like a symphony orchestra conductor, endeavoring to maintain a melodious performance in which the contributions of the various instruments are co-ordinated and sequenced, patterned and paced, while the orchestra members are having various personal difficulties, stage hands are moving music stands, alternating excessive heat and cold are creating audience and instrumental problems, and the sponsor of the concert is insisting on irrational changes in the program.”

“I believe that management is an art – and possibly one of the most difficult ones.
6 Just as the artist constantly and consciously works to perfect his technique and to gain mastery of his relevant skills, so must the manager.
7 Mere technical command of the skills does not, however, produce a virtuoso or a superb manager.
8 It is that extra something which each of us brings from within ourselves that makes the difference – vision judgement, awareness of the world around us, and responsiveness to that world, which leads to success.
9 Managing is a matter of the mind and the character.” Sir John Harvey-Jones “If you ask managers what they do, they will most likely tell you that they plan, organize, co-ordinate and control.
10 Then watch what they do.
11 Don’t be surprised if you can’t relate what you see to those four words.” Henry Mintzberg “Management is tasks.
12 Management is discipline.
13 But management is also people.
14 Every achievement of management is the achievement of the manager.
15 Every failure is the failure of the manager.
16 People manage, rather than forces or facts.
17 The vision, dedication and integrity of managers determine whether there is management or mismanagement.” Peter Drucker “Behaving like a manager means having command of the whole range of management skills and applying them as they become appropriate.”
18 The phrase “applying them as they become appropriate” will be the catchphrase for the text that follows.
19 If we, as authors, gave any philosophy to impart to you, our readers, it is that management theory, management practice, and management science are all situated skills.
20 What one should do, see, understand, or communicate are not governed by absolutes but by the demands of the local situation.
21 This review is thus an expansion of Simon’s pat phrase:
22 the art of managing is knowing what to apply and when.
23 Most books on management (or on management theory) are constructed around a particular point of view.
24 There are books on structural contingency theory, resource dependence theory, and corporate ecology theory, to name a but a few examples.
25 There are also books which seek either to explain how a manager might make use of these theories or how some other manager did so with regard to a particular company or event in time.
26 The entire management strategy field is devoted to such theories and resulting tales, as is most of what gets labeled organizational behavior or as organizational dynamics.
27 Whether deliberate or not, the implication of developing such single perspective theories (or monism) is that there does in fact exist some all embracing theory of management that can be applied globally to all management issues.
28 This review is vastly different.
29 While the authors do have an underlying point of view, a view that stresses the situated nature of management, the lessons presented involve multiple perspectives and multiple paradigms.
30 The coherence we aim for is not based on homogeneity of perspective, but on a recognition of “appropriateness”.
31 Our audience is made up of those studying management for the purpose of becoming better managers.
32 We make no claims that the text that follows will be the acme of academic argument, for the arguments of management academics are often irrelevant to the practicing manager.
33 Instead of attempting to teach you how to win polemic wars at the university, we strive to aid you in better understanding the toolbox of multiple perspectives that you, as a manager, have at your disposal.
34 Our language will attempt to be as ‘real world’ as possible.
35 With every page the emphasis is on practical understanding.
36 What is the ‘Experience of Managing’?
37 What does it mean to be a practicing day-to-day manager?
38 What does the experience feel like?
39 What questions, pressures, and situations occur?
40 Our aim is to get the reader past the typical rhetoric that stems from corporate recruiters or well-intentioned but somewhat clueless journalists.
41 It is very important to have a clear appreciation of the ‘experience of management’ to allow intelligent and informed critique of the various management approaches.
42 How can we have “command of the whole range of management skills and [apply] them as they become appropriate” if we do not have a ‘feel’ for the strengths and shortcomings of the different perspectives.
43 To develop a ‘feel’ for the strengths and shortcomings we need to understand ‘what management is’.
44 Traditional Management Theory View of Management
45 There are other labels for the academics and researchers interested in these questions.
46 They include organization scientists, specialists in organization theory and organization behavior, strategists, planners, and management consultants, or even ‘guru’ and ‘witch doctor’.
47 Action, Ambiguity, and Interpretation

The idea that the bases of action are not "reality" but perceptions of reality is close to a received doctrine these days.
48 However, there are ample controversies about the nature of the perceptions and the sense in which a more autonomous (objective) reality also exists.
49 Almost all students of action allow actors some kind of subjective control over the normative and perceptual factors guiding their actions, though they differ in their assumptions about the extent to which subjective judgments and "objective reality" diverge.
50 Some theorists would claim to have discovered or defined a generic preference structure;
51 others would presume that expectations (at least on average) approximate reality, at least after some time;
52 and others would suggest that beliefs and perceptions may be more or less automatically enacted into reality.
53 With these important qualifications, however, there is some general consensus that what we see or believe may at times deviate from what is true.
54 The ambiguities of knowledge and desires reflect partly the cognitive limitations of individuals and organizations.
55 Such a conception leads both to an interest in improving the capabilities of human actors to approximate the decision-theory ideal and to a fascination with systematic bias in judgments and in collective decisions.
56 Ambiguity can, however, also be seen as a fundamental feature of life, one that endures despite the best efforts of reformers and has even be portrayed as having survival advantages1. For example, the capability of a collective to satisfy requirements of agreement may depend on exploiting the ambiguities of preferences and meaning.
57 It is also received doctrine that the premises of action are socially constructed.
58 Preferences, expectations, identities, and definitions of situations are seen as arising from interactions within a social system, thus as embedded in social norms and cultural conventions of discourse.
59 In this view, explanations of action gain legitimacy by invoking shared understandings of proper narrative.
60 Shared understandings are the result of social exchanges mediated by a complete arsenal of social elements - social structure, language, myth, resource distributions, etc.
61 While such exchanges may result in divergence of belief, as, for example, in the exchange between enemies or in processes of individualization, more of the recent interest has been in convergent diffusion processes by which perceptions, desires, and rules tend to become shared for a period of time.
62 The stories that are told by decision-makers can be viewed as instrumental premises of action, as they are by most students of decision making.
63 In such a view, interpretations of history are instrumental to the making of decisions and thus important;
64 but there is no fundamental interest in a theory of interpretation, or story telling.
65 For example, it is clear that certain "magic numbers," such as performance measures or summary statistics, often guide organizational action.
66 Thus, the theory of action has come to emphasize theories of the politics and technology of numbers and the social construction of accounting.
67 Grander derivatives of a subjectivist stance, however, identify humanity not so much with action as with interpretation, with explanations of action, history, and the self.
68 Story telling is seen as more elemental.
69 It is sometimes portrayed as independent of action and thus as a separate domain.
70 Alternatively, action is pictured as an instrument in the development of interpretation, rather than the other way around.
71 Out of such conceptions have come notions of loose coupling between the processes of decision making and its outcomes.
72 Decision-making processes are seen as signals and symbols of legitimacy, and thus valuable in their own right, regardless of any consequences for decision outcomes.
73 The community of talk is seen as distinct from the community of action, with different rules and different audiences.
74 As a result, organizations can talk about some things about which they cannot act and can act on some things about which they cannot talk.
75 The symbolic meaning of decisions has come to be recognized as a vital aspect of decision making that is not necessarily linked to decision implementation.
76 The basic technology of organization is described as a technology of narrative, as well as a technology of production.
77 The contested terrain of organizations is seen as a terrain of meaning.
79 “Continuity and change in theories of organizational action” by James G. March

