Org Structure

Nature Intervenes

Organizations as Organisms

Let's think about organizations as if they were organisms.

We find ourselves thinking about them as living systems, existing in a wider environment on which they depend for the satisfaction of various needs. And as we look around the organizational world we begin to see that it is possible to identify different species of organization in different kinds of environment. Just as we find polar bears in arctic regions, camels in deserts, and alligators in swamps, we notice that certain species of organization are better "adapted" to specific environmental conditions than others. We find that bureaucratic organizations tend to work most effectively in environments that are stable or protected in some way and that very different species are found in more competitive and turbulent regions, such as the environments of high-tech firms in the aerospace and microelectronics industries. In this simple line of inquiry we find the crux of many of the most important developments in organization theory over the last fifty

years. For the problems of mechanistic visions of organization have led many organization theorists away from mechanical science and toward biology as a source of ideas for thinking about organization. In the process, organization theory has become a kind of biology in which the distinctions and relations among molecules, cells, complex organisms, species, and ecology are paralleled in those between individuals, groups, organizations, populations (species) of organizations, and their social ecology. And in pursuing this line of inquiry, organization theorists have generated many new ideas for understanding how organizations function, and the factors that influence their well-being.

In this chapter we will explore these ideas, showing how the organismic metaphor has helped organization theorists to identify and study different organizational needs, organizations as "open systems "the process of...