Organizational Development: A Manual for Managers and ... - FPDL
Organizational Development: A Manual for Managers and ... - FPDL
Organizational Development: A Manual for Managers and ... - FPDL
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facilitating its ability to deal with challenges <strong>and</strong> opportunities posed by the environment.<br />
(G. Morgan, 1997)<br />
Some other concepts or principles are equally important <strong>for</strong> underst<strong>and</strong>ing the contemporary view<br />
of organizations. We will try to describe them as briefly as possible, based on the ‘free<br />
encyclopaedia, Wikipedia, definitions (en.wikipedia.org)<br />
“A dynamical system is a concept in mathematics where a fixed rule describes the time<br />
dependence of a point in a geometrical space.” Parameters of dynamical systems are in<br />
continuous change. “The mathematical models used to describe the swinging of a clock pendulum,<br />
the flow of water in a pipe, or the number of fish each spring in a lake are examples of dynamical<br />
systems. A dynamical system has a state determined by a collection of real numbers. Small<br />
changes in the state of the system correspond to small changes in the numbers. The evolution rule<br />
of the dynamical system is a fixed rule that describes what future states follow from the current<br />
state. The rule is deterministic: <strong>for</strong> a given time interval only one future state follows from the<br />
current state.” Organizations are definitely dynamical systems, because they involve a lot of<br />
dynamical parameters <strong>and</strong> components, but they are of a special nature, because they are nondeterministic<br />
<strong>and</strong> non-linear.<br />
“A deterministic system is a conceptual model of the philosophical doctrine of determinism<br />
applied to a system <strong>for</strong> underst<strong>and</strong>ing everything that has <strong>and</strong> will occur in the system, based on<br />
the physical outcomes of causality. In a deterministic system, every action, or cause, produces a<br />
reaction, or effect, <strong>and</strong> every reaction, in turn, is also an action that becomes the cause of other<br />
subsequent reactions. The totality of these cascading events can theoretically show exactly how<br />
the deterministic system will exist at any moment in time.”<br />
The behaviour of “nonlinear system is not expressible as a sum of the behaviours of its<br />
descriptors. In particular, the behaviour of nonlinear system is not a subject to the principle of<br />
superposition, as linear systems are. Crudely, a nonlinear system is one whose behaviour is not<br />
simply the sum of its parts. Linearity of a system allows investigators to make certain mathematical<br />
assumptions <strong>and</strong> approximations <strong>for</strong> easier computation of results.” In nonlinear systems these<br />
assumptions cannot be made. That is because “the response of non-linear systems to the small<br />
accidental change of the state is not in direct proportionality with the distortions. In some points of<br />
so-called dynamic equilibrium even a very small influence may determine the way of further<br />
development (butterfly effect). These may be really points in the phase space, or lines, or surfaces,<br />
etc. Such points were called by Puancare bifurcations; Prigogine called them later polifurcations.”<br />
The noun bifurcation (from Latin bifurcare, to split into two) became one of the most popular terms<br />
in any discipline considering any kind of development within social systems. Being dynamic <strong>and</strong><br />
10