If it is important for an organisation to retain what it has done to date, then it needs competences to prevent learning. That which has been proven in the past must not be thrown out in favour of any hype, every fashion, every vested interest or every critic. To preserve stability and to maintain an …
When people, teams or organisations know something and then discover that it is no longer completely correct, then pressure is created not only to learn something new. The question also arises, more or less, whether one is still ‘ok’ ‘within oneself’, when one’s knowledge is ‘incorrect’. (“How could we have been so mistaken?”). Therefore, learning …
When an organisation is occupied with the guiding process handling the past, then it is concerned with the question whether the assessment of current conditions is appropriate. It examines its existing insight (“Customers are like this!”), by reflecting the value of this insight in the present (“Is it possible that customers have changed in their …
In ancient Greek philosophy, experience was understood as the knowledge of the particular (as opposed to general knowledge). Experience has a system when it has a past, i.e. when it can store and remember. Thus, habits are created and presumably, usual practice (“This is how the world is!” = Shopping works like this, or this …
Those who know, don’t learn. Organisations that know, don’t either! Therefore, knowledge reduces irritation competence, because one has answers and believes one can avoid questions (“Could it not also be different?”). The impetus for learning is uncertainty! This is why, in dynamic and changing environments, the most important feature is not knowledge, but the ability …
The guiding process handling the past is always activated when an organisation is exposed to an irritation. Like all systems, an organisation can be irritated when it is able to be responsive to an environmental irritation. Because of the responsiveness, the organisation must react by varying their processes (“Carry on like this or change?”), then …
Game theory has now produced an almost unmanageable variety of approaches, which are utilised and promoted by conflict research, cooperation research, negotiation theories, behaviour theories and competition theories. Interestingly, the mainstream of the variants applies conditions which are inapplicable for everyday (manageable numbers of ‘players’ and ‘rules’, finite time for the ‘game’, rational approaches of …
What are the mechanisms which influence the interest of people, teams and organisations towards cooperation? The place for this question in system theory is that all and everyone must be able to handle the imponderability of the environment. Each system requires a sufficiently stable environment to create its own stability. As each system has other …
Competition orientation, as opposed to cooperation orientation, means the decision or the decision-making pattern in which a system focuses on itself and ranks the linking with its environment as secondary. This can be observed in people, teams and organisations. Under which circumstances is this orientation activated, or developed? Every system is dependent upon its environment. …
One hand washes the other – this is a well-known saying about this organisational aspect of handling the present. Beyond the formal processes, organisations preserve their flexibility and readiness for unusual situations by the provision of a type of parallel currency: those holding roles and functions allow scope for decisions and actions by ‘not being …