OVERVIEW

Management as a function has not changed appreciably in the first 80 or more years of the twentieth century. Now, however, we may be in the midst of a revolution in all aspects of organizations. This revolution is driven by changes in paradigm or world view. The changes in paradigm are substantial. Hierarchy, for example, has been the basis of organizational structure for hundreds, if not thousands of years. Yet the emerging world view suggests that hierarchy, in many ways, has outlived its usefulness and that heterarchical (non-pyramidal) structures may allow organizations to be more productive. Another substantial change is from reductionism to holism. This difference will be discussed in this unit. It is basically the difference between believing that organizations function like machines or the human body. Typically, organizations are thought of as machines. In fact, the traditional organization chart of unit 7 is a perfect wiring diagram for a machine. The emerging worldview suggests that organizations cannot be viewed nearly that simply. Holism means that the organization is best viewed in its entirety because of the importance of interdependencies.

Chaos theory is perhaps the most well-developed approach embodying the emerging worldview. Most traditional approaches in organizations use the tools of linear regression or calculus to study organizational phenomena. Linear regression, however, assumes that the phenomena exhibits a linear relationship. Calculus assumes that the phenomena exhibits a continuous relationship with no sudden jolts or discontinuities (someone quitting her job would be a discontinuity in team performance). Chaos theorists have demonstrated that these assumptions are rarely operative in organizations.

The emerging worldview and chaos theory have resulted in several different interpretations, or new models for organizational functions such as leadership and structure. The new interpretations make the assumption that organizations should operate the way nature does. If a phenomenon, such as participation, predominates in nature then emerging management accepts participation as part of how organizations should be. The ability to self-organize also seems to be characteristic of nature. Examples of self-organization are everywhere, including surprising cases such as "women living in close groups such as prisons, hospitals, and student residences tend to synchronize their menstrual cycles" (Briggs and Peat, 1991, p. 184).

OBJECTIVES

After completing this unit, you should be able to:

Summarize the paradigm shift that is taking place in organizations which includes changes in change of structure from hierarchy to heterarchy, from determinism to indeterminism, from direct causality to mutual causality, from the objective observer to the perspectival observer and from reductionism to holism.

Describe some differences between chaos theory and traditional organizational approaches

Compare and contrast organizational concepts as leadership, self-organizing, problem solving, organization structure, and statistics in organizations in traditional and emerging management

DISCUSSION

An Emerging Worldview (1st header)

Some management experts who engage in far-sighted thinking about organizations believe that a revolution in organizations has begun. This same revolution has already affected physics, biology, and mathematics and now holds open the promise of new and exciting breakthroughs in the management of organizations. This revolution is the result of a major shift in paradigm or world view by the people working in organizations. As we noted in unit 3, experts believe the paradigm shift currently taking place is more significant than any change since the Enlightenment.

We will define the term emerging management as the management principles which are consistent with the underlying assumptions of the new or emerging world view. In this unit, we will explore changes from the old to the new world view in five underlying assumptions.

from hierarchy to heterarchy

from determinism to indeterminism

from direct causality to mutual causality

from the objective observer to the perspectival observer

from reductionism to holism

Each of these changes, many with unfamiliar terms, will be discussed below. The traditional underlying assumptions are not wrong. In fact, many of them seem to be useful in localized settings. For example, within a system there are instances of direct causality. Nearly all systems, however, will have at least one feedback loop, which means that the functioning of the system cannot be understood by only assuming direct causality. Mutual causality, and the other emerging assumptions, seem to be more useful abstract concepts. They reflect reality more accurately in a larger number of instances.

From Hierarchy to Heterarchy (2nd header)

Organizations have been structured in hierarchies for centuries. The traditional organization chart as discussed in unit 7 and depicted in Figure 7.1 is arranged in a hierarchy. Hierarchies are most effective in "command and control" situations. The military in combat is the best example of command and control. Traditionally, when your senior officer issued you an order, you did it - no questions asked. Many organizations today do not operate in a command and control style, because, as we noted in unit 7, organizations have recognized that work flows across an organization chart, rather than being contained within a single function. Very rarely will an executive, other than the president, have a direct authority relationship with everyone she needs to rely on to get work done. More typical in organizations today is interactive influence among managers and their employees, mutual constraints upon all parties involved, and simultaneous interests.

