The Promise of

Images of
Organization
ORGANIZATIONS ARE MANY THINGS AT ONCE!
They are complex and multifaceted.
They are paradoxical.
That's why the challenges facing managers and practitioners are often
so difficult. ,
While managing and organizing are challenging in the best of times,
the difficulties are compounding in today's environment of rapid change.
If you want to be the type of leader or professional who helps your organ-
ization adapt to the multiple demands of an increasingly turbulent world,
you need to become aware of the images and assumptions that are shaping
your current thinking and develop the capacity to use new ones. You need
to dev'elop competencies that allow you to see, understand, and shape sit-
uations in new ways.
That is the focus of Images ofOrganization.
It is nota "quick fix" book.
It is not a book that offers a simple recipe for tackling organizational
problems.
Rather, it is something that I hope you will find far more valuable: a
resource that will help you challenge and transform your thinking about
organization and management-a resource that you will want to visit time
and again.
At first sight, Images may seem to be a very complex book because it
embraces so many different management perspectives.
But the basic thesis underlying the book is a very simple one: that all
organization and management theory and practice is based on or

3
 Mechanization Takes
Command:
Organizations As
Machines

WHEN WE THINK OF ORGANIZATIONS AS MACHINES

we begin to see them as rational enterprises designed and structured to
achieve predetermined ends.
• The organizational machine is given goals and objectives.
• It is designed as a rational structure of jobs and activities.
• Its blueprint becomes an organizational chart.
• People are hired to operate the machine and everyone is expected to
behave in a predetermined way.
This is the theory that has driven much of organization and manage-
ment since the industrial revolution. It has brought enormous benefits,
increasing capacities for production a thousandfold. But its weaknesses have
also been exposed as human beings have rebelled against being "mecha-
nized," creating rigidities that prevent organizations from adapting and
flowing with change.
Many of us are trapped by patterns of mechanistic thinking. By
becoming aware of how this occurs, we can learn to tap its strengths while
unleashing our ability to organize in new ways.

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 Nature Intervenes:
Organizations As
Organisms
THE IMAGE OF AN ORGANISM SEEKING TO ADAPT
AND SURVIVE IN A CHANGING ENVIRONMENT offers a powerful
perspective for managers who want to help their organizations flow with
change.
• The metaphor helps us to understand organizations as clusters of
interconnected human, business, and technical needs.
• It encourages us to learn about the art of corporate survival.
• It urges us to develop vibrant organic systems that remain open to
new challenges.
The metaphor offers powerful ways of thinking about strategy and
organizational design, showing that the mechanical perspective, so popular
in management, is just one of many approaches. It encourages us to see how
whole populations of organizations may rise and fall along with the trans-
formation of the niches and resource flows on which they depend, and to
understand that, as in nature, the evolution of the corporate world reflects
a "survival of the fitting," not just the survival of the fittest.
The metaphor suggests that different environments favor different
species of organizations based on different methods of organizing and that
congruence with the environment is the key to success.

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 Learning and Self-
Organization:
Organizations As
Brains
WHAT IF WE THINK ABOUT ORGANIZATIONS AS BRAINS?

• We focus on their learning abilities and the processes that can either
stunt or enhance organizational intelligence.
• We discover how the findings of modern brain research can be trans-
lated into design principles for creating learning organizations.
• We learn how intelligence can be distributed throughout an enter-
pnse.
• We see how the power of information technology can be used to
develop decentralized modes of organization that are simultaneously
global and local.
As we move into a knowledge-based economy where information,
knowledge, and learning are key resources, the inspiration of a living, learn-
ing brain provides a powerful image for creating organizations ideally suited
to the requirements of a digital age.
 Creating Social
Reality:
Organizations As
Cultures
WHEN WE VIEW ORGANIZATIONS AS CULTURES, we
see them as minisocieties with their own distinctive values, rituals, ideolo-
gies, and beliefs.
• We see important cross-national variations in cultural style.
• We see that individual organizations may also have their own unique
cultures.
• We learn that what unfolds in any organization is a reflection of what
is in people's minds.
• We note that while some corporate cultures may be uniform and
strong, others are often fragmented by the presence of subcultures.
• We realize that organization rests in the shared meanings that allow
people to behave in organized ways.
The metaphor helps us to rethink almost every aspect of corporate
functioning, including strategy, structure, design, and the nature of leader-
ship and management. Once we understand culture's influence on work-
place behaviors, we realize organizational change is cultural change and that
all aspects of corporate transformation can be approached with this per-
spective in mind.

