PRL2002 Community Consultation and Development

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PRL2002Community Consultation and Development

• Lecture 3

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• Theoretical Insights
• Reconceptualising Organisations

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Today

• Continuing our exploration of the journey of
  organisations - old views
• New explorations of organisations
• New Paradigm Thinking
• Systems Theory / Human Systems
• Community

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Remember ?

• The Industrial Revolution heralded the age of
• organisations characterised by
• Hierarchical structures, autocratic leadership
• The public be damned

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How Did This Occur? ...

• Prior to 1960s - theories used to understand
  organisations were scientific.
• Scientific Thinking - 'seminal' work of theorists
  and scholars like Newton, gave rise a
  'mechanistic' view of the world based on
  'natural' laws (eg. for every action is an
  opposite and equal reaction).

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• The machine metaphor (Hock 1999, pp. 55-57)
• The universe and everything in it, whether
  physical, biological, or social, could only be
  understood as a clock-like mechanism composed of
  separate parts acting on one another with
  precise, measurable, linear laws of cause and
  effect. If we could dissect and understand all
  the parts and the laws governing them, we could
  reconstruct the world and all therein, presumably
  much more to our liking than the world we
  experienced

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• The age of handcrafting was abandoned in favour
  of mechanistic, dominator organizations, which,
  in order to produce huge quantities of uniform
  goods, services, knowledge, and people, amassed
  resources, centralized authority, routinized
  practices, and enforced conformity. This created
  a class of managers and specialists expert at
  reducing variability and diversity to uniform,
  repetitive, assembly-line processes endlessly
  repeated with ever increasing efficiency

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• Reductionism - assumes the world is 'machine'
  like the best way to understand it is to break
  it down into smaller and smaller components, to
  examine how phenomenon behave in isolation.
• Compartmentalisation of Knowledge - master
  knowledge of each component part so they can be
  controlled fully - the rise of the specialist
  with knowledge of component part.

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So ...

• Like a machine, organisations were viewed as
  orderly phenomena - each part playing a specific
  role.
• Orderly terms of direct cause and effect
  relationships.
• Physical, social and human resources were treated
  in the same mechanistic, mathematical way.

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The Effect ...

• (Hock 1999)
• They devour resources, decimate the earth, and
  demean humanity. The very nature of these
  organizations alienates and disheartens the
  people caught up in them.

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• Still evident in todays organisations
• Mechanistic approaches - downsizing,
  restructuring, strategic planning
• Dehumanised, tyrannical approaches
• Rise of specialist has extended to all types of
  organisations. Kenny (1994) for example, argues
  that political decisions are commonly
  conceptualised as technical matters, requiring
  specialists (technocrats) to facilitate
  effective decision-making.

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The Impetus for Change

• Feeling that the world is moving too fast.
• Rapid pace of technological and social change.
• Much less certainty in life than in recent times.
• World becoming increasingly complex
• immense engines of change creating enormous
  diversity and complexity in the way people live,
  work and play. (Hock 1999, p.57)
• 1960s - emergence of political, social activist
  and pressure groups

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Result - Shift in Thinking ...

• contentious - met with much resistance.
• conventional wisdom of over 400 years being
  severely challenged.
• Many up-coming scientists and scholars avoided
  researching this area - feared that publishing
  papers might damage their professional standing
  and careers.
• The key contention - dared to consider that there
  were elements of human existence that could not
  be explained or predicted in mathematical terms,
  and thus could not be controlled.

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• Eg. Scientific Approach - does not adequately
  explain relationships - eg. water cannot be
  understood only as two gas elements (hydrogen
  oxygen) the dynamic relationship produces the
  remarkable outcome, of 'wetness' (liquid).
  (Engwicht 1992)

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Emerging Theories

• New paradigm thinking - post-mechanistic and
  non-linear as opposed to 'linear' and
  'mechanistic'.
• The importance of understanding the phenomenal
  world in more holistic ways, for instance in
  terms of inter-relationships, (ie. relationships
  between things).

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Example of New Paradigm Thinking - Chaos Theory

• Chaos the study of 'dynamics
• the way things change (ranging form physical to
  social sciences - including political cultural
  and economic).
• Explains a society characterised by rapid and
  frequent transitions between (new-emerging)
  orders (Merry 1995 p.7)

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• Chaos - "a time of transition between orders"
  which is characterised by a period of
  uncertainty, unpredictability, disorder, tension,
  conflict and confusion. (Merry 1995, p.7)

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• Sensitive dependence - a high degree of
  susceptibility to small influences (eg.
  butterfly)
• The state of systems can change dramatically
  (become chaotic, turbulent) as a result of
  minute changes - eg. weather
• Chaos indicates cannot be predicted with 100
  accuracy - eg. weather predictions
• Phenomena do behave in patterned ways - but this
  is observed over a longer period of time than the
  mechanistic view.

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Another Example of New Paradigm Thinking -
Complexity Theory closely aligned to Chaos Theory

• Connects growth of system and creativity
• Complex order arises out of disorder - eg.
  bushfires, uni emblem.
• Resistance to change is an impediment to new
  (more generative) states.

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• punctuated equilibrium - consistent movement
  between disorder, equilibrium, and
  disorder.(Stacey 1996)
• Great leaps in human learning, understanding,
  innovation and creation occur in the chaotic
  stage, with the sequencing and ordering of this
  learning occurring during equilibrium.
• Punctuated equilibrium - complex systems (eg.
  politics) are inherently self-organising systems
  always reorganise into a new but more complex
  states of order.

