Images of organisations

Introduction – What is it about?

You can't kiss organisations. That's what it means when you want to emphasise that they are ideas, nothing literally tangible.

• Organisations are not (only) the peoplewho „work in“ them as „members“, because they can change, be replaced or simply die without the organisation having to go under with them. This can easily be seen in countries.
• Organisations are also not (only) the legal contracts and constructionsthat give them legal recognition, rights and obligations. A look at the informal regulations and cultures makes this clear and anyone who has ever implemented, accompanied or experienced a change project knows this fact.
• Organisations are also not (only) the machines and the buildings as well as the office, warehouse and production halls whose postal addresses guide postmen and women, employees and visitors to the organisation. In the digital age at the latest, there is hardly any doubt about this.

This blog post also deals with the following not with what organisations are, but what they can be in and according to the imagination of peoplehow they show themselves to those, how they are experienced by those – and, to keep it short at this point: How organisations are imagined by people and thereby and what mutual interactions are created as a result.

For organisations are – this can be objectively formulated – a creative invention of man, a creation that comes about solely through communication and cooperation between people, even if in the end only one person or no person at all is a member of the organisation, but this is nevertheless recognised by others as an existing bearer of rights and duties.

As early as the 1980s Gareth Morgan be Standard work "Images of the organisation" which has become a classic of organisational theory and management literature. In it, he approaches the phenomenon of organisation from many different angles and highlights its advantages and disadvantages. He was guided by the following basic ideas.

• Gareth Morgan researched and taught mainly in the 1980s and 1990s and thus in the early heyday of change, which was characterised by the „decline of organised modernity“ and the emergence of digital technologies and networks. CHANGE became a big issue in organisations everywhere and was accompanied by an enormous boom in the consulting industry. Change managers were practically born here! Morgan wanted to provide them with useful knowledge about change processes, familiarise them with the task, mode of action and function of change management and make them aware of development patterns that emerge in change processes.
• Morgan was convinced that for management, but also for the consulting of organisations, it is crucial to have as many perspectives as possible and as long as possible consciously and readily available. He saw access to this diversity of perspectives not in the perspectives of functional roles (top, bottom), but in the imagined images of the people involved, which could ultimately be traced back to a few standard mechanical, biological and psychological images.
• Above all, it is important that an image and metaphor are by no means sufficient for an appropriate analysis and a practical understanding of the organisational situation or problem. This is because exposing the advantages of a metaphor causes its disadvantages to disappear into obscurity. For example, the description of a start-up as „fast as a singer“ can quickly misjudge the fact that it often stumbles like a foal. The assertiveness of a lion hardly suggests that it hardly uses its ears, even though it has two of them – and only one large mouth. Recognising through metaphors also leads to misunderstanding.
• It is therefore important to work with as many metaphors as possible and to ask about them in each case,
  • what can be seen with the metaphor
  • what is thereby overlooked
  • and how these findings relate to other metaphor findings
  • and only after this sounding out and interpretation mechanism have been completed can decisions and organisational paths be decided upon.

Many of the following ideas can therefore be traced back to G. Morgan.

There is also a podcast episode on the topic of this blog post with the experienced organisational consultant Christian Rieckmann.

1 - Machine

The organisation as a mechanistic structure and its linear processes

Even today, we still think of large organisations initially in terms of their organisational structure (organisation chart) and their arrow-directed processes. Each position has (as far as possible) a task that is logically upstream of another position and its task. Everything that is required to manufacture and distribute a product is "broken down" to the individual action and can be assigned to (personnel) positions - and the organisation builds itself according to this logic, can be formulated de facto on the drawing board. The organisation is conceived as a machine that requires an input and produces an output through well-structured work steps. Quite simply. Quite logically.

This image of organisations corresponds to the desires and ideas of so-called "organised modernity", which spread in the first third of the 20th century not only in Western liberal democracies (Fordism, Taylorism), but also in the production ideas of National Socialism (Volksbetriebe, Volkswagen) and state communism (Kombinatswesen). The individual becomes a "cogwheel" if he or she is not completely "under the wheels" anyway. In the image of the organisation as a machine, the field of tension with people becomes particularly clear.

Features:

• Clear, hierarchical organisation chart that mostly resembles a pyramid.
• Breakdown of all activities down to the individual hand movements, logical-mechanical process structures, mechanistic structure,
• Cogwheel idea as the inner workings of the organisation
• Historical role models: state bureaucracy and church administration
• Objective: division of labour, standardisation, specialisation, routine, efficiency, reliability.

