Wanted: A unified theory of how organizations work

Enviado por Niels Pflaeging el Jue, 12/03/2009 - 20:12.

A quote from management theorist Elliot Jaques and an extension of it I found somewhere.

“Management is in the same state today that the natural sciences were in during the 17th century” —
before the discovery of the circulation of the blood.

In other words, there are barber surgeons everywhere, applying leeches and creating theories out of their limited experience and saying, “Well, you know, the leech worked; the company improved. This must be the right way.” And then the next time, the company fails, but the barber surgeon argues that this was an idiosyncratic case; the leech still works.

One could believe that this kind of multiplicity of thinking is the way that human nature, human sciences, and social sciences have to operate. Or one could believe we just haven’t gotten to the circulation of the blood yet. We don’t yet have the unified field theory of knowing how organizations work. And maybe it’s around the corner, or maybe we just don’t have the microscope that can allow us to see it.

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by Niels Pflaeging - 12/03/2009 - 20:18

...is the BetaCodex just that theory?

Dear all,

I think we have made a big step towards approaching a "unified theory of the organization" and towards how to properly explain it, when we started working on organizational cell structure design with our clients, from 2007 on.
Gebhard Borck and I became rather thrilled by the insights we gained from cell structure design at two client firms, at the beginning of 2008, and we have been thinking about the implications of transforming organizations of all types to this design ever since.

We believe the consequences are indeed mind-boggling, and we also think that these papers are among the most innovative, far-stretching and provocative we have produced so far.

Our implementation work and scientific research on networked cell design has led us to write two exclusive white papers.
The first was published in October 2008 ("Turn your company outside-in!", part 1, http://www.betacodex.org/node/389) and the second part a couple of weeks later: Read it here: http://www.betacodex.org/node/390

This 2-part-paper represents a new approach in our white paper series, because it describes two consulting case studies in detail and derives conclusions for transformation from them.

I hope you will enjoy reading (and commenting) it! Please write a feedback here.
If you wish to apply cell structure design in your organization, and if you have roughly between 30 and 500.000 employees, then please let me know! ;-)

Regards, Niels