Contingency Theory

There is little doubt among most theorists that the environment strongly affects organizations.
80 Changes in global economic conditions and resource availability can cause business organizations to succeed or fail.
81 Early theorists like Chester Barnard (cite) recognized that organizations are often unstable and seek to survive at all costs.
82 In a seminal article Lawrence and Lorsch (cite) develop an open systems theory of how organizations and organizational sub-units adapt to best meet the demands of their immediate environment.
83 By an open systems theory we simply mean that the organization is open to the environment, an exchange of resources occurs across the organization/environment boundary.
84 Rather than start with the individual Lawrence and Lorsch decided to start with an ecological view of the organizations and their environment.
85 In their theory an organization is defined as a system of interrelated behavior of people that are performing a task that has been differentiated into several distinct sub-systems.
86 Each sub-systems performs a part of the task, the effects of each being integrated to achieve effective performance of the system.
87 Differentiation is defined as the state of segmentation of the organizational systems into sub-systems, each of which tends to develop particular attributes in relation to the requirements posed by it’s relevant external environment.
88 Whereas, integration is defined as “the process of achieving unity of effort among the various sub-systems in the accomplishment of the organization’s task.” Basic sub-systems are seen as sales, production, and R&D, for example.
89 Tasks are segmented into sectors for market sub-environment, technical-economic sub-environment, and scientific sub-environment.
90 In their theory Lawrence and Lorsch hypothesized that these sub-systems would develop differently based on how they interacted with their environment.
91 Contingency theory suggests that performance is determined by the organizations’ ability to cope with its environment.
92 First, organizations must balance differentiation and integration to be successful.
93 Second, groups that are organized to perform simpler, more certain tasks (e.g.
94 production groups) usually have more formal structure than groups focusing on more uncertain tasks (e.g.
95 research and development).
96 Therefore, it follows that the degree of differentiation is based upon environmental requirements.
97 Third, the time taken for sub-groups to orient is primarily dependent on the immediacy of feedback from their actions, i.e.
98 the time taken to perceive the effects caused by their actions.
99 Thus, the degree of integration is consistent with the requirements of the total environment.
100 Finally, the goal orientation of sub-units is based relative to the part of the environment that effects them the most.
101 Therefore, the degree of goal orientation is consistent with the requirements of the total environment.
102 In the same vain Galbraith suggested that the greater the uncertainty of the task, the greater the amount of information that must be processed between decision-makers during the execution of the task to get a given level of performance.
103 Firms can reduce uncertainty through better planning and coordination, often by rules, hierarchy, or goals.
104 The critical limiting factor of an organizational form, therefore, becomes the ability to handle the non-routine events that cannot be anticipated or planned for.
105 When the ‘exceptions’ become too prevalent, they overwhelm the hierarchy’s ability to process them.
106 The degree of coordination is often dependent on the number of exceptions to defined tasks.
107 Design strategies can reduce the amount of information processed, or increased the ability to handle more information.
108 All of these strategies help to reduce the number of exceptions that must flow up the hierarchy for resolution.
109 Galbraith believed that variations in organizations are variations in strategies to increase pre-plan ability and to decrease the level of performance required for continued viability.
110 He defines a continuity of organizational forms that firms utilize to reduce this uncertainty, including creation of slack resources, creation of self-contained tasks, and creation of lateral relationships.
111 Moving the decision making power down in the firm to where the information exists can reduce uncertainty at the decision level.
112 This includes more direct contact between managers across groups, liaison personnel between groups, task forces and teams of different kinds, and matrix organizations.
113 His argument is that while some of these strategies can reduce more uncertainty, they also require more ‘organizational investment’ and higher administrative costs.
114 The difficulty lies in the creation of mechanisms that permit coordinated action across large numbers of interdependent roles.
115 Firms must choose the most optimal level for their immediate environment, i.e.
116 the strategy that has the least cost in its environmental context.

Institutional Theory
117 Closely related to contingency theory, institutional theorists assert that the institutional environment can strongly influence the development of formal structures in an organization, often more profoundly that market pressures.
118 Innovative structures that improve technical efficiency in early-adopting organizations are legitimized in the environment.
119 Ultimately these innovations reach a level of legitimization where failure to adopt them is seen as irrational and even negligent.
120 At this point new and existing organizations will adopt the institutionalized structural form even if the form does not improve their efficiency.
121 Meyer and Rowan argue that organizations are driven to incorporate the practices and procedures defined by failing rationalized concepts of organizational work and institutionalized in society.
122 These ‘institutional myths’ are merely accepted ceremoniously in order for the organization to gain or maintain legitimacy in the institutional environment.
123 The adoption and prominent display of these acceptable ‘trappings of legitimacy’ help preserve an aura of organizational action based on ‘good faith’.
124 The underlying reason is that legitimacy in the institutional environment helps ensure organizational survival.
125 These formal structures of legitimacy can reduce efficiency and hinder the organization’s competitive position in their technical environment.
126 To reduce this negative effect, organizations often will de-couple their technical core from these legitimizing structures.
127 Organizations will minimize evaluation and neglect program implementation to maintain external (and internal) confidence in formal structures while reducing their efficiency impact.
128 DiMaggio and Powell argued that organizational structure, which used to arise from the rules of efficiency in the marketplace, now arise from the institutional constraints imposed by the state and the professions.
129 The efforts to achieve rationality with uncertainty and constraint lead to homogeneity of structure, ‘institutional isomorphism’.
130 Firms will adopt similar structures as a result of three types of pressures:
131 Coercive pressures come from legal mandates, or influence from organizations they are dependent upon;
132 Mimetic pressures to copy successful forms arise during high uncertainty;
133 Normative pressures to homogeneity come from the similar attitudes and approaches of professional groups and associations brought into the firm through hiring practices.
134 They add that the rate of institutional isomorphism is increased when firms are highly dependent on the institutional environment, exist under high uncertainty or ambiguous goals, or rely extensively on professionals.

Resource Dependency
135 If, as contingency theory suggests, organizations are dependent on the environment for their survival what is the form of those dependencies?
136 The resource dependency theory posits that such dependencies typically take the form of a relationship between themselves and other organizations.
137 Interdependencies are mutual dependencies that develop to reduce the uncertainty in the relationship.
138 Organizations who are dependent on the continued success of other organizations may build "behavioral dependencies" with them to reduce risk.
139 This often involves increased coordination and mutual control over each other's resources.
140 In modern society these dependencies have increased over time as firms become more specialized.
141 Pfeffer and Salancik suggested that it is the organization's dependence on the environment that makes the external constraint and control of organizational behavior both possible and almost inevitable.
142 Groups that control the most vital resources or can reduce the uncertainty of other organizations have the most power.
143 Control over resource allocation, they argue, is an important power source.
144 This power basis can arise from possession of the resource, ownership of the resource, control of access to the resource, control of actual use of the resource, or making the rules that regulate the resources.
145 Power also depends on whether a critical resource is obtainable from other sources.
146 Dependence can then be defined as the product of the importance of a given input or output to the organization and the extent to which it is controlled by a relatively few organizations.
147 The logic is that anytime there is dependence asymmetry between organizations (or individuals) there is a power difference.
148 Pfeffer and Salancik concluded that it is possible to conceive of organizational behavior as the consequence of influences.

Organizational Ecology
149  Organizational ecology, or population ecology as it sometimes is referred to, is the study of dynamic changes within a given set of organizations.
150 Using the population as their level of analysis, population ecologists statistically examine the birth and mortality of organizations and organizational forms within the population over long periods.
151 Population ecologists take an evolutionary view of organizational change, assuming that organizations descend from previous or existing organizations and that population-level change in organizational forms is usually slow and continual.
152 This approach developed from work by Astley, Hannan and Freeman.
153 Hannan and Freeman argued that long-term change in the diversity of organizational forms within a population occurs through selection rather than adaptation.
154 Most organizations have structural inertia that hinders adaptation when the environment changes.
155 Those organizations that become incompatible with the environment are eventually replaced through competition with new organizations better suited to external demands.
156 Analysis in population ecology has three levels, explaining:
157 1. birth and death rates within a population 2. vital-rate interaction between populations 3. "communities of populations" sharing similar environments The theory holds that unlike evolution in animals, natural selection in organizations does not necessarily lead to optimization.
158 Optimized change often depends on the "coupling" between intent and outcome.
159 Long-term change in the diversity of organizational forms within a population occurs through selection rather than adaptation.
160 Most organizations have structural inertia that hinders adaptation when the environment changes.
161 Those organizations that become incompatible with the environment are eventually replaced through competition with new organizations better suited to external demands.
162 Astley’s work contends that community ecology better explains the mechanisms of birth and death of populations of organizations.
163 Community ecology focuses on how populations of organizations interact with each other.
164 Using the population as the basic unit of analysis it explains organizational evolution as the joint product of forces that simultaneously produce homogeneity and stability within populations, and diversity between them.
165 The birth of new organizational species, considered a random event, opens up new avenues of development in what is inherently an unpredictable pattern of evolution.
166 This process lies in a fortuitous set of conditions that promote the emergence of mutant forms, where technological innovation is the organizational analogy to biological mutation.
167 Organizational communities begin to function when they exchange resources with each other, rather than with the environment.
168 As these interdependencies grow the community is less dependent on the environment, causing "community closure" which inhibits the emergence of new populations.
169 The population increases until the available resources become scarce, and the selection process weeds out the weaker firms.
170 Once this stabilizes the populations, new interdependencies emerge between populations, and new populations are added to fulfill functional roles until the community is saturated.
171 The railroads and transportation system development in the US is an example of a community created by technology.
172 A saturated community is unstable and will ultimately collapse with new innovations.
173 Organizational ecology theories are linked to both structural contingency and resource dependence.
174 Thus the three theories together contend that organizational forms:
175 * Exploit dynamic resources, growing when abundant and shrinking when scarce;
176 * Lose their competitive edge as they age as new technologies emerge and social situations change;
177 * Put processes of legitimization and competition into opposition.
178 At low density, growth in numbers mainly legitimizes a population and the organizational form it uses.
179 But as density increases, competition becomes more important (especially when density is high relative to resources).
180 All three perspectives focus analysis above the level of a specific organization, and both emphasize a long-term historical view.