III
 Interests, Conflict,
and Power:
Organizations As
Political Systems
WHEN WE SEE ORGANIZATIONS THROUGH THE
LENS OF POLITICS, patterns of competing interests, conflicts, and power
plays dominate the scene.
• We view organization and management as a political process.
• We can identify different styles of government.
• We see how organization becomes politicized because of divergent
interests of individuals and groups.
• We appreciate the fact that conflict is a natural property of every
orgamzanon.
• We observe many different sources of power and learn how they can
be used to our advantage.
Understanding organizations in political terms allows us to accept
politics as an inevitable feature of corporate life. We learn that effective
managers are skilled political actors who recognize the continuous interplay
between competing interests and who use conflict as a positive force.

147
 Exploring Plato's
Cave: Organizations
As Psychic Prisons
WHAT IF WE VIEW ORGANIZATIONS AS SYSTEMS
THAT GET TRAPPED IN THEIR OWN THOUGHTS AND ACTIONS?
Obsessions, mind traps, latent sexuality, narcissism, fear of death,
strong emotions, illusions of control, anxieties, and defense mechanisms
become the focus of attention.
• We see that organization always has unconscious significance.
• We learn how psychic forces can act as hidden dimensions of organ-
ization that encourage or block innovation.
• We pay particular attention to how frozen mindsets and unconscious
forces can make people resist organizational change.
• We recognize the power and significance of what, on the surface,
seems irrational.
• We recognize how we can become imprisoned by our ways of think-
ing and how, if desired, this pattern can be changed.
By exploring the psychoanalytic theories that underpin this perspec-
tive, we gain detailed insights about the links between organization, the
unconscious, and behavior that are usually ignored by traditional manage-
ment theory.

181
 Unfolding Logics of
Change: Organization
As Flux and
Transformation
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE LOOK BEYOND THE
SURFACE APPEARANCE OF ORGANIZATIONS and see them as the
expressions of deeper processes of transformation and change?
• We gain insights into the fundamental nature of change.
• We see that deep systemic forces are constantly either locking organi-
zations into the status quo or driving their transformation.
• We acquire new and powerful perspectives for intervention, using
images of spirals, loops, and contradictions to help organizations shift
from one pattern of operation to another.
The ideas explored in this chapter lead us into the new sciences of
autopoiesis, chaos, complexity, and paradox with powerful implications for
our understanding of organization and environment in the broadest sense.

213
 The Ugly Face:
Organizations As
Instruments of
Domination
WHEN WE VIEW ORGANIZATIONS AS SYSTEMS
THAT EXPLOIT THEIR EMPLOYEES, THE NATURAL ENVIRON-
MENT, AND THE GLOBAL ECONOMY FOR THEIR OWN ENDS, we
are led to a powerful critique of almost every aspect of management
throughout history.
• Whether viewing the construction of ancient pyramids or the activi-
ties of modern corporations, our attention is led to the processes of
domination that underlie organized activity.
• Workaholism, occupational accidents and disease, and social and
mental stress become seen as the price inflicted on one group of peo-
ple to serve the interests of others.
• The role of global corporations in the exploitation of people and
resources becomes seen as part of a deep' process of exploitation run-
ning throughout the corporate world.
The metaphor creates a new level of social consciousness and an
appreciation of why relations between exploiting and exploited groups can
get so polarized. It invites managers to a deeper sense of the ethical dimen-
sions of their work and its social impact.

259
 Reading and
Shaping
Organizational
Life

ORGANIZATIONS AND ORGANIZATIONAL

PROBLEMS CAN BE SEEN AND UNDERSTOOD IN MANY DIFFER-
ENT WAYs. Limit your seeing and your thinking and you limit your range
of action. Limit your range of action and you limit your effectiveness. This
chapter shows how we can use multiple metaphors to "read" an organiza-
tion and increase our options for effective interventions.

299
 Using Metaphor
to Manage in a
Turbulent World
AS WE MOVE INTO THE TWENTY-FIRST
cENTuRY, we find ourselves living through a period of unprecedented
change with major implications for the whole field of organization and
management. Theories that were once viewed as providing sound founda-
tions are becoming obsolete. New theories are emerging at a rapid pace.
Each month, it seems, brings a crop of new perspectives through which
managers are urged to understand and act on their problems.
Needless to say, the situation is often overwhelming. Managers at all
levels are invited to embrace new paradigms, develop new competencies,
integrate left- and right-brain thinking, become skilled political actors, and
learn to be team players. In any single year, leading business journals invite
managers to consider dozens of ways of structuring and managing their
enterprises to create
• learning organizations,
• inverted pyramids,
• shamrocks,
• spider plants,
• third-wave organizations,
• virtual enterprises,
• duster organizations, and
• lean organizations,
to name just a few.

319