The philosophy of integration
Business organizations vs. organic organizations
Laszlo Kövari
The often overlooked common denominator of such terms as innovation, knowledge, identity, strategy, leadership, operations and change is organization. Organization may mean two things: 1 organic organization (emergence of a structure from potentiality to actuality), 2 organizing.
Organizing results in an artificial, mechanically assembled entity. Organic organizations and mechanically assembled (artificial) organizations are in polar opposition to each other. In fact a mechanical organization (it’s safe to say this includes all business organizations) disable organic organization, while organic organization threatens the very foundations of a mechanical organization.
The organization is not a company, and the company is not an (organic) organization.
This has serious and well known consequences in all areas of business. It’s enough to think about M&A, venture capital, innovation as “positioning”, strategy, corporate governance, “corporate culture”, etc.
A brief outline of main differences between the two types of organization:
|
Factor |
Artificial (business) |
Organic |
|
Purpose |
Profit |
Self-realization |
|
Actors’ modus operandi |
Manipulation |
Communications |
|
Organizational behavior |
Based on Outside stimuli (reactive) |
Based on Identity (active) |
|
Dominating tendency |
Specialization with the illusion of integration |
Integration with appropriate degree of specialization |
Before comparing the different factors in each type of organization, the direction of organic organization and its roles must be briefly mentioned. The actors: 1 main integrator, who is responsible for the principle based concept, which must be realized. This concept provides the context for integration on all levels of the organization. 2. few specialized integrators, 3. integrating specialists, 4. specialists. All functions (jobs) are based on these 4 organic roles. The direction of organic organization is from top to bottom (vertically) and from the periphery to the centre (horizontally).
The main integrator and the specialized integrators fulfill vertical integration roles, while integrating specialists are responsible for the horizontal integration of specialists.
The first row of the table points out that the actualization of a principle based concept is self realization; not only for the organization, but for the actors in it. In a way this means that the organization already exists on the plane of potentialities even before it is “officially launched”. Two examples of semi-organic organizations today are social networks and the open source “movement”. The excitement of connecting with friends, associates and acquaintances and their friends, their associates and their acquaintances comes from the fact that an already existing organizational pattern (six degrees of separation) becomes visible, evident. It is lifted from the state of potentiality to the state of virtuality.
The open source movement has emerged from the specialists’ drive for self-realization.
Both of these organizations are only semi-organic:
Both social networks and the open source movement lack the principle based concept (purpose). They both disregard (are not aware) of the four roles in an organic organization. Although the identity of the actors in both organizations are paramount, there is a palpable void in both: the organizational identity is missing. It’s almost there, but the most important part, the purpose and the awareness of the purpose is missing: why are we connected? In case of social networks the purpose will become clear when the question, to which six degrees of separation is the answer, emerges. In the open source movement the participants are mostly specialists and integrating specialists; horizontal integration is highly efficient, whereby the self-realization of the participants seem to be sufficient. Yet: the organizational behavior to a large degree is still reactive, it is not based on true organizational identity: it only exists on the horizontal plane, it lacks the vertical components, and thus a true foundation for existence (the purpose never originates from the horizontal plane).
The rest of the rows and columns in the table are self-explanatory. The functions in a mechanical organization are not based on roles, the purpose lacks principles (there is no real concept), vertical integration is non-existent and horizontal integration is only sporadically present. This is how it’s possible that HR is responsible for “organizational development” and “leadership development”, strategy has degraded into a horizontal function, leadership is rewarded (mostly to specialists by specialists), “leaders” are responsible for administration and analysis, decisions are made based only on available alternatives (selection based leadership), manipulation is a valued skill, lies and cowardice dominate “management culture”, and both management and staff are either cynical or close to a regressive infantile level, or both. Mechanical organizations are in a state of disintegration and they do everything in their power to create the illusion of integration (how they do it deserves even a book).
The four players in an organic organization represent modes of existence, and corresponding world views, as well as mental models/thinking patterns. Specialists or integrating specialists can not perform vertical integration. Also, putting a concept behind the product of a horizontal initiative (like technology) never leads to vertical integration, since the concept must be the context, and the context must not/can not be secondary to the initiative. Perhaps this is the reason why specialists everywhere flat out deny the need for vertical integration: “everything works just fine as it is”. This seems especially true in the technical domain; yet the problems of both vertical and horizontal integration are highly visible; more so in mechanical organizations, and to a smaller degree in semi-organic organizations. There is no integration between boards and executive leadership, between executive leadership and the organization, between strategy and operations, between investors and companies, between business units, even between teams, etc.
It’s important to mention that the strategic environment itself is mechanical and this means that organic initiatives are quickly mechanized or eliminated. It would be naïve, in a way stupid to think that it’s possible to enable the transformation of mechanical organizations into organic ones. Yet: in order to increase the efficacy of any kind of integration, some kind of organic concept (true corporate identity) must be drawn up and represented by executive management and the board; and for this, they have to step out of business reality. What’s more difficult: they must find a main integrator!
In case of the emerging phenomena of social networks, the element of organizational identity maybe more successfully “introduced”, or rather discovered but this discovery will not come from either technological or business model considerations. Since academia is also mechanical, it is unlikely that it (e.g. social sciences, “applied philosophy”, etc.) will help discover/define social/organizational identities. From this chain of thought the question may seem obvious: where are the main integrators?