Amitai Etzioni, Ed: A Sociological Reader on Complex Organizations

"On the one hand, any concrete organizational structure is an economy; at the same time, it is an adaptive social structure." - A Sociological Reader on Complex Organizations (SRCO), edited by Amitai Etzioni

COMMENT:
In keeping with our tradition of interpolating between food for thought from both the sacred and the secular realms, we turn now to a text we're finding particularly useful of late on the nature of complex organizations from a sociological ...perspective. Etzioni's book helps us reinterpret the sacred ideals of Confucian ethics we've recently been exploring and translate them into a language that is more applicable to the vocabulary of the workplace, a major focus of our work. Thanks for joining us on our journey!


"Considered as an economy, 'organization' is a system of relationships which define the availability of scarce resources and which may be manipulated in terms of efficiency and effectiveness." - SRCO

COMMENT:
In exploring any community from this perspective, it is important to keep in mind the idea of Balance. Any organization must learn to express itself in the direction of Balance if it is to sustain itself. Reaching beyond its means will us...ually result in exhaustion, while not attempting to test its limits usually arrives at gluttony. Both result in what most people tend to describe as failure, and in what The Institute describes as waste and imbalance.

Indeed, in order to discover itself in the ever-unfolding moment as both a history and a future, to be both self-sustaining and self-propelling, to live in what Cziksentmihalyi describes as Flow (more on that later), a community must determine what it is ultimately capable of, and implement its strategies and action-plans with this in mind.

Unable to legitimate its aspirations, or unwilling to explore them, the organization remains mired in entropy, stuck. Understanding this is the first step in making sense of organizational effectiveness, and applies to any community: that of the Self, the Group, or the Society.


"Organization as an economy is, however, necessarily conditioned by the organic states of the concrete structure... [and] depends on the extent to which that system is operating within an environment of effective inducement to individual participants..." – SRCO

COMMENT:
Picking up where our comment from 27 June left off, this second aspect of Phillip Selznick's thoughts on concrete organizations is crucial to our understanding of what *really* happens within the organizational context.

To be sure, there nee...ds to exist the framework upon which the organization rests: the "system of relationships" (or Blueprint, as we at The Institute like to call it) that, when kept in Balance between Is and Ought, between Past and Future, guides participants as they express themselves in and through their organization.

However, the authenticity of these expressions - the extent to which participants commit themselves to the organization and its goals - depends ultimately on the nature of the interactions between participants and each other and between participants and the organization. Positive interactions yield positive results. Negative interactions, well... not so much.

So it stands to reason that those who are capable of navigating the structure of their organization deftly will contribute to creating a meaningful and successful org. These will be the folks who understand exactly what is expected of them at all points of interaction, and who are good at responding to these expectations (read: can respond without taking advantage or feeling put upon).

Every participant who is able to accomplish this (no easy task, but easily teachable) will be one more participant in an increasingly healthy organization.


A Sociological Reader on Complex Organizations, by Amitai Etzioni