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

Chapter 1.2 Basic Modes of Behaviour
Existence space
Any organism can exist only under certain conditions. These conditions may be pictured as a
certain area in multi-attribute space - ‘phase space’ in mathematics - comprised of all external and
internal parameters that are important for this given organism. Take the temperature or blood
pressure, market prices or salary levels, number of computers in the office or visitors per day – it is
always possible to determine the minimum and maximum values of each parameter that are
acceptable for this particular structure.
The only complication is that all these values in a system are interrelated – acceptable temperature
depends on humidity (which in turn has also its minimum and maximum value depending on the
temperature). The level of salaries possible in an organization depends on the situation in the
external market; the number of visitors that would not exceed the capacity of the operational
structure may depend on the number of decks, and so on.
Thus, we cannot determine the conditions that allow the existence of an organism as a set of
figures representing minimum-maximum for each parameter separately. We can only talk about
acceptable combinations of parameters, or points in phase space, representing certain situations.
The continuous multitude of these acceptable situations creates an entire multi-dimensional
existence space.
Any organism may exist within its existence space only. At the boundary of this space it changes
its structure or dies. That is because the structure defines the boundaries of the existence space.
Organisms with different structures should have different emergent features, different identities,
and consequently – different existence spaces.
We cannot picture multi-dimensional space. Let us portray an existence space as part of a twodimensional
plane. Keeping in mind that it inevitably should be a simplified picture, we can easily
use it to illustrate the topology of existence space through the prism of different kinds of behaviour
resulting from different situations.
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