The Chasm Between ‘Real Life’ and Theory
181  The contrast between the experience of management and traditional management theories highlight a clear disagreement between the practicing managers’ experiences and the management world described by mainstream management academics.
182 This disagreement separates the ‘experience of management’ from the bulk of management literature.
183 The gap between them is more than wide enough for us to label it a ‘chasm’.
184 Henry Mintzberg writes of some stark different between management folklore and management fact regarding the nature of management.
185 Here are what Mintzberg describes as “four myths about the manager’s job:”
186 Folklore:The manager is a reflective, systematic planner.
187 Fact: Study after study has shown that managers work at an unrelenting pace, that their activities are characterized by brevity, variety and discontinuity, and that they are strongly oriented to action and dislike reflective activities.
188 Folklore:   The effective manager has no regular duties to perform.
189 Fact:   In addition to handling exceptions, managerial work involves performing a number of regular duties, including ritual and ceremony, negotiations, and processing of soft information that links the organization with its environment.
190 Folklore:  The senior manager needs aggregated information, which a formal management information system best provides.
191 Fact:   Managers strongly favor the oral media -- namely, telephone calls and meetings.
193 Folklore: Management is, or at least is quickly becoming, a science and a profession.
195 Fact:  The managers’ programs -- to schedule time, process information, make decisions, and so on -- remain locked deep inside their brains.
201 Mintzberg’s characterization of ‘fact’ and ‘folklore’ is stark.
202 What Mintzberg call a gap, however, we call a chasm.
203 Chasms are wider, deeper, and more foreboding than gaps.
204 The origins of the chasm date back at least as far as Henri Fayol, a French industrialist who in 1916 introduced the view of management as some kind of machine.
205 This metaphor dominated managerial prescriptions during the 20th century – its influence upon the theories of action is clear.
206 Four simple words – plan, organize, coordinate, and control – underlie what managerial actions business schools, and consulting companies have been prescribing.
207 Furthermore, and possibly more significant, many managers assumed that this is what they should do, as well as non-managers thinking that, that was actually what ‘real’ managers were doing.
208 And, this is what prospective managers have prepared to start doing when they might finally be labeled ‘managers’.
209 It was not until the 70s that some scholars, most notably Mintzberg, began to describe these four words are more like ‘folklore’ about management, rather than facts.
210 It took many more years before the community that describes, and prescribes, management practices considered this critique legitimate.
211 This reluctance to accept the traditional view as folklore rather than fact has to do, not only with institutional momentum for the contrary, but because previously accepted view was simpler and therefore easier to assimilate and implement.
212 It wasn’t really until the onset of globalization in the business world that the far-reaching risks associated with such a simple perspective of management were realized.
213 In the past life was simpler for the manager.
214 In this quasi-closed (rather than open), complicated (rather than complex) world change was slower.
215 A manager not only had a simpler system to deal with, but also he/she generally had more time to make decisions, and also more time realize whether the decision was correct or not, and then still more time to put things right if they were wrong.
216 In a simpler world the gap between what theory prescribed and what managers experienced was less apparent, and far less important.
217 Nowadays, however, things are very different.
218 Primarily as a direct result of the rapid development of IT, systems are more connected and the geographical boundaries of old are no longer physically bound (or close) a region from the rest of the world.
219 The ability to connect to the rest of the world allows and organization to influence and to be influenced by a greater network of organizations, societies, etc.
220 Connectivity has grown exponentially.
221 In this global, complex world life moves quickly (partly as the ability to generate and make use of information grows), i.e.
222 the tempo of business has increased significantly and is continuing to do so.
223 The manager no longer has the luxury of time for many decisions.
224 This combination of increased complexity and tempo means that the gap has grown and become plainly more apparent than ever before.
225 Every day voices in the mass media tell us we live in a world in which complexity is rising and institutional orders are dissipating.
226 In such a world, organisational science studies ways of fending off the forces of chaos that are, so to speak, always just around the corner.
227 Management is portrayed as the process not only of fending off, but also of sometimes seizing hold, of those very forces.
228 The traditional management literature -- the stuff from which most of our MBA led generation is taught -- tends to speak of an objective world where interactions can be described in linear terms, where words have singular meanings, and where prediction and control are paramount.
229 The focus on control provides one perspective on "chaos" and the manifold changes occurring all around us.
230 In an alternative view, organizations can be viewed as systems of interpretation and constructions of reality (Berger and Luckmann, 1967).
231 In order to survive, organizations must find ways to interpret events so as to stabilize their environments and try to make them more predictable;
232 organizations must also find ways to interpret events so as to be one with the environment, an environment that they choose.
233 A central concern of organization science is that of understanding how people construct meaning and reality, and exploring how that enacted reality provides a context for action.
234 When managers 'enact' the environment, they as Weick (1995) put it:
235 "construct, rearrange, single out, and demolish many 'objective' features of their surroundings.
237 they unrandomize variables, insert vestiges of orderliness, and literally create their own constraints." Through this process of sensemaking and reality construction, people in an organization give meaning to the events and actions of the organization.