A heterarchy is a structure that does not have one ultimate source of judgment, such as a president at the top of an organizational pyramid. The simplest form of a heterarchy is found in the Voter's Paradox. The Voter's Paradox was evident in the 1992 presidential election. In that election it was not unusual, for example, to find voters who preferred Clinton to Bush, Bush to Perot, but surprisingly, Perot to Clinton. If these preferences were arranged hierarchically, from the first two choices one could conclude that the voter would prefer Clinton to Perot. Another example is with government contractors. It is not unusual for company A to be the prime contractor on one contract with company B as a subcontractor, and for company B to be the prime contractor on another contract with company A as the subcontractor. In matrix or process management organizations, it is not unusual for workers to be process or project managers on some efforts and be individual contributors on others.

A final example of heterarchy we will include is network organizations. Ram Charan (1991) has reported impressive results in major North American companies by restructuring their organizations into networks. He defines networks as "intense interactions among a well-defined group of people whose responsibilities cross functions, business units, and hierarchy but whose collaboration (coordination and integration) is critical to delivering on strategy" (p. 105). These major companies will still have a president sitting at the top. However, beneath a top executive, there is a flexible hierarchy. The hierarchy is fluid, constantly adjusting to the situation. An executive can at once be manager and subordinate. Moreover, today, more businesses than ever are part of organizations without a central power point. Consider the independent owners of franchise businesses or the attorneys in a partnership.

From Determinism to Indeterminism (2nd header)

A deterministic world is one in which conclusions can be precisely drawn from a set of known variables. Since the time of Isaac Newton, scientists have believed that every event that happens on earth could be predicted if only we had elaborate enough equations. An example of such an equation in leader-subordinate interactions is the situational leadership model which suggests that leadership is a function of applying appropriate amounts of task and maintenance behaviors, as described in unit 9. If only the leader will apply these behaviors properly, the subordinate will act as the leader intends. Recently, however, scientists have discovered that "the world as we know it, particularly the social world, is simply not predictable or controllable, even in the most sophisticated mathematical models" (Lincoln, 1985, p. 35). Hard scientists have determined that the world is indeterminate because they have identified the equivalent of "free will" which occurs at decision points within chemical reactions or physical phenomena, for example. Moreover, in organizations, free will is operative so that employees' reaction to anything cannot be predicted with 100 percent certainty.

From Direct Causality to Mutual Causality (2nd header)

The most familiar to you of the five changes discussed so far is probably the change to mutual causality. Mutual causality simply means that feedback loops are present. As we noted in unit 5, whenever a system contains feedback, compensating or amplifying, it is likely that cause and effect are not related linearly.

From the Objective Observer to the Perspectival Observer (2nd header)

We also foreshadowed the change from the objective to perspectival observer. In our discussion of the theory of knowledge in unit 2 we discussed how no facts are independent of the purposes and techniques of measurements or observations. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle was the first example in a hard science of a refutation of the possibility of an objective observer. In unit 2 we used the example in organizations of how differently a company's employees could feel about how satisfied their customers are. Customer satisfaction often depends on how one wants to look at it, and at what one wants to look. The assumption of the perspectival observer recognizes that the process of observation often alters what is being observed. If someone watches you work, you may work very differently than you would if you knew you were not being watched.

From Reductionism to Holism (2nd header)

Reductionism is the belief that an entity can best be understood by breaking it down into its smallest parts. Holism is that belief that an entity can be best understood by considering it in its entirety. Systems thinking is an example of a holistic approach. Reductionism further suggests that a part can be manipulated in isolation without altering any surrounding parts. For example, the belief that a change made in production will not impact any other department in the organization is reductionist. Mechanical machines can be understood with reductionist approaches. Entities that are more complex or are organic (having properties associated with living organisms) seem to be better understood using holistic approaches.

The Evolution of an Emerging Worldview (2nd header)

The emerging worldview has evolved in recent years as researchers from a number of disciplines have become interested in how revelations in nature may provide insight into the basic frameworks of their own fields. The principal revelation in nature which has set off this activity is the quantum theory of physics. What has quantum theory done to the science of physics? It has forced profound changes in such bedrock concepts as matter, space, time and cause and effect. Quantum theory has explained phenomena that were baffling to classical Newtonian physics. Newtonian physics allows us to understand a large number of natural dynamics. Quantum theory opens up another large number of dynamics that we can now understand.

This emerging worldview appears to offer organizations and its leaders similar new vistas. Through classical organization theory we understand well the chain of command, production, and group dynamics. This theory to date, however, has left us scratching our heads about large scale organizational change, leadership, and the development of excellent organizations (to name just a few). We've seen some successes in these areas, but we don't have anything approaching recipes.

