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

All this does not mean that definite structures will disappear. What is disappearing – is the crutch
of primitive formal instructions. The description and image of the organization is becoming ‘virtual’.
Organizations themselves remain real, not less so than thousands of years ago. But selforganizing
processes are returning to their rightful place. Organizations are becoming more
natural; that allows members of organizations to also be more natural. You see, the call of the time
is just to follow decrees of nature, in organizational development as well as in many other areas.
Implementing some new ideas related to structural arrangements calls for the rejection of an old
approach to disaggregation based on functional specialization, along with the implementation of a
‘new’ (much older, in fact) approach based on ‘control by processes’.
Process (lat. processus - movement) is a naturally occurring or designed sequence of events or
activities, possibly taking up time, space, or other resources or inputs, which produce some
outcome.
A few years after the first description in the Harvard Business Review Business Process
Reengineering (BPR) became the buzz phrase of the day and widely spread, including in public
administration. The reason was simple. This approach was just more natural.
Colour does not exist outside of a surface. Weight does not exist outside of form, and cannot be
imagined without a certain colour. Processes exist in nature. A river runs. Trees grow. People
come together and have fun. All those are processes. Specific partial ‘functions’ are just an
invention of the age of machines. At a certain point, it was necessary and very effective because
those who should perform only one function cost much less than those who would be able to carry
out the whole process. When craftsmen became industrial workers, they became much cheaper,
and forgot their responsibility for the final results; sometimes they did not even know what they
were producing. It worked well for a few hundred years, but is not acceptable any longer.
While in the West BPR was spreading out in triumph - followed by elation and tears - as a new
victory of managerial thought, very similar processes took place in the East, in post-totalitarian
countries. Not many people in the East knew what BPR meant. But the hypertrophy of bureaucratic
structures, with obviously absurd formal regulations in offices and enterprises, forced to ruin what
was not already self-ruined. It was necessary to look for more natural ways of doing more sensible
things, based on modern technologies and responding to new conditions.
Sometimes it worked well. More often – old ineffective structures were substituted with new
ineffective ones. We called it ‘wild jump re-engineering’. It was a time of mass creation of chimers.
Of course, these faulty structures were not viable and most of them disappeared after some time.
50