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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Very often it happens to be just a stereotypic decision that was borrowed from the leader’s <strong>for</strong>mer<br />
experience in another organization, or typical structures <strong>for</strong> this branch, etc. A businessman from<br />
Vilnius who owned a company that faced problems purely due to mistakes in structure, refused to<br />
even discuss the issue - because he copied the structure from a big internationally recognized<br />
German company <strong>and</strong> was sure that ‘nobody can design anything better’. A year later he did– <strong>and</strong><br />
his company multiplied to several times its <strong>for</strong>mer sales. In another case, I was asked by two top<br />
officials from Georgia if the structural patterns related to the internal organization of local<br />
governments in Holl<strong>and</strong> (they having just returned from a business trip) would suit Georgia – these<br />
patterns looked so perfect… Well, at least they were smart enough to raise such a question. Many<br />
never do; instead they merely copy others. This is dangerous, because the one, who just copies,<br />
will never know why something was initially done in this way – so he or she cannot be critical, <strong>and</strong><br />
may get trapped in replicating the pattern without analyzing the reasons it worked in the prior<br />
situation.<br />
General trends<br />
Facing challenges such as a changing customer base, falling prices <strong>and</strong> competition in new areas,<br />
the old-fashioned, ‘steady as she goes’, arthritic hierarchies are struggling <strong>and</strong> declining. New,<br />
faster-moving <strong>and</strong> innovative organizations are taking their place. Successful organizations are<br />
looking nowadays less like efficiently functioning ‘machines’ or ‘computers’ <strong>and</strong> more like thinking<br />
<strong>and</strong> learning organisms – ‘brains’. (N.Glass, 1998)<br />
Although these modern models just appeared within the last thirty years, human organizations<br />
used to follow the ‘organic’ <strong>and</strong> ‘brain’ patterns, probably, in the very distant past. Rigid divisional<br />
structures <strong>and</strong> hierarchies appeared much later <strong>and</strong> were related to a specific <strong>and</strong> not really very<br />
long part of human history – the age of armies <strong>and</strong> machines.<br />
Organization is not an end in itself. It is a tool, a bit like a machine, like a computer, like a brain. In<br />
nature – it is a tool <strong>for</strong> survival. Human organizations used to be created <strong>for</strong> specific purposes. Any<br />
tool may fit its purpose under given conditions, or not. A primitive tool most probably will fit a<br />
primitive purpose in primitive conditions. Primitive tools cannot be very effective, but prove to be<br />
more universal ones.<br />
Nowadays, when even public organizations respond to drastically changing conditions, primitive<br />
tools can rarely be sufficient. Hierarchical bureaucracy, as a method of control, cost too much <strong>and</strong><br />
tends to be extremely inflexible, which often makes it useless.<br />
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