Bridging the Chasm
238 Management theory texts can provide very useful fixes and prescriptions to assist the practicing manager.
239 The underlying assumptions, however, in these texts are generally inconsistent (i.e.
240 they are different, or misaligned) with those actually experienced in the real world of managers.
241 The main criticism of the traditional management texts is the implied notion that single viewpoint approaches have the ‘capacity’ to deliver the necessary breadth and depth to address the vast array of management issues – from simple number crunching problems to multi-disciplinary team (i.e.
242 teams comprising of members each specializing in a different subject) management.
243 By contrast, the main criticism traditionalists have of the ‘others’ is that by refusing to focus management studies on a single perspective theory, the potential political and influential clout of management academics has been vastly reduced.
244 Witness this quote from Jeffrey Pfeffer:
245 Without a recommitment to a set of fundamental questions and without working through a set of rules to resolve theoretical disputes, the field of organization studies will remain ripe for a hostile takeover.
246 (Pfeffer, 1993) Around such ideas Lex Donaldson builds an entire book – “American Anti-Management Theories of Organization:
247 A Critique of Paradigm Proliferation.” Donaldson’s book is an indictment of existing organization theory which, he claims, has fragmented into competing paradigms3. Donaldson argues that this profusion of perspectives is driven not by a genuine need to further the body of knowledge, but by a “push for novelty fuelled by individual career interests” typical of the academic environment – a rather cynical attitude.
248 He asserts that the resulting fragmentation of the field into mutually incompatible ideas has significantly weakened organization theory as an intellectual enterprise worthy of attention and support.
249 Donaldson’s book calls for building a unified theory of organizations by selective addition of elements from organizational ecology, institutional theory, resource dependency, agency theory, and transaction cost economics to a base of structural contingency theory.
250 Furthermore, he suggests that in such unification lies the future agenda for research in organization theory.
251 The inference of this suggestion is that there indeed exists a grand, all embracing, theory of management, synonymous with the concept of the ‘theory of everything’ (TOE) from physics.
252 Such a theory would single-handedly explain every facet of organizational thinking.
253 For example, it would cover such areas as the role(s) of subjective elements such as emotions, language, human interaction, as well as the more objective elements, such as organizational form, business value chain, etc.
254 Not only does such a theory supposedly exist, but, if it were adopted as ‘gospel’, management academics might gain the clout now exercised by economists and ‘gurus’.
255 It is simply not reasonable to expect single perspective approaches to provide broad ranging applicability.
256 This is particularly true given the complex nature of today’s business environment and the resulting vast array of different scenarios a manager might face.
257 Indeed the view within physics, at least, of the existence of a TOE is slowly changing.
258 Stephen Hawking in his latest revision of the bestseller “A Brief History of Time” has hinted that the useable features of a TOE will more than likely comprise a number of separate theories.
259 These theories would have distinct areas of application rather than a single all embracing perspective of the universe.
260 Management academics, as in other sciences, seem to have crowned unification as a goal.
261 In our opinion, the belief and therefore the focus on the search for a unified theory of management is resulting in the closing down and overlooking of potentially exciting and valuable (to managers as well as academics) avenues of research.
262 This is not to say that the insights derived from single minded texts have no value.
263 On the contrary, when applied in the appropriate (limited) situation(s), i.e.
264 the right place at the right time, the approaches may indeed prove invaluable.
265 However, making the connection between the situation of interest and theory is not a trivial undertaking.
266 If we consider the challenges to humankind throughout its own evolutionary journey, we suppose that many occasions prehistoric man came face to face with a sabre toothed tiger or something less dangerous, like a wooly mammoth for example.
267 In the early days, prehistoric man was not equipped with a perspective that allowed him to distinguish between the mortally dangerous tiger and the mammoth.
268 A number of painful lessons later, our simple hunter developed an appropriate model that improved his/her chances of walking away intact after an encounter with a tiger of a mammoth.
269 Prehistoric man had developed an understanding of the situation that allowed him to identify what was important to consider in order to take an appropriate course of action.
270 A challenge to the modern day manager (among many others) is to perform the same trick, i.e.
271 to recognize the pertinent features of a situation, develop or apply a theory explaining the relationships between the pertinent features, and then make a decision based on the predictions/understanding the application of the theory derives.
272 Because of the complexity inherent in many such situations it is impossible to know beforehand what is important to consider, and therefore what model to apply and what will happen.
273 To complicate life more, similar situations do not necessarily result in similar outcomes.
274 We need to wait and see what happens before we know what happens!
275 This is not a very satisfactory for the manager, in fact it’s the end of life as we know it – particularly for the prehistoric men culled by the sabre toothed tiger.
276 Of course, experience will provide a powerful (and sometimes overwhelming) input to the decision process.
277 But as we all know, experience is not always appropriate for new situations, otherwise our failure rate would be much lower than it is.
278 The necessary managerial skill of recognizing (through identification of what’s important for the particular situation – context) which viewpoint to adopt for a given situation (i.e.
279 a clear understanding of situatedness) will be raised time and time again throughout this text, and is the principal message communicated.
280 We will see that the ambiguity and unpredictability of the world around us can be managed, or at least coped.

Actor-Network Theory
281  The original development and application of actor-network theory (ANT) was concerned with the sociology of science and was pioneered by Michael Callon (1986) and Bruno Latour (1987).
282 Overtime, it has been broadened by an international group of scholars to become a process-oriented theory of management
284 ANT is one way to represent work, which in reality is difficult, messy and complex.
285 It simplifies reality in a way that highlights how human actors and artifacts are seen as part of the social world.
286 An actor network (AN) consists of both people and things.
287 Both people and things are actors in a network – they have a role to play.
288 Buildings, texts, or money are usually considered to be resources or constraints.
289 But if we consider objects as playing an active rather than a passive role in the construction of an organization, the role(s) of objects change(s).
290 Just as people act on other people and objects, objects act on other objects as well as on people.
291 For example, a burned out light bulb on an overhead projector not only changes the actions of the presenter who must now speak without his/her transparencies, but is also changes the usefulness of the projector itself – which gets turned-off and moved to the corner.
292 “Entities – human, technical and textual, are compound realities, the product of a process of composition”
294 According to ANT, artifacts as well as humans can be actors, meaning that they are capable of putting other actors into action.
295 Artifacts can trigger and even control humans.
296 There is also no different between a person and a network – a person or a position is nothing without its network.
297 What is a Dean without a faculty, students, or a university?
298 An office or funding?
299 A staff or a computer?
300 According to ANT actors are fighting or struggling in the process of networking, and their fights and struggles are the driving force in this process.
301 This ‘struggling’ is based on the actor’s intention and interest of the situation at hand.
302 An AN increases in size and strength as more actors become enrolled.
303 Adding only people to the network will be insufficient.
304 A new machine, a new computer, classrooms, audio visual equipment, texts, etc., i.e.
305 supporting infrastructure, can increase the strength of the network as easily as increasing the number of people.
306 For example, the military refer to communication systems as a ‘force multiplier’ as the availability of such equipment multiplies the strength of the military force (by supposedly making them more efficient).
307 In fact, it is only through enrollment of both people and things that networks are formed.
308 Actors also participate in many networks which frequently overlap and sometime compete.
309 ANT tells us quite clearly that a theory should not be judged according to an absolute set of indicators, but according to the work that it does in the world.
310 Let us use an analogy.
311 In the early nineteenth century in England there were a huge number of capital crimes – starting from stealing a loaf of bread and onwards….
312 However, precisely because the penalties were so draconian, few juries would ever impose the maximum sentence;
313 and indeed there was actually a drastic reduction in the number of executions even as the penal code was progressively strengthened.
314 Here are two ways of writing history – one can either concentrate on the creation of the law;
315 or one can concentrate on the way things worked out in practice.
316 This is very similar to the position taken by Latour (where he says we can either look at what scientists say that they are doing – working within a purified realm of knowledge – or at what they are actually are doing – manufacturing hybrids).
317 Both of these are valid kinds of account.
318 Early ANT concentrated on the ways in which it comes to seem that science gives an objective account of natural order:
319 trials of strength, enrolling of allies, cascades of inscriptions and the operation of immutable mobiles.
320 It drew attention to the importance of the development of standards (though not to the linked development of classification systems);
321 but did not look at these in detail.
322 In so doing we ‘followed the actors’.
323 We shared their insights (allies must be enrolled, translation mechanisms must be set in train so that, in the canonical case, Pasteur’s laboratory work can be seen as a direct translation of the quest for French honor after defeat in the battlefield), their perspectives, and their traumas.
324 However, by the very nature of the method, we also shared their blindness.
325 The actors being followed did not see what was excluded:
326 they constructed a world in which that exclusion could occur.
327 ANT tenets apply to change.
328 In ANT the concept of a stable and aligned network is a description of a network which is well functioning.
329 Walsham (1997) points out that successful networks of aligned interests are created through the enrollment of a sufficient body of allied interests, which make sure that they will act in a way that maintains the network.
330 ANT forces us to consider both human or customs of those involved in curricular change.
331 It asks us to consider how actors become enrolled in new networks, how the network elements change in relationship to each other, and how sub-networks are formed.