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Another New Theory - Systems Theory

• A System is
• Any group of interacting, interrelated, or
  interdependent parts that form a complex and
  unified whole that has a specific purpose
  Without such interdependencies, we have just a
  collection of parts, not a system. (Kim 1999,
  p.2)
• Recognition that organisation is part of a
  larger, interdependent, organic whole - affects,
  and is affected by, all publics.

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Human Systems

• Human systems differ from other complex systems -
  capable of much faster learning, adaptation, have
  advanced abilities for self-reflection,
  speculation and free will.
• Therefore, humans have the capacity to guide the
  future of systems in positive ways.
• The wider the level of participation in the
  system, the greater the generativity, the greater
  the ability to influence the system positively.

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• Building more 'participative' societies provides
  greater means to influence the system positively.
• Building more 'participative' organisations
  provides greater means to influence the system
  positively - to cope with the turbulance and
  complex ironies that accompany the whitewater
  environment.
• The organisations community - internal and
  external - is the place of accessing
  relationships and interaction between the people
  essential to the good health of the system.

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So What is Community?

• True community requires proximity continual,
  direct contact and interaction between the
  people, place, and things of which it is
  composed. (Hock 1999)
• It is a place where exchange of non-monetary
  exchange of values takes place - of deep,
  inseparable connection between individual good
  and the good of the whole. (Hock 1999)
• A myriad of complex personal and professional
  relationships. (Levey Levey 1995)

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The Journey of Community

• We have experienced fragmentation in community
  due to changes in social structure
• Individualism
• Emergence of global economy
• Urbanisation
• Breakdown of traditional family structure
• Disconnection between place of living/work

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The Effect ...

• People are starving for meaningful, nourishing,
  supportive relationships.
• (Levey Levey 1995)
• In USA - more than 75 of population do not know
  their neighbours. (Levey Levey 1995)
• People are lonely. (Johnston Zawawi 2000)

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The Response ...

• In the contemporary,
• urban culture -
• people seek human connections
• people seek community.
• (Eg. dissatisfaction with reduced face-to-face
• service in banks, retail outlets)

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Organisations and Community - the connections ...

• The most efficient, productive, fulfilling,
  healthy and sustainable forms of human
  relationships take place within community.
  (Levey Levey 1995)
• The organisation that is the embodiment of
  community creates space for relationships,
  teamwork, creativity and innovation - a shared
  purpose calling to the higher aspirations of
  people. (Johnston Zawawi 2000)

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Organisations and Community - the business link
...

• Increases understanding of how small disturbances
  (for example, changes in the environment, public
  opinion, or the activity level of aware publics)
  gather volume and complexity with increasing
  speed(Murphy 1996, p.105), creating issues and
  crises for organisations.
• Builds tolerance for, and ability to, deal with
  the ambiguous, paradoxical and often chaotic
  nature of contemporary issues and problems.

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Organisations and Community - the business link
...

• Move beyond more traditional concepts of
  corporation/stakeholder ties to explore much
  deeper, fundamental concepts of
  interrelationships. (Frederick 1998, p.2)
• Richer picture of corporation-community linkages.
  (Frederick 1998, p.2)
• Organisations seek, and value, the different
  type, and more generalist, knowledge - the
  community can contribute

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Organisations and Community - the consultation
link ...

• Organisations seek, and value, the different
  type, and more generalist, knowledge - the
  community can contribute
• Participative approach holds promise of
  facilitation of faster rates of creativity and
  development of innovative solutions

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Organisations and Community - the consultation
link ...

• Moving beyond policy development driven primarily
  by political self interest and technocratic
  control to a much more inclusive/holistic/interdep
  endent approach

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Organisations and Community - the consultation
link ...

• opens up an imaginative, and possibly fruitful,
  way for organization theorists, strategic
  management scholars, corporate practitioners, and
  civic officials to understand their respective
  roles in shaping the decisions, policies, and
  practices of corporations within their host
  communities.(Frederick 1998, p.2)

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Something to Think About

• Institutions are not a law of nature People
  are not the creatures of institutions,
  institutions are the creations of people, yet
  they increasingly seem as much beyond our control
  as the turning of the earth and the burning of
  the sun All institutions are no more than a
  mental construct to which people are drawn in
  pursuit of common purpose a conceptual
  embodiment of a very old, very powerful idea
  called community. (Hock 1999)

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A Final Thought ...

• Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful,
  committed citizens can change the world. Indeed,
  its the only thing that ever has.
• - Margaret Mead

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References

• Davies, P. 1998, "Cosmic Butterflies", in More
  Big Questions Paul Davies in conversations with
  Phillip Adams, ABC Books, Sydney.
• Engwicht, D. 1992, Towards and Eco-City Calming
  the Traffic, Envirobook, Sydney.
• Gleick, J. 1987, CHAOS Making a New Science,
  Penguin, New York.
• Habermas, J. 1971, Knowledge and Human Interest,
  Trans. Jeremy Shapiro, Beacon Press, Boston.
• Hock, D. 1999, Birth of the Chaordic Age,
  Berrett-Koehler Publishers, USA.
• Merry, U. 1995, Coping with Uncertainty Insights
  from the New Sciences of Chaos, Self-Organisation
  and Complexity, Praeger, Westport, CT. (USA).
• Selden, R. Widdowson , P. 1993, A Reader's
  Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory, Harvester
  Wheatsheaf, Hertfordshire, UK.
• Stacey, R. 1996, Complexity and Creativity in
  Organizations, Berrett-Koelhler Publishers, San
  Francisco.