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So, how can all these elements from socialstructure, technology, participants,goals, and environment, how can these fivekinds of elements work together as asystem?Fortunately, we can fall back upon RichardScott's work again.In his review of organizational research,he not only identified organizationalelements, elements but he also describedhow theories in different eras focused oncertain organizational elements overothers, and characterized theirarrangement in certain patterns.In short, he recognized three classes oforganizational theory.The earliest class of theories regardedorganizations as rational systems.Here, the theories characterize anorganization as a collectivity orientedtoward the pursuit of specific goals andwhose behavior exhibited a formalizedstructure.

These theories tended to focus on theadministrative units of organizations andtheir process of rational decision making.But, ensuing class of organizationaltheories characterize organizations asnatural systems.Here, the theories, related anorganization as a collectivity, whoseparticipants pursued multiple interests.Mm-hm.Often forged in conflict and consensus,but who recognized the value ofperpetuating the organization as an

important resource.So, the organization wants to survive, forexample, and needs to have kind of this,this natural system coordination.In a natural system, the coordination isunplanned, emergent, and coalitions teamto, seem to matter.The informal structure of relations thatdevelop among participants is moreinfluential in guiding behavior than theformal structures, role expectations, andguiding principles.So, this class of theories is regarded an

organization as an adaptive organism, andtherefore it's called kind of a naturalsystem.Most recently, organizational theoristshave come to characterize organizations asopen systems.Here, organizations are conjuries ofinterdependent flows and activitieslinking shifting coalitions ofparticipants embedded in wider and

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material resource and institutionalenvironments.This class of theory focuses more on theenvironment than any other organizationalfeature.So, let's review what we've covered.Here, in this table that I'm going topresent to you there is a lot of text, andI apologize for that.But, I think it's important to see thelandscape of these different theories.The first thing to consider with each ofthese theories is the unit of analysis.And, when we look at rational systems, wesee that there are single organization oradministrative unit, or typically, thetheory regards them as such.When we look at the natural system, we seethat, again, it's looking at a singleorganization.But, it tends to view the organization asmore of an organic system with differentparts, and divisions, or even a coalition,a shifting coalition.

It's contingent, the organization, in manyregards.Then finally, with an open system, we seethat it's, it's a larger constructaltogether of multiple organizations, evenan organizational field, say, ofbiotechnology.Now, if we look at the elements again thathave been covered in this, this lecture sofar, we see them as actors, socialstructure, goals, technologies and tasks,and environment.And if we follow each of them down the

actual columns, we see that the actors ina rational system are leaders or anorganization as a, a single unit.Its social structure tends to be formaland planned, and hierarchical.The goals are specific missions with clearobjectives, and the technology or task is,of this is standard operating proceduresthat are, that have followed maximizationin decision trees, right?So, they're rational ways of taking inputsand, and changing them into outputs.And then, finally, the environment is, is,

is mostly ignored.These are early organizational theories,In the second column, we see naturalsystems.And here, we see participants as those inmultiple roles and in the directenvironment someone.The social structure is informal andemergent.So, here, the external kind of seeps in

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and norms enter.But, it's really the informal organizationthat matters more, the emergentrelationships and coordination that it,that people adapt and use in that context.Matter more, say, than the formallyprescribed ones which people may actuallyeven ignore.The goals in a, in a natural system tendto be multiple.We don't just have one clear one.There tend to be multiple ones, and someof them even conflict.The tasks are, kind of, sometimes lessplanned, they have contingent decisions,and unintended outcomes of, kind of,organizational processes where things kindof, end up somewhere else than planned.And finally, the environment has kind of aminor role here.It's, it's relevant but it, it, it doesn'thave the full-blown role that we'll seewith an open system view.So, the third column gives us the open

system perspective.And here, the actors kind of expandedeverything, kind of expanded to the pointwhere stakeholders, employees, and evenmass consumers matter for an organization.We see in a social structure an externalworld that permeates the internalorganization beliefs outside enter.The firm wants to, to match what theexternal environment wants, like a schoolof education wants to perform the kinds oftasks or have the kinds of relationshipsthat the external world believes it should

have.And then, the goals, the survival, andlegitimacy of a firm in an environment iswhat, is, is more important here.The actual internal working, thetechnological core of an organization isless important in an open system.There's more of an environmentaldeterminance of where you can even havethe appearance of, of performing tasksthat seem legitimate.But, they, they just have to seemlegitimate as opposed to per se, actually,

perform a product all the time as said.So, and the final thing is that theenvironment here is the major role.So, the internal organization is dampenedoften in terms of relevance with an opensystem view.Mostly, because here the organizationswere worried about managing theenvironment.So, here are these three different

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perspectives.And, Scott kind of affords us.Now, one could argue that these theoriesreflect the organizations of their day.So, for example, rational systemsreflected organizations at the turn of thetwentieth century.And then, natural in the mid twentiethcentury, and now open today.But, I'm not sure that's the case.Most organizations still entail all thesefeatures and the processes that rational,natural, and open system perspectivesentail.Another view might be that organizationaltheories expanded their focus as ourunderstanding of firms and instrumentalsocial groups grew.All these features were likely there, andperhaps, shifted some in salience.But, to this day, rational, natural, andopen system qualities persist in manyorganizations.And, part of me kinda wonders if we've

just grown better at acquiring informationand data on these organizations so that wecan more and more see processes thatpertain to these multiple kinds of systemviews.And, as we'll see with, with the lectureson say, the Alison case that's forthcomingin this course, that sometimes thesemultiple perspectives can afford a moreholistic or complementary understanding ofa phenomenon that makes us even better asan analyst and as a manager.