What is illuminated?

• The aim of the organisers is to produce effectively and efficiently in stable environments.
• Clear role contracts and assignment of tasks (limitation of freedom for security; personal responsibility for relinquishing responsibility)
• Capitalistically motivated, industrial mode of production
• Wage labour, i.e. the sale of time and labour in return for financial remuneration with elements of security
• Wage labourer is reduced as a cogwheel to a single function (assembly line work)

What is faded out?

• Environments are rarely stable, but require adjustments, which this mental image does not invite (constantly changing the organisation chart is annoying!)
• Mechanistically structured organisations quickly become rigid, which is demonstrated by the fact that established rules quickly become outdated, but must be adhered to for their own sake.
• The human being as a cogwheel is worn out.
• In organisations whose jobs do not require simple routine activities, the mechanistic view of the organisation comes under pressure

Practical benefits for counselling, coaching and mediation

The organisational picture of a machine helps consultants to clarify the basic structures and relationships between the organisation and individual members, can illustrate the exchange relationship including tasks and responsibilities - also graphically - and offers a good starting point for (self-)clarification processes in coaching or mediation.

The mechanistic understanding of the organisation and thus also of the relationships between the individual persons within it serves as an introduction to further reflection on what problem and conflict resolution can be about.

Your experiences, other ideas and suggestions?
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2 - Organism

The organisation as a living organism that wants to live

Even the hard-nosed Taylorists and Fordists admit that the image of a machine can in no way explain the observable phenomena in the context of an organisation. From the Monday outlier to the question of the legality of love affairs in the organisation and their effects, it quickly becomes clear that inadequacies cannot be remedied in the organisation chart.

The idea that the organisation resembles or at least resembles a living organism is, of course, older than the industrial enterprises of organised modernity. One of the best-known images of this is Thomas Hobbes' image of the state, which he described as Leviathan, the cosmic sea monster from Jewish mythology, part snake, crocodile, catfish and dragon.

What is illuminated?

• The image illuminates the living, not completely predictable aspect of organisations. In this way, working creatures are attributed a role in what is called organisation.
• The contextual nature of organisations also becomes clear: Connections to the environment require adaptation processes and create coordination dynamics.
• Organisations can be divided into species and genera, so that the organism image itself promotes diversity of organisational images.
• The context also includes human needs, so that motivational requirements follow rhythms and cannot be fully synchronised.

Musicians say that rhythm is to life as the beat is to death.

• Innovation then no longer appears merely as a quest for efficiency, but as a consequence of the will to grow.

What is faded out?

• The image of an organisation as an organism tempts us to see it as a living entity: But organisations cannot be kissed - they are social constructs, created from communicated and corresponding ideas.
• The organism metaphor also tempts us to transfer concepts of health and illness to organisations, although this is somewhat different for social constructs than for living beings.
• In addition, the image leads people to believe that developments can be defined as "natural". This is not far removed from social Darwinist interpretations and sometimes justifications for certain, painful behaviours.

Practical benefits for counselling, coaching and mediation

• Organisation is defined by processes, which are mostly, but always, communication processes.
• Even if the image has led us to define (and treat) conflicts as cancers, the image is still able to explain the need for change more clearly than the image of a machine. Organisms have to adapt to their environment - through their own changes.

Your experiences, other ideas and suggestions?
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3 - Brain

The organisation as a neurobiological marvel 

The findings of recent decades on the structure and functioning of the brain have inspired many disciplines, but apart from the computer sciences, hardly more than the organisational sciences. Imagining organisations as brains and transferring supposed or barely verified laws in the brain to the challenges of organisations is an equally striking and daring interpretation approach of our time. The ideas of self-organisation and individual responsibilities in responsibility networks all stem from the transformed idea that organisations "function" in a similar way to our brains.

• Although data and information processing takes place through (communication) streams, perception and interpretation processes are self-organised. The part stands for the whole (pars pro toto).

What is illuminated?

• The image invites us to understand innovations as learning processes that cannot be (completely) planned, but must ultimately remain open, although the environment (of the brain) must be shaped.
• In line with the way our brains work, harmful influences must also be prevented in organisations and learning processes must be initiated but always remain open(er) as a result. Learning is a process of self-organisation and self-responsibility. Everyone is responsible for this.
• This also leads to the idea of the entrepreneur within the company, the "Ich-AG", the entrepreneurial self, which was reflected in concepts such as indirect leadership.
• With regard to new technologies, these can be presented as more connectable, as they are merely new "data sensors" whose "inputs" must be recorded and processed independently.
• Environmental complexity can be tackled with greater agility. Brains are not programmed to stand still like machines.

