Living System the Organization as a Living

Living System

The Organization as a Living System

There are many different metaphorical models that have been used to describe organizations, from ships to machines to human brains. Another perspective views organizations as equivalent to living organisms or really to any complex living system, where reactions happen both on an immediate and reactionary basis and as a matter of planning and decision making. This perspective can be especially useful when viewing organizations during volatile times and in a host of other conditions; though this metaphor is not necessarily better or more complete than other symbolic ways of viewing organizations, it certainly has benefits in certain applications and situations. Viewing the organization as a living organism can help one to determine how the organization makes its decisions, where the powerful and weak points of the system are, and even predict its behavior as an entity that above all wants to survive in a wolrd that threatens to kill it through competition.

The business world is not really as lie or death as the natural world in most instances, of course, but there are organizations where decision making and organizational direction truly are matters of life and death. There are also situations where the stakes are much less extreme, but the results of moving and thinking like a living system are no less profound. This paper will examine two very different examples of human organizations, noting their differences but most especially noting the ways in which both of these organizations act like living systems, generating decisions and movements as units rather than individuals.

First, however, a little bit of background is necessary. Joe Flower (1995) describes the organization-as-living-system model in a very detailed manner, noting that often organizational leaders want to know how to make their organization react to some environmental (i.e. external) concern when in fact -- like any living creature -- the organization is responding in one way or another. Organizations adapt to changes, respond to threats, find themselves on natural courses or "basins of attraction," and come upon limits that they cannot surmount without fundamentally changing (Fower 1995). Unlike wild= creatures in the forest, however, organizations are most successful when the reactions and adaptations that occur out of instinct are tempered by the wisdom that comes form experience and careful planning and decision making. In order to act in ways that are effective both for the organization and the environment in which it operates, there has to be some sort of planning involved -- the living system that is the organization needs some point of leadership (Flower 1995).

Military Organizations

One type of human organization that is typically thought of as very tightly controlled and hierarchical -- perhaps as unlikely a single living system as one can imagine a human organization to be -- is the military. Though it is true that most military personnel are heavily controlled in many aspects of their lives and certainly in the ways in which they perform their duties, this does not diminish the similarity between military organizations and living systems. It is through control that the actions of this system are consciously and conscientiously moved forward.

One rather compelling article discusses the way in which the military functions as a part of the national economy, and how the individual units within the larger military system function effectively as their own economies, providing a source of labor and provision for the military and civilian personnel that make up and support each unit (Federov 2001). What is asserted in this article is essentially that the military functions both as a living system on its own, responding to changes in its environment by adjusting its own economic activities, and as a part of the larger living system that is the entire national economy by providing a source of protection for continued economic growth and thus increasing the value of social labor in the economy at large (Federov 2001). There are conscious decisions being made in the defense industry, but there are also automatic fluctuations and adjustments other part of the military as a whole and individual military personnel when economic shifts in the nation as a whole are observed and recognized (Federov 2001).

The Symphony Orchestra

Fancy uniforms aside, symphony orchestras are about as far removed a human organization form the military as one can get. Orchestras too, however, are like living systems, though perhaps in markedly different ways than are military organizations as described above. These groups must be able to think and adjust as a fully interconnected system during performance (not actually unlike military units in combat, one would imagine) in order to achieve the standards and goals set; a group of disinterested individual musicians could never measure up.