Chapter 5Organizational Theory: Metaphors of

Biology

A System Theory• System Concepts• Influence in Organizational Communication• System Theory, Complexity, and Chaos

System Concepts

• Wholeness – Interrelated/Interdependent• Hierarchy - Structured• Openness - Open• Feedback -

Wholeness• A system is a set of elements bound together

in interdependent relationships• Wholeness means that the effects of

elements working in a relationship to one another differs from the effect of their isolated, individual actions taken collectively

• Synergy: The whole is greater than the sum of its parts

Hierarchy• Elements (people) are organized into subsystems• Subsystems (work groups, departments,

divisions) are related to one another to form the system (entire organization)

• The system itself operates within a larger environment

• Division of Labor• Unity of Command• Unity of Direction

Openness• Systems may be regarded as relatively open or

closed• Open systems are characterized by active

exchange with their outside environment• Organizations are open systems that take in

energy and materials (input), transform this input in some way (throughout), then return products and by-products of throughput to the environment (output)

Feedback• Open systems are characterized by two basic

processes– Maintenance processes are regulatory. They keep

certain system conditions within acceptable ranges

– Adaptive processes bring about change and growth

• Both of these processes depend on feedback responses to system actions that provide information for use in adjusting system conditions

Feedback• Negative Feedback: indicates

deviations from desired conditions. The system adjusts by correcting the deviation.

• Positive Feedback: reinforces deviations rather than signaling for a correction. This form of feedback is the basis for change and adaptation.

System Theory: Influence on Organizational Communication

All of the human processes that define an organization arise from communication

• Relationships among organizational members are defined through communication

• Linkages and interactions among subsystems depend on communication and information flow

• All feedback processes involve communication

System Theory, Complexity, and Chaos

• Living systems such as organizations are quite complex, occasionally orderly, but generally turbulent and very difficult to predict

• The only certainty is uncertainty• Unpredictability is predictable• Do not impose false order on turbulence• Understand turbulence as turbulence

Weick’s Theory of Organizing

• Equivocality Reduction• Fundamental Propositions• The Evolutionary Metaphor• Communication as Sense-Making

Equivocality Reduction• Information is equivocal when it can be

given different interpretations because it is ambiguous, conflicted, obscure, or introduces an element of uncertainty into the situation

• Equivocality reduction involves using communication strategies to reduce uncertainty so you may act

Equivocality Reduction

How do crises activate the process of equivocality reduction?

• Natural Disasters: floods, tornadoes• Corporate Crises: financial scandal

Fundamental Propositions

• Where environmental inputs (information) have little equivocality, organizations can rely heavily on rules to guide their responses

• As equivocality increases, organizations are less able to rely on rules and more communicative effort is required to respond to it

Fundamental Propositions

• Communication strategy to reduce equivocality– Interlocked behavior cycle consisting of a

double-interact– Person A says something to B, B replies to

A, and A provides an adjustment response (e.g., confirmation, request for clarification, etc.)

The Evolutionary Metaphor

• In Darwin’s theory of evolution, the members of a species exhibit variations in their makeup

• Some genetic variations turn out to be more adaptive than others helping organisms to survive

• Adaptive traits are selected for continuation and eventually retained as characteristics of the species

The Evolutionary Metaphor

“The most advantageous variations are selected by the cultural group for use and retained as functional attributes of the cultural group. Weick borrows this three-stage model of adaptation [variation, selection, and retention of behaviors] modifying it to the three phases of organizing: enactment, selection, and retention” (Kreps, 1990)

The Evolutionary Metaphor

The idea of enactment in Weick’s theory means that humans do not just passively respond to conditions in the environment. We attend actively to the environment and selectively interpret it, recognizing the level of equivocality in the information that we have.

Retrospective Sense-Making

• Organizational behavior is no so much rational as it is rationalized

• What if intentions and motives do not really exist prior to action?

• What if they are only accounts that we construct to explain our behavior after we have done it?

• Retrospective sense making means that we construct interpretations of organizational experiences and actions by reflecting on them

Luhmann’s Social Systems Theory

• Systems as Communication• Stability, Change, and Episodes• Communications and Decision

Contingencies

Systems as Communications

• Social systems are not comprised of persons and actions but of communications

• Communication is a social operation, which cannot be reduced to individual actions

• What is important about the social system is not the individual utterance, but the understanding produced from the interactions of two or more parties

Systems as Communications

• Communications are not produced by individual actors; they are produced by the communication process

• A social system can be understood only in terms of its communication system because communications themselves determine what further communications occur

• In other words, the communication system is self-sustaining

Episodes, Stability, and Change

• An episode is a sequence of communications with a beginning and an end and it is recognized by the structure of its communications

• Structure involves the conditions that define what is possible in the episode at its beginning, end, and between these two markers

• Structure in this sense both constrains and enables communication

Episodes, Stability, and Change

• The sequences of communications can be replicated over and over or reproduced across a wide range of situations within a system. This is stability.

• Reproduction is not just about stability. It is also about change. Communication systems generate mutations, then select and retain those mutations that are adaptive.

Communications and Decision Contingencies

• Decisions involve choices among alternatives• Decisions involve contingencies - things that

could happen, but are not certain to happen• Decisions are always contingent in the sense

that we picked one alternative, but we could have picked another

Communications and Decision Contingencies

• In social contexts we cannot really communicate decisions without also communicating rejected alternatives

• Decisions, rather than eliminating contingencies, generate new ones, always opening up new possibilities to decide upon

Evolutionary PsychologyNature versus Nurture Dichotomy• Is behavior biologically determined (nature)?• Is behavior socially acquired (nurture)?

Evolutionary Psychology• Why do we have to choose between nature and

nurture?• May human behavior be explained by an interaction

between environment and biology within an evolutionary framework?

Evolutionary Psychology• Human behavior, and by extension culture,

are influenced by innate psychological mechanisms that evolved into their present form during the Pleistocene Epoch, which ended over 10,000 years ago

• The brain is a collection of domain-general and domain-specific mechanisms adapted through evolution to handle the problems confronted by early human beings

Evolutionary PsychologyAdaptive Mechanisms proposed in Evolutionary

Psychology relevant to organizations:• Primitive emotional contagion, where the emotional

state of one individual is evoked among nearby individuals through a process of automatic subconscious mimicry

• Reciprocal altruism, the performance of unselfish acts for the benefit of others with some expectation that the recipients will return the favor in the future

Evolutionary PsychologyAdaptive Mechanisms proposed in Evolutionary

Psychology relevant to organizations:

• Preference for similarity, the tendency to prefer association with others who are similar to us

• Sensitivity to prestige hierarchies, showing deference to more valuable group members and accepting preferential access for those members to desirable resources