What is faded out?

• Self-organisation is an ideal for organisations as long as the economic results are right.
• Moreover, self-organisation cannot be achieved: Power, authority and interests also work against it.
• The mental image of the brain is very presuppositional and ultimately abstract: it is not universally compatible and therefore not suitable for the majority, 
• Sometimes it resembles wishful thinking, organisations are experienced differently by the majority.

Practical benefits for counselling, coaching and mediation

• Feedback and negative feedback are learning processes (double-loop learning)
• Conflicts can also be interpreted as feedback processes in this respect
• Conflicts are practically like learning programmes that have to be completed in order to reach the next level.
• This image can be used to emphasise the diversity of perspectives and thus reality.

We don't work in the same company. You work in the company you imagine and I work in the one I imagine. 

Your experiences, other ideas and suggestions?
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4 - Culture

The organisation as an expression of identity

Organisations are homes, form identity and also lay claim to it. They are themselves culturally determined phenomena that are interpreted as an expression of developmental stages.

Today, this image has enormous appeal and repulsion.

What is illuminated?

• The picture illuminates organisational phenomena as ritual cultural assets. What used to be the imperative of rationality is now a cultural asset and cult rite.
• The picture invites magical and enchanting interpretations. The rational ground is abandoned and free interpretations of symbols are established. For example, symbolic management can be explained as a culturally conditioned expectation.
• Organisations indicate stages of social development, societies are said to be on the right path and are "anchored"; are we still an industrialised country or are we already digitalised? Are we a service and information society or are we sleeping through these developments because they do not fit in with our identity (proverbial German customer friendliness?!).
• It also becomes clear how and why organisations create and demand identity and thus form mini- and elite societies (Siemensians), trade unions create counter-culture - by the same means.

What is faded out?

• The cultural image ignores the moment of personal choice, which is expressed contractually. Organisational membership is not innate, but is chosen for a limited period of time and under certain conditions.
• In addition, the idea of culture is always accompanied by the danger of interpreting good and bad culture.
• It is not uncommon for the misconception to arise that culture can be rationally influenced and shaped (but possibly shaped by mechanistic or neurobiological concepts).

Practical benefits for counselling, coaching and mediation

• Conflicts can be dealt with as cultural conflicts, so that pure interest in being different is required - or the battle for cultural sovereignty/leading culture is at hand.
• International organisations can be interpreted as lighthouse projects of interculturality.

Your experiences, other ideas and suggestions?
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5 - Gathering of people

The organisation as the defendant

If you want to understand the concept of an organisation as a gathering of people, then the great Leipzig law professor, pandect lawyer and commission member for the Civil Code of 1900 Bernhard Windscheid (born 1817-Düsseldorf; died 1892-Leipzig) may, albeit strangely, be able to help. Windscheid had been instrumental in carving out a purely substantive legal claim from the Roman legal action formula (Actio) and distinguishing it from formal procedural requirements. In short, formulating § 194 para. 1 BGB, which still applies today: "...The right to demand an act or omission from another..." is the legal definition of a claim. And anyone who mocks the idea of entitlement today or considers their own claims to be completely self-evident and worthy of judicial confirmation is standing on the shoulders of Bernhard Windscheid when he loudly declares his claim to be justified, correct and therefore lawful.

In the image of the organisation as a gathering of people, this attitude of entitlement is activated more than in any other image of organisations. The organisation is not seen first and foremost as a danger, threat or risk, but as an opponent from which the individual or even several individuals can demand something; ...that the organisation does or refrains from doing something, but always on behalf of and for individuals. The organisation itself has no rights, but only the duty to do everything for the people (members?). Because that is, according to the idea, the purpose of organisations. They serve the people, have to increase their happiness and satisfaction - or they have to disappear.

Here, in this conception of organisations, there is actually no entity organisation at all, but only people, who are all at the centre - and organisations appear at best as an expression of this humanistic ideal.

PS: This has little to do with Bernhard Windscheid, but a lot to do with a sense of entitlement.

What is illuminated?

• This concept emphasises the visible and intuitive, especially in affluent societies in which people can freely choose their membership in organisations (including those for the preservation of livelihoods, e.g. wage labour) and change at any time: Organisations have to justify and increase the satisfaction, happiness and thus also the meaning of human action and activity.
• Organisations have to support people in their individual development, turn to them and consider them in their full complexity.
• People have a right to organisational attention, to be approached and asked by the organisation.
• People, it is emphasised, want to work and spend their lives in such organisations because they can develop them there - with the support of the organisation.

