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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Character of an organization<br />
Structure determines the emergent features of an organization. But the behaviour of an<br />
organization cannot be fully determined by its structure. Substructural aspects <strong>and</strong> relations will<br />
also play a very important role. Certain parts of the substructure of an organization may remain<br />
more or less the same over time. Then certain regularities in behaviour caused by these<br />
substructural elements, or differences in behaviours of different organizations that have seemingly<br />
the same structures, may be observed. Thus, organizations, due to their substructures, obtain a<br />
kind of specific character or ‘personality’.<br />
Talk about organizational climate, organizational environment, or organizational behaviour are<br />
quite usual. But discussing organizational personality is something new, although quite natural.<br />
The next step after recognizing an organization as a living organism is recognition of a certain<br />
collective brain <strong>and</strong> a kind of organizational intelligence (see, <strong>for</strong> example, Childre <strong>and</strong> Cryer,<br />
1999). So, why not character?<br />
William Bridges goes as far as dividing organizations into 16 types in accordance with Carl Jung’s<br />
classification of psychological types based on dichotomies ‘extraversion or introversion’, ‘sensing<br />
or intuition’, ‘thinking or feeling’, <strong>and</strong> ‘judging or perceiving’. In his book ‘Character of Organization:<br />
Using Personality Type in Organization <strong>Development</strong>’ one can find even an <strong>Organizational</strong><br />
Character Index that was developed as an experimental tool <strong>for</strong> working with organizations. As the<br />
author pointed out in this book,”as long as it is used critically, the analogy between the<br />
organization <strong>and</strong> the individual permits us to underst<strong>and</strong> <strong>and</strong> discuss certain things about<br />
organizations that would otherwise remain obscure <strong>and</strong> difficult to articulate. Specifically, it enables<br />
us to underst<strong>and</strong> why organizations act as they do <strong>and</strong> why they are so very hard to change in any<br />
fundamental way. “(W.Bridges, 2000).<br />
Applying Bridge’s classification looks a bit risky because in the case of individual human behaviour<br />
those dichotomies refer to a set number of specific types of personality, diagnosed though genetic<br />
<strong>and</strong> physiologic reasoning, <strong>and</strong> in the case of organizations this number more likely will be infinite.<br />
However, recognizing <strong>and</strong> analyzing organizational character is a good step <strong>for</strong>ward. At the end of<br />
the day, if organizations did not have a character, how it would be possible to improve their<br />
character?<br />
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