Over-Regulation
One of the main issues in an organisation is that which can be called over-regulation. Over-regulation, for a great many issues and people, is unilaterally in favour of common practice and the compliance with rules. This can take different, but completely combinable forms:
• On the social level, the over-regulation expresses itself by the fact that ideas, action potential and the decision-making competences of organisational members hardly play a role. Quite the opposite – they are inhibited and supressed by the over-regulation. In the context of ‘knowledge’ this is even more dramatic when it revolves around pure ‘working’ procedures. The more competences employees have, the greater the demotivation caused by over-regulation. At the same time, too many decisions are centralised, which, accordingly, makes such organisations slow and cumbersome (“I have to first ask about this!”). The organisation becomes de-personalised!
• On the factual level, over-regulated organisations are threatened with not being able to cope with the existing complexity. The solutions are then too simple and cannot meet the facet-rich aspects of the situations (“This case has not been foreseen in our formulas!”) The organisation becomes too simplistic!
• On the temporal level, the organisation is too orientated to the past, i.e. it prevents the perception of other, new futures. The environment is seen in the same way as the standardised regulations foresee it (“It cannot be the case that the customer has a problem with this!”). Routines ignore situations that they are unable to manage. The organisation becomes rigid!