Organizational Learning
332  Unlike theory building in the natural sciences, organizational theory has proceeded without a strong sense of collective endeavor.
333 In the past decade the idea of ‘organizational learning’ has captured the imagination of both managers and scholars.
334 The focus on learning has given rise to a viewpoint, in which individuals’ beliefs and insights are viewed as critical influences on organizational effectiveness.
335 Organizational learning theorists, like Argyris, Senge, Cohen and Levinthal propose that it is not enough for leaders to design appropriate organization structures and continue to make well-reasoned decisions.
336 Instead, organizations must at all levels be attentive to changing conditions, including their ability to absorb the learning at hand.
337 Argyris is widely cited as a pioneer in organizational change efforts and credited with a lifetime of sustained creative thinking about intervention in complex systems.
338 His work forms the basis for many concepts and models of organizational learning.
339 Argyris argues that all human action is a consequence of design - both conscious and not.
340 In each situation, if-then propositions analogous to a computer program specify desired actions.
341 Ineffective action is as much a result of design as is effective action.
342 The idea is to simply ask people to change their programs, to improve their own effectiveness and the effectiveness of their organizations.
343 There are two kinds of programs in people's heads;
344 one is the espoused kind, if-then propositions we think lie behind our actions.
345 The other is the ‘theory-in-use’, which is if-then propositions we actually use when we act.
346 The problem is that individuals are unaware of the discrepancy between the two.
347 This unawareness is partly due to learning our theories-in-use early in life.
348 More insidiously, however, specific features of theories-in-use keep people unaware of this discrepancy.
349 We then act upon these ‘facts’, remaining unaware of having made an inferential leap and thus unable to detect our errors.
350 Argyris defines ‘actionable knowledge’ as specifying both the skills required to produce a new state as well as the contextual conditions necessary to help maintain it, and maintains that if organizational researchers wish to produce actionable knowledge, they must focus on theories-in-use.
351 As one of the scholars that has popularized the concept and practice of organizational learning, Senge's overriding goal is to synthesize technical and behavioral learning issues.
352 He combines technical models with the concepts of vision and personal growth.
353 In the context of system dynamics' history of focusing on technical issues, the behavioral theories underlying his work are comparatively less developed, but reflect an awareness of the importance of both cognitive and affective issues.
354 Inspired by systems thinking and driven by a commitment to team learning and shared vision, his aim is to involve people throughout the organization in learning.
355 ‘Learning organizations’ are frequently portrayed as wonderful, almost magical workplaces that will function at once as market powerhouses and as vital communities of learners.
356 When a firm wishes to learn about things unrelated to its ongoing activity, it must develop what Cohen and Levinthal labeled ‘absorptive capacity’.
357 This capacity for learning refers to the ability of a firm to recognize the value of new, external information, assimilate it, and apply it to commercial ends is critical to its innovative capabilities.
358 Absorptive capacity depends on the prior knowledge of the firm.
359 It may be a by-product of R&D investment or manufacturing or through training.
360 An organization's absorptive capacity depends on individual capacities.
361 It depends on transfers of knowledge across environmental boundaries and across sub-units.
362 “Gatekeepers” help transfer info across boundaries, and in turbulent environments more such gatekeepers are needed to increase reception of new ideas.
363 Effective communication with gatekeepers requires knowledge and a shared language.
364 Absorptive capacity is path dependent.
365 Accumulating absorptive capacity in one period will help its more efficient accumulation in the next.
366 Also, the possession of related expertise might permit the firm to better understand and evaluate the import of, for instance, new technologies.
367 If the firm quits absorbing, it may never catch up again.
368 When new opportunities emerge, the lagging firm may not recognize them.
369 As learning becomes harder, high absorptive capacity becomes more important manifested in increased R&D spending.
370 In summary, Senge's models of the dynamics of systems (or organizations) provide valuable strategic insights that neither of the other two behavioral theories contain.
371 Argyris compels us to address the fundamental sources of ineffectiveness found in interpersonal conversation, and builds a case that there is no way to avoid some of this long hard work in pursuing organizational learning.

Culture Theory
372  Some scholars have realized that the people with whom we interact have a wealth of habits, rituals, verbal and non-verbal languages, laws, taboos, values, assumptions, history, myths, rituals, stories, and legends, which must be considered in any interaction with them.
373 This is the basis for cultural theories of management and organizing.
374 Culture is often defined as the “glue that holds an organization together.” Sometimes culture is considered the character of an organization, i.e.
375 it's climate, ideology, and image.
376 Yet, people inside a specific culture do not always perceive their culture as a social construction;
377 rather, they see it as an objective reality.
378 In the mind of most cultural theorists culture is not objective but highly subjective, and expresses the values or social ideals and the beliefs the organizational members come to share.
379 However, much of the literature refers to a single organizational culture, when in likelihood there are several organizational subcultures.
380 Much of the work by Schein focuses on shared tacit assumptions are the basic unit of culture, and they powerfully influence behavior in organizations.
381 Culture is a learned product of group experience and its strength is a function of the convictions of an organization's founders, the stability of the group or organization, and the intensity and nature of past learning experiences.
382 Beliefs held by founders and leaders are extremely powerful in this model, carrying on for years after the founders have ceased to run the organization.
383 Schein argues for the need to decipher an organization's culture by eliciting data about cultural artifacts such as dress codes, ways of talking to the boss, and other visible evidence of a culture.
384 The second level of data encompasses espoused values - that is, readily offered reasons for the visible artifacts.
385 The third and most subtle level captures shared underlying assumptions, which require some probing to be uncovered, such as through discussing inconsistencies between artifacts and what Argyris called espoused values.
386 The idea is that once counterproductive beliefs are articulated, it is then possible to change them.
387 Schein's commitment to respecting the uniqueness of each organization's culture adds richness to the perspective offered by learning theory.
388 Van Maanen and Barley view culture as a set of solutions devised by a group of people to meet specific problems posed by the situations they face in common.
389 Culture become a living, historical product of group problem solving.
390 They argue that cultural patterns cease to exist unless they are repeatedly enacted as people respond to occurrences in their daily lives.
391 Culture is manifested in norms, rules, and codes that people use to interpret and evaluate their own behavior as well as the behavior of others, but it only endures as values that are transmitted from one generation to the next.
392 Thus culture is both a product of structure and interaction.
393 Smircich uncovered five research themes considering culture -- comparative management, corporate culture, organizational cognition, organizational symbolism, and unconscious processes and organization.
394 The differences in approach to culture are derived from differences in basic assumptions researchers make about "organization" and "culture".
395 Many are based on the concept of a metaphor and imagery, like machines, organisms, or political arenas.
396 Her argument is that our thinking and assumptions are constrained by our choice of metaphor, in the linking of images of organizations and of culture.
397 Gregory faults many organizational culture studies as failing to explore multiple "native" views encompassing several subcultures.
398 Instead of emphasizing the homogeneity of culture and it's cohesive function, most organizations should be viewed as multicultural with a considerable divisive potential.
399 Her idea is that a more holistic culture paradigm tries to show how culture parts function to maintain the integrity of the group's social structure.
400 This was the primary perspective of early industrial sociologists, and designed to help managers better control subordinates by taking their cultural reactions into account.
401 The strength was its recognition of the importance of informal social organization in industry.
402 Weick uses a cognitive perspective to make the point that organizations are networks of shared meaning or shared frames of reference, organized patterns of thought.
403 He shows that conceptions of strategy and culture are very similar.
404 He notes that if beliefs, values are different in the organization there is often a greater need for detailed planning.
405 But there is also a greater probability that plans will not be implemented as intended, through diverse interpretation and action.
406 In fact, he suggests that culture can substitute for plans more effectively than plans can substitute for culture.
407 Both strategy and culture can generate structure.