Another revelation in this century has been the information now known about biological self-organizing systems. Classical biology assumes that ecological systems seek stability. It appears, however, that their persistence occurs not because of their stability, but because of their continual ability to renew themselves in a dynamic environment. Stability is also a goal of traditional organizations. That goal may be transformed into one of creating organizational structures that have the ability to renew and self-organize, in other words, to emerge.

The emerging worldview is headed in the direction of discovering an underlying unity that may ultimately "encompass not just physics and chemistry, but biology, information processing, economics, political science, and every other aspect of human affairs [italics added]" (Waldrop, 1992, p. 67). The basic message for us in organizations is this: we must reexamine our current models and assumptions to see if they are consistent with messages that nature has formed. Many of the assumptions of the emerging worldview are not new to organization theory. What is new is that emerging management may provide a more compelling justification for certain principles than management science currently has. For example, thousands of empirical efforts have demonstrated that behavior that emerges from the bottom up is more committed and productive. Emerging management offers the prospect that not only is this dynamic demonstrable empirically and in keeping with democracy (and it just sounds like the right thing), but it may also be in keeping with the natural order of our universe. One of the biggest blocks to emerging management becoming mainstream is that it (like nearly everything else) has a jargon of its own, and this jargon is at least intimidating, if not downright contradictory! (In this unit we won't even get into stochastic learning automata, strange attractors, and autopoiesis)

Chaos Theory (1st header)

Chaos theory, which is perhaps the most well-developed approach embodying the emerging worldview, has a misleading name. To some, the name chaos theory connotes mystery and excitement. To others, it doesn't sound practical or easy to understand. For our purposes, chaos theory, also known as nonlinear systems theory (Priesmeyer, 1992, p. 4), can be simply defined as the study of phenomena which contain order that cannot be predicted. Chaos theory has provided insights into population growth patterns, windshear in airplane landings, market trading, rush-hour traffic patterns, and the solitary wave of the tsunami, among several others (Briggs and Peat, 1989).

Researchers have just begun exploring organizations using chaos theory to determine whether it provides insights in that arena as well. Just because a system contains order which cannot be predicted does not mean that it cannot be understood. In nonlinear, dynamic systems, prediction as we know it is not possible. Chaos theory, however, can provide ways of making very specific probabilities. The difference is between saying "It will rain tomorrow," and "There is a 95% chance that it will rain tomorrow." Table 13.1. illustrates some additional differences between the focus of chaos theory and traditional organizational approaches. Some table items are included for completeness but will not be elaborated upon in this unit.

nonlinear relationships

- critical mass thresholds

focus on feedback

amplifying feedback

explanation

focus on variation

initial state is important

dynamic measures

linear relationships

- marginal increases

focus on directives

compensating feedback

prediction

focus on averages

initial state is unimportant

static measures

Several characteristics mark the approaches taken by chaos theorists. First, the initial condition is a critical variable in the behavior of a chaotic system. Amplifying feedback, then accounts for much of the rest of the behavior. Feedback that is amplifying builds on what can start as very small things that may grow large enough to dominate the system. Some of these things start out extremely small. In grade school, students learn that any calculation carried out to more than three decimal places bears on nit-picking. In chaotic systems, differences that start out much smaller than three decimal places can grow to have unbelievable effects. A good example of this phenomenon is weather prediction. When meteorologists make calculations of temperature, wind speed, barometric pressure, and so forth, they lose critical information if they round off measurements to three decimal places. These roundoff amounts have been shown to make wide variations in weather prediction.

Emerging Management (1st header)

The underlying assumptions of the emerging worldview and the use of techniques such as chaos theory have led to the formulation of principles of what we have called emerging management. Emerging management is a field in its infancy, so each of these ideas is still evolving. You will see that each is quite different from the corresponding concept more in practice today. We will explore two different views of leadership, problem solving, organization structure, self-organizing, and the use of statistics.

Leadership (Wheatley) (2nd header)

Margaret J. Wheatley was perhaps the first management commentator to propose that organizations should look to nature for clues as to how organizations should be. Wheatley suggests that if we find an analogy in nature for some approach in organizations, then that lends credence to the validity of the approach because we have tapped into the underlying unity of the universe.

By this reasoning, Wheatley argues that participative management is the natural style of leadership because physicists have determined that the universe is participative. Wheatley's (1992) deliberation on this subject is instructive.

