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LECTURE 1: READINGSOrganizations as Open Systems – Scott
That a system is open means, not simply that it engages in interchanges with the environment, but
that this interchange is an essential factor underlying the system’s viability.
All systems are characterized by an assemblage or combination of parts whose relations make them
interdependent. Social organizations, in contrast with physical or mechanical structures, are complex
and loosely coupled.
Boulding’s system types:
Characteristics of open systems:
Open systems are capable of self-maintenance on the basis of throughput of resources from the
environment. Interaction with the environment is essential for open system functioning. The open
system view of organizational structure stressed the complexity and variability of the individual parts
as well as the looseness of connections among them.
Open systems and psychoanalytic perspectives – Stacey
The German biologist von Bertalanffy put forward the idea that organisms, as well as human
organisations and societies, are open systems. They are systems because they consist of a number of
component subsystems that are interrelated and interdependent. They are open because they are
connected to their environments, or supra-systems, of which they are a part.
,Open systems explanations of managing and organising therefore focus attention on:
• organisations, industries and societies as systemic wholes;
• the behaviour of people within a subsystem or system;
• the nature of the boundary around a subsystem or system;
• the nature of the relationships across the boundaries between subsystems and systems;
• the requirements of managing the boundary.
The open systems concept provides a tool for understanding the relationship between:
• the technical and the social aspects of an organisation;
• the parts and the whole organisation (e.g. the individual and the group, the individual and the
organisation);
• the whole organisation and the environment.
The message is that, if changes are to succeed, then they have to be based on a realistic
understanding of the interconnection, or feedback, between the social and the technical subsystems.
And that interconnection is not taken account of simply by introducing participation or reward
schemes for individuals. Instead, general systems theory prescribes a match between the two
subsystems, one that establishes stable equilibrium.
When mature, competent managers come together as a group, each is said to bring along the
infantile mechanisms of dependence, idealisation, denial, splitting, projection and fantasising that
,have been learned as an infant and laid down in the unconscious. Anything that raises uncertainty
levels and thus anxiety levels could provoke regression to those infantile mechanisms. Bion
distinguishes between two important aspects of any group of people. The first aspect is the
sophisticated work group. This group focuses on the primary task that it has come together to
perform. So, a team of top executives has the primary tasks of controlling the day-to-day running of
the business of the organisation and also the strategic development of that organisation. All groups
are also at the same time what Bion called ‘basic assumption groups’. A basic assumption group is
one that behaves as if it is making a particular assumption about required behaviour. The assumption
becomes most apparent when uncertainty and anxiety levels rise. What Bion is talking about here is
the emotional atmosphere, the psychological culture, of the group. All groups of people have these
two aspects: some task they are trying to perform together, accompanied by some emotional
atmosphere within which they are trying to perform their task. That atmosphere can be described in
terms of a basic assumption they are all making. Bion distinguished amongst three basic
assumptions:
1. Dependence. Here the group behaves as if it has come together to depend on some leader.
2. Fight/flight. Here it is as if the group has come together for the purpose of fighting some enemy or
for the purpose of fleeing from some enemy.
3. Pairing. Here it is as if the group has come together to witness the intercourse between two of
their number that will produce the solution to their anxieties.
Turquet added a fourth one:
4. Oneness. Here it is as if the group has come together to join in a powerful union with some
omnipotent force that will enable members to surrender themselves in some kind of safe passivity.
, Leadership
Bales (1970) identified the emergence of two kinds of leaders in small task-oriented groups: the task
leader, who gives suggestions, shows disagreement and presses the group to focus on task
completion; and the social-emotional leader who asks for suggestions, shows solidarity and soothes
tempers by encouraging tension release. These leadership roles are mutually supportive in that each
helps the group solve different problems, provided that the role occupants can work together. An
effective leader is one who maintains a clear focus on and definition of the primary task.
However, there are also neurotic forms of leadership. Kets de Vries (1989) explains the nature of
neurotic leadership in the following way. Everyone behaves in a manner that is affected by what one
might think of as an inner theatre. That theatre consists of a number of representations of people
and situations, often formed early in childhood, and those that have come to play the most
important roles are core conflictual relationships.
Interaction
Interaction within and between organisations is understood in systems terms as with strategic choice
and learning organisation theory. Open systems theory pays more attention to the micro level than
cybernetics and systems dynamics do. In other words, it pays attention to the subsystems of which
the whole is composed. This is especially so when it is combined with psychoanalytic perspectives,
because these are very much concerned with the individuals and the groups that make up an
organisation.
In summary
The open systems/psychoanalytic approach opens up insights like these:
• Charismatic leaders and the strong cultures of dependence they provoke in followers may well be
extremely unhealthy for organisations. Researchers (e.g. Peters and Waterman, 1982) may therefore
note the presence of charismatic leaders and superficially conclude that this is the reason for success,
when it might well be a neurotic phenomenon that is about to undermine the company.
• A cohesive team of managers may not be a healthy phenomenon at all. It may be an unhealthy and
unproductive reflection of the fantasy of basic assumption groups acting out dependence or oneness
assumptions. Again, researchers not considering an organisation from a psychoanalytic point of view
may well conclude that such neurotic cohesion is a reason for success.
• The idea of the group or the management team may itself be a defence mechanism. So, faced by
high levels of strategic uncertainty and ambiguity, managers may retreat into the ‘mother figure’ of
the team for comfort and in so doing fail to deal with the strategic issues.
• Groups clearly do not have to have a purpose or even a task to function very tightly as a group,
even if it is a misguided one. Again, signs of close teams should provoke suspicion, not praise.
• Groups or teams are a two-edged sword. People need them to establish their identity. They need
them to operate effectively. But they can also deskill people.
• The desire for cohesion may well be a neurotic phenomenon.
• Plans and rigid structures and rules may all be defences against anxiety instead of the rational way
of proceeding usually considered.
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