Symbolic Action Theory
408 Managers are invariably concerned with power.
409 While political strategies of managers tend to be described in terms of sources of power which objectively exist (i.e.
410 those determined by characteristics of the organization and its environment), political influence behaviors can also operate within the interpretive paradigm via the notion of socially constructed reality
412 However, not much empirical work on managing meanings to acquire power has been conducted.
413 Most of the studies on intra-organizational power fall instead under the functionalist perspective, which relies on objective conditions or sources of power (Bradshaw-Camball & Murray, 1991).
414 The symbolic action perspective deals explicitly with the management of perceptions and meanings.
415 Symbolic actions target perceptions in situations where there really are no goods and services that can be exchanged, and thus serve as a basis for claiming power (Pfeffer, 1981b).
416 The source of power then becomes acceptance of one's construction of reality.
417 Symbolic actions are those actions which enable the acquisition of power despite the absence of favorable conditions found in the context or situation within which it is operating.
418 The symbolic action notion is similar to social influence theory (Tedeschi & Melburg, 1984), which argues that where the influencer does not possess objective characteristics, he/she needs to engage in various impression management behaviors to create the image that otherwise would have been created by those objective characteristics.
419 Mostly these behaviors pertain to actions that try to communicate certain messages regardless of whether such messages have some basis in fact.
420 They serve to create an image, a reality that is favorable to the actor, so that the same ends are achieved as when favorable conditions actually exist.
421 The notion of socially constructed reality (Berger & Luckmann, 1966) suggests that through the use of language and symbolic actions, organizational actors influence definitions of ‘reality’, and that it is on the basis of this constructed reality, rather than the objective or materially concrete reality, that organizational members act (Pfeffer, 1981a, 1982).
422 One ‘reality’ defined by organizational actors is what contingencies or resources are critical for the organization (Pfeffer & Salancik, 1978).
423 The strategic contingency theory (Hickson et al., 1971), in fact, lends itself to the notion of a socially constructed reality.
424 Its components of ability to cope with uncertainties and non-substitutability suggest that one needs to be able to demonstrate and call attention to the fact that not only has one dealt successfully with these critical contingencies, but that one has the sole and requisite expertise to handle such affairs and deliver the expected results.
425 A similar argument can be extended to resource dependence, the other dominant theory of intra-organizational power (Pfeffer & Salancik, 1978).
426 Political language and symbols can be utilized not only to directly influence definitions of what contingencies and resources are important, but also to shape the evaluative frame, particularly the values and norms used by organizational actors in judging and making choices (Frost, 1989;
427 Griffin, Skivington, & Moorhead, 1987).
428 Frost (1989), for example, wrote about three fundamental issues that need to be considered in understanding and utilizing politics in HRM. These interrelated issues, addressing the questions of "doing things right," "doing the right things," and "what is right," involve values and norms of various organizational actors who influence the resolution to these questions.
429 Empirical support for Frost's (1989) argument comes from Enz's (1988) finding that top management's perception of value similarity was the strongest predictor of departmental power.
430 Symbolic actions become more effective when used persistently.
431 As Peters stated, "senior managers are signal transmitters, and signals take on meaning as they are reiterated"
433 An action repeated often enough gives truth to the message being conveyed (Pfeffer, 1981b).
434 In addition, Pfeffer (1981a) indicated that the concurrent use of a variety of actions sending a consistent message provides more potency.
435 Thus, frequency, variety, and consistency are important dimensions to consider.

Sensemaking
436 Weick (1995) argues that how people organize themselves, how they resolve uncertainty and ambiguity, and discover meaning is controllable.
437 Sensemaking refers to how meaning is constructed at both the individual and the group levels.
438 Through the construction of meaning, clarity increases and confusion decreases.
439 The decrease of confusion leads to higher productivity, better quality, and greater confidence in group processes.
440 These outcomes are applicable to all group processes whether they be in a boardroom or in a classroom.
441 The concept of sensemaking has been described as interpretation coupled with action (Thomas, Clark, & Gioia, 1993;
442 Gioia, Thomas, Clark, & Chittipeddi, 1994;
443 Weick, 1979;
444 and therefore, reflects the combination of thought processes with execution of that thought.
445 The term sense-making has come to be used to refer to a ‘theoretic net’, a set of assumptions and propositions, and a set of methods which have been developed to study the making of sense that people do in their everyday experiences.
446 Some people call it a theory, others a set of methods, others a methodology, others a body of findings.
447 In the most general sense, it is all of these.
448 The central concept of sensemaking (Thomas, Clark & Gioia, 1993;
449 Weick, 1995) stands in the study for people's attempts to shape meaningful action by:
450 1) Basic values and beliefs, which are stable over time (Schein, 1992);
451 2) Interpretive schemes building on the individual's experiences from earlier action and events;
452 3) Clues to what of the abundant information the individual will base action, i.e.
453 a basis for guiding attention.
454 Interpretive schemes are structured sets of pre-existing views and patterns of events/actions that can contribute to meaning and action (Lord & Foti, 1986).
455 Consciously or not people tend to act in accordance with earlier patterns, which may be developed or changed, though.
456 Weick offers his reader a set of sensemaking properties to articulate the concept that would be considering an approach to give sense in itself.
457 These seven sensemaking properties include:
458 being grounded in identity construction, retrospect, enactive of sensible environments, social, ongoing, focused on extracted cues, and driven by plausibility rather than accuracy (Weick, 1995).
459 The core assumption on which sense-making rests is the assumption of discontinuity.
460 This assumption purposes that discontinuity is a fundamental aspect of reality.
461 It is assumed that there are discontinuities in all existence – between entities (living and otherwise), between times and between spaces.
462 It is assumed that this discontinuity condition exists between reality and human sensors, between human sensors and the mind, between the mind and tongue, between the tongue and message created, between message created and channel, between human at time one and human at time two, between human one at time one and human two at time one, between human and culture, between human and institution, between institution and institution, between nation and nation, and so on.
463 Discontinuity is an assumed "constant" of nature generally and the human condition specifically.
464 Sense-making focuses on behaviors:
465 the step-takings that human beings undertake to construct sense of their worlds.
466 These step-takings, or communicatings, involve both internal behaviors (e.g.
467 comparings, categorizings, likings, dislikings, polarizings, stereotypings, etc.) and external behaviors (e.g.
468 shoutings, ignorings, agreeings, disagreeings, attendings, listenings, etc.).
469 Sense-making assumes there is something systematic about individual behavior when the individual is reconceptualized not as an entity but as an entity-behaving at a moment in time-space.
470 It is assumed that the individual constructs ideas of these moments, that these constructions are themselves strategies, that these constructions are sometimes repetitions of ideas used in the past and sometimes newly created in terms of how the individual defines the new situation.
471 It is further assumed that the individual will implement his/her pictures using behavioral tactics, which are responsive to the individual's ideas of the situation.
472 Some of these tactics will again be repetitions of behaviors of the past given the rule-based characteristics of much of human behavior.
473 What tactic is used has consequences for the kind of idea created;
474 and, the kind of idea created has implication for tactic used.
475 In essence, the individual defines and attempts to bridge discontinuities or gaps.
476 It is this focus on gap-defining and gap-bridging which is seen as offering a way of introducing order to conceptualizations of individual behavior.
477 It is not the individual entity that is seen as ordered but rather the gap-defining and gap-bridging that is ordered.