"There are many critiques offered for the current and growing shift toward participative management. Is this a popular idea that, like so many others, we can wait out, knowing it will pass? Is it based on democratic principles and therefore non-transferable to other cultures? Is it merely a more sophisticated way to manipulate workers? Or is something else going on? For me, quantum physics answered those questions. I believe in my bones that the movement towards participation is rooted, perhaps subconsciously for now, in our changing perceptions of the organizing principles of the universe. This may sound grandiose, but the quantum realm speaks emphatically to the role of participation, even to its impact on creating reality. As physicists describe this participatory universe, how can we fail to share in it and embrace it in our management practices? Will participation go away? Not until our science changes" (p. 142).

Wheatley also borrows the notions of fractals (geometrical figures in which an identical motif repeats itself on an ever diminishing scale - an example is a head of broccoli) and attractors (underlying patterns of behavior that exist because of inherent structural characteristics - an example is an organization's culture) from chaos theory to describe leadership in emerging management. For her purposes, the important characteristic of fractals is that they are self-similar. In other words, an entire fractal can be constructed by knowing only a small piece of it. An example in organizations is that a customer would discover the organization's customer service values by seeing how any single employee acts. The difficult challenge for organizational leaders is to disseminate the values so completely and consistently that the organization takes on this fractal quality.

Wheatley argues that leaders can achieve this quality by establishing broad areas of vision, values, and beliefs. Within these acceptable confines, the leaders then allow individuals freedom to function in their random, sometimes chaotic-looking meanderings. These broad areas are attractors, that pull errant behavior back into the acceptable area. Wheatley (1992) makes a strong statement about how effectiveness will follow naturally once the proper attractors are in place.

When a meaning attractor is in place in an organization, employees can be trusted to move freely, drawn in many directions by their energy and creativity. There is no need to insist, through regimentation or supervision, that any two individuals act in precisely the same way. We know they will be affected and shaped by the attractor, their behavior never going out of bounds. We trust that they will heed the call of the attractor and stay within its basin. We believe that little else is required except the cohering presence of purpose, which gives people the capacity for self-reference (p. 136).

Leadership (Vaill) (2nd header)

Peter B. Vaill (1991) nicely captures the paradigm shift in the title of his book, Managing as a Performing Art: New Ideas for a World of Chaotic Change. He represents the paradigm shift as a paradox, which he calls "The Grand Paradox of Management." The paradox is that managers are trying to achieve the goals of the traditional paradigm, which Vaill argues is impossible because of the operative paradigm. The primary goals of the traditional paradigm are comprehension and control. The manager's primary contribution is to comprehend what is going on in the organization, and based on that comprehension create constraints and take actions to control the organization and keep it stable.

Vaill's question is, if command and control are such straightforward, dry, and mechanistic processes, "why in the face of all this do those living in the midst of these systems, including managers, continue to find them mysterious, recalcitrant, intractable, unpredictable, paradoxical, absurd, and - unless it's your own ox getting gored - funny?" (Vaill, 1991, p. 77) He advocates a management style of muddling through rather than expecting that a manager can rationally create plans and controls which will then be implemented as planned.

Self-Organizing (2nd header)

One of the assumptions of the command and control management approach is that a primary function of managers is to provide organization and structure to their units. What researchers have discovered in nature is that phenomenon very effectively organize themselves! Clemson calls the self-organizing systems law the first law of systems thinking. This law states, "complex system organize themselves; the characteristic structural and behavioral patterns in a complex system are primarily a result of the interactions among the system parts" (Clemson, 1984, p. 26). Managers often focus on the cause of events (direct causality). The first law leads to the conclusion that "it caused itself." An example of self-organizing is the prolonged applause at events such as concerts which begins as a chaotic roar of noise, but often develops into a synchronized rhythm as people clap, hoping for an encore performance.

Wheatley points out that if order is a natural phenomenon, then organizations get order "for free." (Brown, 1994, p. 21) She suggests that people in organizations will self-organize if the following conditions are met: "people need to be able to bump up against one another, to have access to many more relationships than we usually plan for, to work in an information-rich environment, and to truly understand why [people] are working together and what they are trying to accomplish" (Brown, 1994, p. 21).

Problem-Solving

Russell Ackoff, the noted systems theorist, contends that many of the problem solving approaches used in organizations are not as effective as they could be. He also believes that organizations have overemphasized the concept of problem solving. His argument is similar to that of Senge's designer role for leaders. Senge believes that problems should be prevented by proper design. Ackoff would not argue with that, but would add that when anomalies do occur, they should be managed as part of the regular course of things, rather than having a task force convened, or an employee assigned to work on a particular problem.

