Intelligent Organizations (eBook)

Preface 5
Table of Contents 9
Chapter 1 Organizational Intelligence in Systemic Terms 12
1.1 The Need for Organizational Innovation 12
1.2 An Innovative View of Organizations 13
1.3 Related Streams of Inquiry 17
1.4 What Makes an Organization Intelligent? 18
1.5 Purpose and Scope of this Book 19
Chapter 2 Complexity and Understanding 21
2.1 Two Crucial Concepts: Complexity and Variety 21
2.2 Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety 24
2.3 The Conant-Ashby-Theorem: Models are Crucial 29
Chapter 3 Management – A Distributed Function 32
3.1 On Leadership and Management 32
3.2 On Control Loops 34
3.3 Control versus Pre-control 37
3.4 Extrinsic versus Intrinsic Control 37
3.5 Hierarchy versus Heterarchy 39
3.6 Distributed Management 41
Chapter 4 Intelligent Organization – A Systemic Framework 43
4.1 Postulates 43
4.2 Introducing the Framework 45
4.3 Dimensions of the Framework 47
4.4 Theoretical Models to Enhance Organizational Intelligence 50
4.5 Relationships between the Models 52
Chapter 5 Activities: What the Organization Does 54
5.1 The Model of Systemic Control (MSC) 55
5.2 Operative Level 58
5.3 Strategic Level 60
5.4 The Normative Level 71
5.5 Relationships between the three Levels 75
5.6 Criteria of Systemic Effectiveness 76
5.7 Revisiting the Feedback Cycle 78
5.8 An Application Perspective 80
5.9 Intermediate Summary and Outlook 83
Chapter 6 Structure – Preconditions for Effective Action 87
6.1 The Viable System Model (VSM) 87
6.2 On Recursive Organization Design 91
6.3 Recursion and Heterarchy 93
6.4 Embodiments of Recursive Management 95
6.5 Virtual Organizations as Viable Systems 98
6.6 Networks as Viable Systems 101
6.7 Networks of Viable Systems 104
6.8 Viable Systems: Hierarchy, Heterarchy or Both? 106
6.9 Criticisms and Beyond 108
6.10 Autonomous Agents in Viable Organizations 109
6.11 An Application Perspective 111
6.12 Intermediate Summary and Outlook 113
Chapter 7 Behavior – The Control of Cognition and Emotion 116
7.1 Behavior In and Of Organizations 117
7.2 Participation and Authority – Social Behavior for Complexity Absorption 121
7.3 The Team Syntegrity Model (TSM) 122
7.4 The Team Syntegrity Process 126
7.5 Applications 127
7.6 Case Study: A Collaborative Global Research Project 128
7.7 Further Empirical Evidence 135
7.8 Outlook 138
Chapter 8 Ethos and Identity: Basic Parameters of Organizations 140
8.1 Organizational Ethos 142
8.2 Organizational Identity 154
8.3 Theory of the Firm 157
8.4 Some Empirical Evidence 160
8.5 Immoral Organizations 165
8.6 More Empirical Evidence 167
8.7 Immoral Actors in Organizations 170
8.8 Intermediate Summary and Outlook 171
Chapter 9 Time and Organizational Dynamics 175
9.1 Transformation over Time 176
9.2 A Practical Example 177
9.3 Lessons from Computer Simulations 179
9.4 Intermediate Summary 187
Chapter 10 The Framework Revisited 189
10.1 Systemic Features 190
10.2 Organizational Principles in the Framework 191
10.3 An Integrative View of the Dimensions and Models 193
10.4 Change and the Fundamental Parameters Revisited 198
10.5 Applications of the Framework 201
10.6 Relevant Empirical Work by Other Authors 209
10.7 Intermediate Summary and Outlook 210
Chapter 11 Outlook: The Way Ahead 213
Appendix 217
References 220
Index 239