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

On the other hand, the controlling subject should be able to resolve as many tasks per unit of time,
as may arise in a system and demand his or her response. This may be called the ‘law of minimal
productivity.’
Thus, any concrete subject (be it the director, board, or whatever) can only control the behaviour of
a system in such conditions where and when the variety of possible situations and the rate of
unpredictable change does not exceed his/her own variety of options and level of efficiency
(speed) or productivity.
Real organizations may often choose behaviours from a huge number of alternatives available
within their given limits. The dynamics of change and the unpredictability of some significant
factors may leave little time for reflection. Then the decisions of a director, if they are not made
quickly enough may, at best, no longer make sense.
When the control capacity of a ruling organ or body is not sufficient to ensure necessary control
over the situation (within the range of parameters that require its control), then, instead of being an
organ that brings order to an organization’s behaviour, may become the organ generating chaos.
Alternative solutions might include:
• Reinforcement of control capacity (e.g. substituting a weak director with a strong one,
moving from personal leadership to a management team, using IT and expert systems, and
so on);
• Reducing the number of controllable parameters (it is better to control a smaller number of
more important parameters and leave others for self-regulation, than to hopelessly try to
control more parameters than are actually controllable with the given capacity);
• Disaggregation of control by allocating controllable parameters to other ‘levels of control’.
Sometimes it is possible to present a system as a kind of hierarchical structure, visually
representing relations to show how parameters supposed to be controlled on a higher level are just
derivatives of particular parameters that are controlled at a lower level.
For example, profit comes from sales and production costs; satisfaction of clients may depend on
terms of delivery, price, and quality of product; warmth in municipal blocks may depend on heating
arrangements and thermal insulation. In such cases it may be possible to employ more ‘controllers’
and let them operate under the guidance of the ‘top’ one. This disaggregation may go further,
when the tasks are still too difficult for the controlling capacity of available controllers – then it may
make sense to employ another level of controllers to control even more simple elements. For
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