Postmodernism and Complexity
478 The ‘management science’ point of view of what management is all about has its analogy in the hard sciences.
479 This is known as the mechanistic, reductionist, or Newtonian viewpoint (we will use these different terms interchangeably throughout the book).
480 This viewpoint considers the world at large to be linear and ultimately predictable, and therefore controllable.
481 This desire for control has attracted management scientists to the Newtonian view because of its deluded promise of such complete control.
482 Linearity, and therefore the Newtonian viewpoint, is excellent for the systems (machines) we design to behave predictably.
483 Unfortunately, organizations are not machines, and as managers we have severe limitations in our ability to control the design process – human beings are not predictable.
484 We shall consider further the features of the Newtonian viewpoint later, but for now we can summarize it’s principle implication as the whole is equal to the sum of its parts.
485 Therefore, reductionist thinking focuses our attention to the characteristics of the parts, by neglecting the relationships between the parts.
486 This viewpoint completely omits the possibility of self-organization and emergent behaviors, which are a source of unpredictability in the ‘real world’.
487 Life does not always go to plan – events that may appear to have no link with organization may be responsible for catastrophic events further down stream;
488 and re-organization at all scales, i.e.
489 teams, group, sector, etc., might occur as a direct result of the changing nature of the relationships between the parts, e.g.
490 people and technology, that make up the organization.
491 These features of real organizations are not, and cannot, be accounted for with the adoption of a reductionist viewpoint.
492 The problem with the Newtonian view, as with all views, is that the problem of interest must be considered in terms of the ‘rules’ of the view.
493 For linear systems this is not as so important – slightly different representations will lead to slightly different understanding of how the system performs.
494 The representation will not model reality completely but will prove to be a very useful approximation – for linear systems.
495 For complex systems (we will provide a description of a complex system shortly) we find that slightly different representation might lead to completely different, and possibly contradictory, understanding of how the system performs.
496 Unfortunately for managers, organizations are complex systems, and therefore this sensitivity to viewpoint becomes critical.
497 Shaping the problem to fit the viewpoint is fine when considering linear systems, but is likely to prove wholly inadequate for complex systems.
498 The figure below illustrates this problem.
499 The two axes of the graphs simply represent a change in perspective and it’s associated change in the knowledge concerning the behavior of the system of interest.
500 Perspective is used in its broadest meaning to include the assumptions and representation (model) of the system of interest.
501 We see that for a complicated system (i.e.
502 a system comprising a large number of weakly interacting parts – meaning that each part could be reasonably considered without the need to look at it’s neighbors, e.g.
503 a car) if we compared the knowledge derived from two differing perspectives, the difference between the knowledge sets would be proportional to the differences between the two perspectives.
504 On the contrary, if we performed the same comparison for a complex system (e.g.
505 a department), we would see that the two knowledge sets might be disproportionately different we when compared to the differences between the perspectives, i.e.
506 the two knowledge sets derived might be completely different.
507 Of course, this illustration takes a very simplistic view of the relationship between perspective and derived knowledge, as well as taking a very simplistic view of knowledge, but it does serve to warn us of the severe limitations of our view of the world when confronted with organizational issues (and the need for situated thinking).
508 In the world of management and management consultancy many different problems are addressed with one approach, which necessarily results in shaping the problem to fit the viewpoint, or the current management fad.
509 Rather than addressing and managing the inescapable complexity inherent within organizations (which arises through the interrelations between entities) traditional approaches reduce the complexity in a prescriptive manner.
510 This effectively forces the manager to forego options that might’ve been available to him/her through the adoption of a number of complementary perspectives.
511 The distinction between complicated (a useful approximation of the ‘old world’) and complex (a useful description of the ‘new world’) has critical relevance for the modern manager.
512 Today’s competitive environment has put into critical perspective the notion that by learning faster, and staying ever more agile, competitive advantage is yours to keep.
513 The environment changes in ways which can only be selectively dealt with.
514 There is little chance to make use of lessons learned for they are lessons about an environment gone by and are out of date before they can be learned never mind used.
515 Experience still has value, but it’s application is no longer so clear cut.
516 Where the old world was about discrete elements, a complicated agglomeration of many discrete things, the new world is a complex one of interdependent and interrelated entities, of the swirl of events and of situations going on around us.
517 Perhaps the sharpest differences can be found in the manner by which we treat information.
518 In the ‘old world’, physical constraints were givens and the management challenges were centered on information flow and usage.
519 In the ‘new world’, information flow is infinite and the management challenges center on selection of information and adjusting to physical constraints.
520 Video conferencing allows us the luxury of pretending to be Dolly, cloned and duplicated out in the world.
521 But, which meeting should be attended in person?
522 Whose hand needs shaking rather than an email smilely?
523 Humans are not cogs of wheel, not even when they bear the label ‘employee’.
524 Something more is needed.
525 In a complex world it is not enough to understand discrete events such as the diary truck’s flat tire.
526 There are so many discrete things, events, and situations that it is foolish to pursue their mastery as the way to ‘make sense’ out of what occurs.
527 Knowing that United owns 800 airplanes will not tell you where each of them flies and why.
528 Neither would a knowledge of the route structure or the cargo demands or passenger loads or any other single discrete piece of information.
529 The complex versus complicated distinction can be most easily explained by simply considering the roots of the words.
530 In Latin plic is ‘fold’ and plex is ‘weave’.
531 We fold to hide facets of things and to cram more into a crowded space.
532 We weave to make use of connections and to introduce mutual dependencies.
533 Thus, the flat tire of a local dairy farmer’s truck may inconvenience a few customers but will not impact the food markets of a big city.
534 By contrast, a closing of O’Hare airport due to weather wreaks havoc over the US transportation system for days.
535 The local dairy may be complicated (in this context), but the airline transport system is complex.
536 In a complicated world, we unfold discrete elements to gain understanding by relieving the crowded conditions and thus exposing hidden facets.
537 In a complex world of interweavings such an unfolding of a discrete part will only work to change the whole.
538 The whole may remain a whole but it will be a different whole merely due to the tugging you have introduced.
539 Serendipity is the art of making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things managers were not in quest of.
540 Although this word is widely used, few people know of its unusual history and that its original meaning has been lost.
541 When this meaning is restored, the actions that companies can take to promote serendipity become clear.
542 Creativity often involves recombining or making connections between things that may seem unconnected.
543 The more intricate the connection, the greater the intellectual distance that must be traversed to make it, and the greater the role for the unexpected.
544 Serendipity helps to bridge distances.
545 As originally defined by Horace Walpole in 1754 serendipity combines a fortunate accident with sagacity.
546 Sagacity is derived from the Latin noun sagicitas (‘keenness of perception’) and means, according to the Oxford English Dictionary:
547 gifted with acuteness of mental discernment;
548 having special aptitude for the discovery of truth;
549 penetrating and judicious in the estimation of character and motives, and the devising of means for the accomplishment of ends.
550 The modern definition puts the emphasis almost totally on accidents and leaves out the sagacity, the other aspect of serendipity as Walpole defined it.
551 Serendipity means promoting the opportunity for fortuitous events.
552 Too narrow a focus, be it on implementation, operations, or marketing can mean missed opportunities and missed evolution.
553 Management through control (the reductionist illusion) rather than through understanding and encouragement – this is the ‘easy’ option, rather than the ‘thinking man’s’ option.
554 This is the result of the bureaucratic view of management, which in turn is a result of taking a complicated rather complex view of the world.
555 Single paradigmatic views of management lead to ‘check-list’ approaches to management - removing the need to ‘think things through’, to reason.
556 Single paradigmatic approaches increase the possibility of developing the wrong strategy.
557 Also does not adequately deal the necessary capability to adapt to unforeseen circumstances that should be part of any strategy (things don’t always go as planned).
558 Traditional approaches see management as a separate function in itself rather than homing in the symbiosis, or alliance, between management and all other organizational activities.
559 By taking a single paradigmatic view of organizations, this effectively results in a focus upon optimization of one particular facet of an organization.
560 It will become clear that this results in ‘sub-optimization’ (whatever that might mean for symbiotic systems!) of the overall system.
561 At best, traditional approaches might see either the organization or the environment as a complex entity, but rarely both.
562 And if so, a single perspective is constructed to account for everything.
563 This in addition to the lack of symbiotic processes (resulting from interrelationships), results in a seriously flawed view of the world.
564 Traditional methods, like the Newtonian approach, promise the manager the ability to have control - this is just an illusion!
565 (as is the promise economic theory proposes, that the economy is predictable).