According to Ackoff, "this whole way of thinking encourages us to focus attention upon bits and pieces of our organizations and thereby leads us to adopt policies and carry out actions that as often as not make the original situation worse" (Clemson, 1984, p. 171). It is rare in organizations that a problem can be isolated so that a fix can be implemented without also altering something else in the organization. Ackoff advocates "mess management," his term for the continuous balancing and navigating of complex, interrelated messes, rather than problems, that most people in organizations face.

Organization Structure (2nd header)

A group of management experts have proposed that organizations should be structured according to market forces rather than traditional hierarchy. William Halal and others point out that the IBMs and AT&Ts of the world are bigger than most of the countries on earth, comparing revenues with gross domestic product. Yet traditional management theory suggests that these corporations should be managed with centralized controls.

These theorists then ask the question, "How does this approach differ from the central planning that failed so utterly in the Communist bloc?" They argue that what is done in organizations is exactly what communist and socialist countries do in trying to have planned economies. Halal proposes that organizations should establish internal markets. An organization that is set up as an internal market has the organizational units buy and sell from each other just as they would outside vendors. For example, if a division wanted to fill a key management position, it could hire the human resource department to provide counsel, or it could hire an outside firm.

Having internal markets would turn most of the traditional overhead functions in organizations into profit centers. The MIS department, the human resource department, the marketing department, and others would no longer be monopolies, the only place their organization can go for these services. These departments, in turn, will have the freedom to sell their services outside the organization too.

Internal markets offer the same powerful advantages of free markets: myriad opportunities for achievement, liberation from authority, accountability for performance, entrepreneurial freedom, creative innovation, high quality of service, and others. Internal market proponents suggest that "control can be best achieved through freedom; security is increased by accepting risks; structure is enhanced by change; and so on" (Halal, 1993, p. 8).

Statistics in Organizations (2nd header)

H. Richard Priesmeyer, in his book, Organizations and Chaos, makes a compelling case that traditional statistical methods should be supplanted by more useful techniques. Traditional statistical methods used in organizations - the mean, linear regression, totals, and others, were first used more than two hundred years ago. They were developed, and work well, in reductionist, deterministic settings of direct causality. According to Priesmeyer, "only a few people originally conceived that we should compute the mean, mode, and variance; the rest of us have simply followed the piper who taught our college statistics classes. With our new understanding that systems evolve incrementally, why should we not trace their evolution as a trajectory over time? With our number-crunching prowess today, why not consider every observation?" (Priesmeyer, 1992, p. 185). By every observation, Priesmeyer and other chaos theorists advocate that each piece of data is important. They believe that averaging numbers, for example, destroys valuable information.

Most of the traditional statistical measures assume that data points are not related to each other; in other words, they are independent. In an indeterminate universe, subsequent states are affected by the feedback from earlier states. Consequently, the first step in representing the dynamism is to use marginal rather than absolute values. According to Clemson (1982) "it is more useful to know that something is changing and to have some idea of how it's changing than to have a detailed but static picture" (p. 189). In other words, if sales are $10 million one year, and $11 million the next, these are absolute values and the marginal value is a positive one million dollars. Moreover, in nonlinear systems subsequent values are affected by the feedback from earlier values, so the marginal values reflect the direction and flow of the variable of interest. Marginal values show the dynamic evolution of a process and provide insight beyond what can be used in cumulative subtotals, for example. Priesmeyer advocates what he refers to as velocity histories and phase plane trajectories to replace multiple linear regression and other traditional techniques. A discussion of these chaos statistics is beyond the scope of this unit.

REFERENCES

Briggs, J. and F. D. Peat (1989). Turbulent mirror: an illustrated guide to chaos theory and the science of wholeness. New York: Harper and Row.

Brown, T. (1994, April 18). "De-Engineering the corporation." Industry Week. pp. pp. 18-23.

Charan, R. (1991, Sept-Oct). "How networks reshape organizations - for results." Harvard business review. pp. 104-115.

Clemson, B. (1984). Cybernetics: a new management tool. Tunbridge Wells, Kent, England: Abacus House.

Halal, W. E., A. Geranmayeh, & J. Pourdehnad (1993). Internal markets: bringing the power of free enterprise inside your organization. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Lincoln, Y. S., ed. (1985) Organizational theory and inquiry. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications.

Priesmeyer, H. R. (1992). Organizations and chaos: defining the methods of nonlinear management. Westport, CT: Quorum Books.

