Organisational issues of 21st-century systems - #theRSA example August 30, 2010

Emails from Kellie to Pam in response to Organisational issues of 21st-century systems (related to #theRSA) Shared with permission
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Hi Pam

Thanks for your fascinating email. I wanted to find time to write what I hope is a useful response.

Your description of the RSA workshop encapsulates some interesting differences between older and newer organisational forms. I particularly liked the analogy of the rowing boats in the Channel as twenty-first century networks barely visible from the White Cliffs of Dover representing the solid, recognizable structures that preceded them.

We know that organizations are not super-organisms like beehives, nor independent entities with minds of their own - that is a fiction reinforced by the legal construction of the corporation. In current theory, we see organisation in its broadest sense as a means of creating and stabilising shared meaning. It is the natural human response to uncertainty. The exponentially complex nature of reality is simply too much for us to contain within our minds. Where would we be without banks, insurance companies, churches and schools?

In stabilising meaning, we create symbols, artifacts and systems which, over time, coalesce like so many layers of sediment. This is the process of institutionalisation. Like the White Cliffs, meanings stabilised over time become immovable other than by the gradual forces of erosion. Sudden change is very rare. The monolithic institutions of modernity, such as industrial corporations and government, could be described in terms of the White Cliffs.

Thanks to the paradigm-shifting forces of globalization and technology, however, new organizational forms appear on the horizon. Twenty-first century networks are characterised by loose connections, transitory projects, and extensive, flexible reach. I'm not surprised that participants in the RSA project represented contemporary networks with plasticine. It's virtual plasticine that enables me to communicate with you from yesterday in San Francisco. Meanings constructed in these networks may not stabilise for long, however - like waves in the Channel. This, and because networks occupy different kinds of social spaces to institutions, they are hard to see from the Cliffs. It sounds like the RSA workshop was an interesting experiment in communication between the two forms.

Perhaps this is also why large institutions are so interested in surveillance! But I will leave it there for now.

I'm glad you like the blog name - that's a great endorsement. I will be writing about organization in general, though I expect that businesses will predominate in my blog as they do in the world. The objective is to connect theory and reality in bite-sized chunks that can be digested with your morning muesli.

Let's keep up the conversation.

- Kellie

On 30 August 2010 18:39, Kellie wrote:
Hi Pam

By all means. I'm happy for you to give my name and this email address: dysorganization@gmail.com. It's a very interesting conversation - there are lots of qualifiers and further avenues to explore, but this is a start.

All the best

Kellie