It is very important for organisations that their members have the psychological ability as a person not to confuse themselves with their role. Only in this way can they produce the role-appropriate behaviour. He who thinks that as a boss he is a better person than his employees, or that, because he is the boss, …
How do organisations motivate people to take on membership? With regard to psychological motivation, the meta-theoretical link always involves the regulation of needs: people do something because needs can be satisfied, or because uncomfortable feelings (fears) disappear, and they don’t do something, because the satisfying of needs is difficult or impossible, or because uncomfortable feelings …
Careers develop. They write a story, i.e. they cannot be planned and are, therefore, particularly interesting for meta-theoretical considerations about organisational dynamics. If you look closely, you can see that career is shaped and regulated in all three sense dimensions. In the factual dimension, careers compete for limited positions. The higher the hierarchy, the scarcer …
What are the consequences for organisations, when they assign to or (rather) expect decisions to be made by one person (see hierarchy and decision-making). This is because every person is overtaxed with organisational decisions. Nobody can maintain an overview about what flows into ‘their’ decision (and what does not), what others are deciding at the …
Structural coupling is, system-theoretically, the substitute theory for causality. As no person can think in the head of another, it must be explained how people (=psychological systems) influence each other, or how they can even be in connection. The explanation of system theory is that the systems alternatively make their ‘complexity’ available to each other. …
It makes a difference if you occasionally meet in a loose round or whether you have been married for forty years. Equally, whether you haggle your way as a freelancer from contract to contract, or whether you are an official in the customs office, does too. The more ‘firmly’ two systems are coupled together, the …
One particularly interesting phenomenon for understanding organisations and to identify dysfunction, are so-called ‘Conflicting Targets’ (=contradictory expectations or goal requirement for a responsible person, team or organisational unit). Here is one popular example: A call centre is being measured by the Sales Director about customer satisfaction, and the Finance Director is measuring the cost of …
Classical organisational theory sees organisations as structures which are orientated towards a purpose, which should reach their goal with effective use of funds. This interpretation projects a technical, mechanically-thinking construct onto organisations. If this viewpoint were completely wrong, it would not have sustained itself for such a long time. Out of this, the role and …
Empowerment has become one of the many fashionable concepts in ‘modern’ management. This concept has substance, however, if one follows the questions which are raised within its orbit. What forms can organisations develop in order to usefully link or decouple the fullness of their decisions, to charge them sufficiently with agreement or with possibilities of …
How do organisations stabilise themselves? Like all systems they must ensure repeatability. Formal rules are an important method for this. As one can officially rely on formal rules, predictable (=stable) decisions are established. How extensive this (documented) regulation of an organisation is, how it is documented, through which media it works, how these rules are …