Vaill, P. B. (1991). Managing as a performing art: new ideas for a world of chaotic change. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Waldrop, M. M. (1992). Complexity: the emerging science at the edge of order and chaos. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Wheatley, M. J. (1992). Leadership and the new science: learning about organization from an orderly universe. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

REVIEW QUESTIONS

1. Consider the children's game of paper, rock, and scissors. Does it represent a hierarchical or heterarchical system? Why?

Heterarchical. No one choice always wins. There is no fixed hierarchy of one option over both of the others. Rock breaks scissors, scissors cuts paper, but surprisingly, paper covers rock.

2. Do doctors generally use reductionist or holistic techniques?

Much research has shown that health is achieved through a combination of mental, emotional, and physical well-being. The medical profession in Western society tends to be reductionist and makes several dichotomies. One is between mental and physical. The psychiatric and psychological fields strive for mental health while basically ignoring the role of the physical body. The other fields strive for physical health while basically ignoring the role of the mind. Interestingly, Eastern medical philosophies have used holistic approaches for thousands of years.

3. Describe some differences between chaos theory and traditional organizational approaches.

Your answer may include, but need not be limited to the following:

Chaos theory believes that only explanation, not prediction is possible. Traditional approaches focus on making predictions. Chaos theory recognizes the importance of the initial condition in a chaotic system. With traditional approaches the initial condition is considered relatively unimportant. Chaos theory focuses on amplifying feedback while traditional approaches focus on compensating feedback.

4. Describe ways in which the command and control model of management differs from emerging management.

Command and control works best in situations where hierarchy is the best structure. Emerging management is based upon examples found in nature. Very few natural examples of command and control exist. Emerging management emphasizes the importance of participation by the workforce in decision-making. The authority figure(s) make decisions in command and control. Command and control focuses on establishing and maintaining order. Emerging management believes that order will naturally occur. Command and control management believes in simplifying complex phenomenon into totals or averages. Emerging management believes that each data point carries important information that shouldn't be lost by totalling or averaging.

5. Why is problem solving a reductionist approach?

Problem solving assumes that anomalies that occur are problems that can be fixed. Problem solving traditionally does not consider first order and second order effects of solutions implemented. Problem solving assumes that a problem can be isolated, and that independent person(s) can focus on solving that problem without considering the system in which the problem is imbedded.

INTEGRATING QUESTIONS

1. Does what Wheatley calls leadership better fit our unit 4 definition of leadership or management?

Leadership. Wheatley's model focuses on vision, values, and beliefs. It is concerned with direction and requires primarily right brain skills. It focuses on effectiveness and fosters mutual respect in teams.

2. In unit 3, we observed that a family is a system. In your own marriage or significant relationship (or that of your parents), is the relationship between spouses hierarchical or heterarchical?

The relationship between spouses in my marriage is heterarchical. It is not a case of "Father Knows Best." Each spouse has particular strengths and interests. In each area of the marriage and family business, the spouse with the strengths or interest provides the leadership and the other spouse acquiesces. For example, I have ultimate authority for deciding which church the family attends and my spouse has ultimate authority for deciding which house we buy. Nearly all decisions, however, are made by consensus based on simultaneous interests and mutual constraints.

SUGGESTED ACTIVITY

Observe your work group for a period of time when the manager is present, and for a period of time when he or she is not. What differences, if any, do you see?

INSERT A

A medium-sized government contractor in the Washington metropolitan area is 20% owned by an individual who is the chairman of the board. The president of the company owns 16% of the organization. The chairman of the company is also employed by the company as the vice president of one of the divisions. Consequently, the chairman, president, and vice president (who is also the same person as the chairman) do not have a traditional hierarchical relationship. Basically, the chairman can't fire the president, and the president can't fire the division vice president. This example is increasingly common in organizations today.

INSERT B

The Future of Emerging Management (1st header)

For many students, reading about emerging management may be like reading an interesting science fiction story - the concepts seem intriguing or far-fetched and perhaps less appropriate for today than some future time. For other students, who may work at MCI, certain parts of Ford Motor Corporation, or other organizations where emerging management is currently practiced, these concepts are familiar. Many of these concepts are new enough that even where they are in practice, the jury is out on whether they will remain in practice for the long term. Organizations may discover that certain management practices that were common at one time, but out of vogue today, may return to former levels of acceptance. In this unit we have presented a set of concepts which are hotly discussed among management and organization experts. Students are invited to perform their own analyses on the merits of these new concepts. Sources in the reference section can provide more detail on the concepts of this unit.