Postmodernism
566  In spite of the lack of inertia in the management sciences to explore more energetically the multi-paradigmatic nature of management, there exists a more general philosophical movement, which debates the nature of knowledge - postmodernism.
567 The following is a short introduction to postmodernism, which highlights selected lessons that might be taking forward into a reformulation, or reframing (not replacement) of management theory.
568 What is postmodernism?
569 It has been argued that there are as many postmodernism’s as there are postmodernists (reference).
570 Essentially, for the purposes of this text, postmodernism represents a school of thought concerning the nature of knowledge, how it is created, how it is maintained, how it is evolved, i.e.
571 an epistemology.
572 Given the prefix post- it is implied that postmodernism is a reaction to something called modernism.
573 What, therefore is modernism?
574 It is not exactly clear from the literature what modernism actually is as people who are supposedly involved in modernist activity do not actually refer to the term readily.
575 We will for now assume that modernism is synonymous with the mechanistic linear view of the world described earlier, i.e.
576 that the world can be best understood by breaking-it down and studying it’s parts, there does exist an objective reality that can be modeled accurately to the nth degree, and there also exists a grand unifying theory that describes this absolute reality absolutely (deep stuff).
577 The fundamental changes to our view of the world that result from assuming whether or not there exists an objective world is surprising and extensive.
578 For simplicity we shall distinguish between two broad camps of the postmodernist movement, namely the skeptical and the affirmative.
579 In skeptical postmodernism the argument goes something like:
580 the world is so complex that the goal of achieving an objective truth (“truths are illusions of which one has forgotten that they are truths” reference) is essentially unachievable.
581 From this the skeptics derive that all perspectives are equally valid.
582 Unsurprisingly it has been said that skeptical postmodernism offers “a pessimistic, negative, gloomy assessment” of the possibilities of social science, and arguably management theory!
583 Skeptical postmodernists deny the existence of an empirical management theory.
584 Though the idea of “all perspectives are equally valid” might seem a little extreme (and of no value in itself) the suggestion that there does not, and will not, exist an all embracing theory of management strikes a chord with the arguments developing within the social sciences (by unbeknownst postmodernists) (reference), complexity theorists (reference), as well as eminent theoretical physicists (reference).
585 This attitude to ‘meta-narratives’ is very much at odds with Pfeffer’s desires for a single-paradigmatic view of management theory.
586 Affirmative postmodernism on the other hand at least appreciates that comparisons can be made between viewpoints and that more value can indeed be ascribed to one viewpoint over another.
587 This is of more use to the manager if only the means by which each viewpoint could be valued (i.e.
588 it’s relevance and applicability to the situation at hand) was clear and operationalized, i.e.
589 there exists a well documented process that one could to follow that would enable an assessment of the value of each viewpoint.
590 This is where deconstructionism comes in.
591 “Deconstruction is an exploration within strict boundaries of the indeterminacy’s that open up radical reinterpretations of such texts.” Or in layman’s terms, in order understand a particular viewpoint one must understand completely and utterly the origins of the viewpoint.
592 Or, in terms of management theory, to appreciate whether or not a viewpoint has particular value to the manager in a particular setting he/she must be fully aware of the all assumptions, implied and explicit, associated with the viewpoint.
593 If not, then according the tenets of complexity science (which we will come to shortly), then there is a chance that the actions derived from adopting a viewpoint might be wholly inappropriate.
594 Unfortunately for us a complete understanding of the origins of a viewpoint is as inaccessible as a TOE. However, the process of attempting to uncover the ‘history’ of a viewpoint will result in potentially valuable reinterpretations.
595 Again, the theme of exploration, the employment of multiple viewpoints appears.
596 Previously it was indicated that postmodernism does not equate to anti-modernism.
597 Another feature of postmodernist thought is that modernist approaches do have value (contrary to some viewpoints) and so should play a role in any postmodern description of management theory.
598 “The intent is not to venerate the work of predecessors or privilege the techniques of science;
599 rather it is to situate research issues in creative tension with historical and scientific contexts.
600 Thus, postmodernists both celebrate tradition and deny the myth of progress.” (reference) – again, a view that is very much at odds with Pfeffer’s.
601 Previous attempts towards management theory drawing from the traditional mechanistic paradigm do have value and should continue to play a part in future developments.
602 Understanding the position of, for example, structural contingency, resource dependence theory, and SAT, within the management theory jigsaw is needed.
603 Again, we are back to the notion of situatedness and choosing a fitting viewpoint for the situation of interest.
604 Postmodernism is characterized by “an increasing plurality of beliefs,” and the preference for detailed understanding of the particular, for local knowledge and local times, as opposed to statistical empiricism, i.e.
605 multiple approaches combined with situatedness.
606 An area of research which strongly sympathizes with many aspects of the postmodernist view, and which is also creating waves throughout the management world, is complexity science.

Complexity Science
607 The management literature, science and philosophy have another complementary alternative in bringing management theory ‘into the 21st century’ – it is known as complexity science.
608 As mentioned previously in this introductory chapter, the linear view of the world has been found to be a very robust and persistent stance that has changed very little during the past four hundred years as the extent of application of the Newtonian mechanistic paradigm has been explored.
609 The basic concept, which comes to us from this long tradition of science, is that of reductionism.
610 Reductionist method essentially assumes that one might understand a particular system by breaking it down and examining its constituent parts.
611 The behavioral characteristics of the whole can then be inferred by summing the parts, i.e.
612 the whole is simply equal to the sum of its parts.
613 This is essentially what a manager does when he/she is faced with a tricky situation - the problem is broken down on the assumption that by considering the different elements separately a ‘good’ decision concerning what action to take will be made.
614 This methodology has proved extremely powerful over recent centuries and remains to be today.
615 The nature of problems being examined though has changed recently.
616 Primarily, technological development (particularly communications) has resulted in globalization, i.e.
617 society has become more inter-connected.
618 Rather the individuality that previously characterized society has given way to a collectivized ecology.
619 When investigating such systems the reductionist paradigm appears wholly inappropriate (for reasons that will be detailed later).
620 For example, consider water.
621 A complete understanding of water’s constituent molecules, i.e.
622 H2O, which is pretty much what we have in modern chemistry, gives little insight into the possible configurations bulk water can adopt, e.g.
623 clouds, hail, snow, etc.
624 To appreciate these aspects of water we are required to focus on the interactions between the parts rather than the nature of the parts themselves.
625 This feature of systems is what complexity scientists attempt to explain - the fact that the whole is actually greater than the sum of its parts.
626 The apparent inability of linear thinking to account for macroscopic behavior resulted in a review of the accepted scientific doctrine that is still in its infancy today.
627 In the words of Mitchell:
628 "Scientists in many different disciplines are increasingly sharing an impatience with the kind of linear, reductionist thinking that has dominated science since Newton.
629 Instead they are gathering novel ideas about interconnectedness, coevolution, chaos, structure and order and forging them into an entirely new way of thinking about nature and human behavior." Terms such as coevolution and chaos will be defined and the value in adopting the use of such language will be described later, but before we move on, it might be useful for the reader if we take some time to describe the characteristics of a complex system.
630 From Paul Cilliers Complexity and Postmodernism complex systems are endowed with the following qualities:
631 1. Complex systems consist of a large number of elements;
632 2. A large number of elements is necessary, but not sufficient;
633 3. The interactions between the elements are fairly rich;
634 4. The interactions are non-linear, usually have a fairly short range, and there are feedback loops formed from the interactions;
635 5. Complex systems are usually open systems, i.e.
636 there are ongoing exchanges between the system and it’s environment;
637 6. Complex systems operate under conditions far from equilibrium, i.e.
638 there is constant change;
639 7. Complex systems have a memory, i.e.
640 the future depends upon the past;
641 8. Each element is ignorant of the behavior of the system as a whole.
642 Though not all the above characteristics can be readily associated with an organization, some of them are clearly relevant in describing organizations.
643 Later we will provide the reader with stronger and hopefully convincing evidence that organizations are definitely complex systems, thus identifying complexity science as a key component of any theory of management.
644 To date, however, a complexity-based description of management has not been fully developed, though progress is rapid.
645 This rapidly developing area of science attempts to provide explanations of the emergent behaviors associated with such systems - the link between comprising elements, such as people, and overall system, such as an organization, behavior.
646 By emergence we mean that events just happen - self-organization spontaneously occurs – it is inevitable though not obvious.
647 For example, crashes in the stock market occur whether we want them to or not - contrary to tight controls and restrictions recessions happen.
648 This is rather worrying for the manager.
649 What hope does he/she have in controlling a department, sector, etc., when new behaviors emerge spontaneously with apparent disregard for the manager’s will?
650 All is not lost.
651 A paradox does, however, exist - that of control versus emergence - that a manager must understand and deal with.
652 We can see from the above brief discussion that there are some recurrent themes associated with the postmodernist and complexity movements.
653 These themes can be summarized to just two terms – exploration and multiple viewpoints.
654 If, as managers, we are to manage in this complex world, we need to explore not only within single viewpoints, but also within multiple perspectives.
655 It is important to reiterate, however, traditional management will not be succeeded, but will be combined with, and complemented by, a new complexity-based perspective to form a more robust, versatile, and effective means, not to control, but to cope.

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