What is faded out?

• The fact that organisations are often founded by people who are not interested in the happiness of others is ignored. Organisations often have a different purpose than placing members at the centre of their goals and activities.
• However, even member-focused organisations can be abused, instrumentalised and exploited for the interests of individuals and in opposition to others. This can lead to "purges". The boundary of those entitled to membership is then drawn on the basis of "membership".
• It is also misunderstood that organisations themselves pursue interests and goals that do not place the individual, let alone members, at the centre.
• In the blind spot of this image, the organisation itself always appears as a potential danger, precisely because claims are only made against it.

And of course, sooner or later Robert F. Kennedy and his inaugural speech come to mind:

"And so, my fellow Americans:

Do not askwhat your Country can do for you - askswhat you need for your Country can do.

Practical benefits for counselling, coaching and mediation

The image helps to formulate confronting, i.e. contradictory questions, to relativise exaggerated claims and to categorise disappointments. Just as in team mediation, mutual relationship claims sometimes have to be clarified and renegotiated (ability to work, professional cooperation is sufficient, no friendship is needed; you don't have to be eleven friends, but a professional team), in organisational mediation, claim relationships between employees and the organisation also have to be renegotiated, and space has to be given to expectations and disappointments.

The knowledge of such an image, from which positions and interests can be derived, often helps to understand the needs and hopes of organisational members.

Your experiences, other ideas and suggestions?
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6 - Political system

The organisation as a processor of interests

In this conception, organisations are the playgrounds and playgrounds of interests that are generated, processed, sometimes negotiated, but usually powerfully enforced. The organisation as a process unit controls these flows of interests and is controlled by them. In these ways, various approaches to power can be realised in organisations.

• autocratic ("This is how we do it!"),
• bureaucratic ("We have to do it this way!"),
• technocratic ("This is the best way to do it!"),
• Democratic ("How do we do this?")

For the political organisation of the state, the Greek historian Polybios describes this cycle of constitutions of state organisations centuries ago, and even today there is hardly anything to add to its clarity.

And even today, these politicising imaginations are invoked in business organisations, e.g. in the call for "strong guys" in a crisis or that the best thing to do is for them to take the helm or whatever... these ideas are not bad per se and can also solve specific problems, but never without creating new ones. There's no need to fool yourself.

What is illuminated?

• This concept emphasises that conflicts - even in organisations - are conflicts of interest and as such are normal and unavoidable. Dealing with these conflicts alone is important.
• Politics, political tactics, strategic positioning - these are all tangible realities in organisations. 
• And such policies in organisations destroy the myth of rationality and explain that function and efficiency are not always the reason for certain processes and decisions in organisations.

What is faded out?

• The fact that such policies are normal and unavoidable is sometimes ignored; instead, it is falsely argued that this or that decision is politically motivated, wrong and inadequate.
• Sometimes - paradoxically - a psychology of suspicion arises that always assumes something different behind every decision than what has been announced. 
• This image of organisations promotes feelings and impressions that there are only winners, losers and disinterested people in organisations.

Practical benefits for counselling, coaching and mediation

In coaching and mediation, this image enables certain processes and decisions that are interpreted as outrageous and impossible to be put into a new perspective, the existence of "non-rational decisions" to be rationalised and incomprehensible and therefore escalating phenomena to be presented in a larger picture. The image alone is no proof of correctness, which as a coach or mediator you can hardly attest to or support anyway, but it does help to specifically coordinate the appropriate intervention, generate questions and provide food for thought. For this reason, it is also helpful to visualise your own ideas in this regard and, if necessary, to "reconcile" them.

Your experiences, other ideas and suggestions?
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7 - Psychological prison

The organisation as jailer.

The organisation appears as an entity that was created by humans, but ultimately opposes them.

People get caught up in the nets they have woven themselves.

The organisation can appear here as a family substitute as well as a manipulating octopus that "creates" the self-captivation of self-thinking beings by disinforming and brainwashing them. Plato's allegory of the cave is the inspiration here from the very beginning. This image always has an effect when people begin to settle into their (quite unfortunate) situation and want to cover it with a veil of immutability. This is even the case when the situation is not unfortunate at all, but highly pleasing because it is successful. However, this success can also lull us into a sense of lulling and invite us to rest, which then slips into a deep sleep and threatens to prevent us from waking up in time.

What is illuminated?

• This image is a good way of explaining both the dynamics of change and resistance.
• Organisations appear somehow human by presenting themselves as mental prisons; they ultimately lack rationality.

