Organizational Development: A Manual for Managers and ... - FPDL

In a world without chaos, the survivability of an organism would depend on: a) individual and
generic experience that had selected acceptable structures and patterns of behaviour, and b) the
model of reality (‘mental map’) that was formed out of this experience and is used for making
rational choices (when there is a choice). In this case, a more complete and durable memory of the
previous experience is a pre-condition for more adequate behaviour. Each result of action or nonaction
corrects and determines the same model and enables prediction that may ultimately be as
exact as one wants (‘Laplace’s demon’). Unfortunately or fortunately – such a world does not exist.
In a chaotic world, organisms are able not only to adapt to the certain environment, but also adapt
to the uncertainty of the environment that is caused by chaos. This chaos may be more or less
bounded or ‘determined’, but cannot be eliminated. It is impossible to know what will happen
tomorrow. In the best case, it is only possible to predict that something ‘may happen’ and
something else ‘is unlikely to happen’.
There is an interesting memory dilemma. On the one side – survivability of an organism depends
on the rate it stores in memory its impressions from interrelations with its environment (mapping
the world). On the other side – inertia of the memory may not serve well if something was not
forgotten in the right time. In a changing world, an organism must revise and correct its mental
map – thus important condition is the rate of erasing ‘achievements’ based on old experience when
these are not relevant any longer. When the world is changing rapidly – then learning ‘how it is
now’ must also be fast, as well as leaving behind ‘that which is not relevant any longer’.
Stability in a contemporary world gives way to dynamic (predictable) change and chaos
(unpredictable change). Thus, the starting point in choosing an organism’s behaviour is no longer
the status quo, but change itself. To be more precise – not only the changes themselves, but also
cause-effect relationships, and regularities and patterns of change that include conditions and
levels of predictability for certain processes.
In the stream of changes, any new state is unpredictable - but possible directions are predictable,
because the world, in general, remains the same and follows the same laws. It is like gas in a
vessel – it remains the same, although molecules are in permanent and chaotic movement and the
situation on the micro-level never repeats. The only way to understand what is permanent in the
world is to observe how it changes.
Thus, behavioural conditions for survival include:
• Adequate reaction to the actual situation (‘map of current situation’ is needed);
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