What is faded out?

• By shedding light on the irrational, human side of organisations, it hides the organisational ratio, the purposefulness, which in principle prevails independently of individual people.
• The image invites regret, to slide down into all the unfulfilled wishes of childhood in the context of the family and to reproduce this feeling. The organisation is thus made responsible for the early childhood of its members.

Practical benefits for counselling, coaching and mediation

The image makes it understandable why people feel trapped, but even more so how people allow themselves to be trapped. This - sometimes psychologically based - longing for a sense of home and security can enable empathy and pave the way for a constructive approach.

Your experiences, other ideas and suggestions?
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8 - Flow and change

The organisation as a fluid, intangible entity

Years ago...well, now I have to say decades ago, there was a postcard as part of Berlin's city marketing with the slogan "Never be, always become". A prime example of mentally anchoring the organisation (=the social system) Berlin as (in) flux and change.

The conceptual image does not allow many contours to emerge, but instead forces images that primarily justify changes, developments, tendencies and room for manoeuvre. It generally makes the intangible appear welcome and positive, without, strangely enough, directly and confrontationally opposing tradition. Change itself can present itself as tradition. But this remains vague and nebulous.

The idea of an organisation as a flow and change "captures" the complexity of social systems, but also paves the way for incomprehensibility in the sense of a depressing arbitrariness.

Nobody steps into the same river twice. (Heraclitus)

What is illuminated?

• Change and transformation are presented as "logical" and the time between birth and death, between start and end, is presented as a time in which not only time simply passes, but also that which lives in it. There may be magic in every beginning, but there is also the beginning of death. And even in dying, becoming is revealed. Andre Gide sends his regards.
• This illuminates yet another aspect. Just as modern man began to observe the passing of time and "discovered" the future through the historical sciences (Lucian Hölscher), which turned out to be shapeable precisely because of this, the image of organisations as a river and change also leads to being able to shape this process of dying and becoming. We may not be able to step into the same river twice, but that does not mean that this river flows independently of us; its flow is also subject to our powers.

What is faded out?

• The idea and realisation that with time not only they, but everything passes away, becomes an ideal of innovation (and killing). Change itself becomes an ideal and an ideology and stands for itself, positive and right.
• People make sense of the things around them and the things that happen. However, this only means that they sort and interpret the perceived changes in retrospect and give them meaning retrospectively, hardly ever in the forecast. This is not necessarily the case.
• The realisation that change also occurs when things want to be preserved does not discredit conservatism any more than the progressive desire to change things that are currently right per se.

Practical benefits for counselling, coaching and mediation

We are currently experiencing a similarly one-sided dynamic with the concept of innovation as we once did with change. First one change, then two, then overlapping and finally permanent change. Change as a saviour was almost over, then innovation came along as a lucky charm.

But apart from the ideological excesses that are attached to these terms, these images can have a motivating effect and focus on the essentials: Do you want to stand by - or be a part of the change, a shaping part? Especially in conflict situations, this image can evoke or at least focus the necessary energy in those involved, which then allows them to take action.

Your experiences, other ideas and suggestions?
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9 - Instrument of power

The organisation as an individual tool

The image highlights the fact that organisations exist because people want to exercise power (or have power exercised over them). The individual striving for power and dominance, e.g. to achieve security, develops into the striving for dominance of companies and states.

What is illuminated?

• The image puts a finger in the wound of organisational self-image: by no means all organisations exist for the benefit of people, and certainly not always. But even those organisations are powerful and in danger of doing evil.
• Even the good and well-intentioned sometimes exploit members or clients, suppliers, etc. The church does not have a good reputation as an employer, nor do trade unions, the police and other expert organisations.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

What is faded out?

• By focussing on power, the conception appears both reductionist and deterministic - as if evil were an inevitable consequence of power. For it remains significant that organisations need power in order to be effective.
• Paradoxically, the idea and criticism of the power of organisations leads us to believe that power is an attribute that could be divested under other circumstances, through other decisions, etc. The focus on power of and in organisations leads us to believe that things could or should work without power.

Practical benefits for counselling, coaching and mediation

Especially in escalated conflicts, in which powerlessness and interdependencies spread, the power of others begins to be demonised; then the opponents have an unjustified amount of power and you only have "modest possibilities". Power becomes evil and people fail to recognise that crises and conflicts are also about becoming powerful (yourself) again and no longer defining yourself as a powerless victim.

Your experiences, other ideas and suggestions?
Head to the comments column...thanks!