Primary Function
The conditions needed for an organisation to form, is the existence of a problem for which it establishes itself as a solution. It needs a function in the environment: providing credit to other organisations, providing bread rolls for hungry organisms, ensuring the defence of a nation, or building cars for a mobile society. This function of theirs is, of course, not chiselled in stone, but rather a decision whose suitability will be checked. This ‘check’ is carried out by both (!) sides.
The organisation checks if this function ensures survival in the appropriate environment. Do you still need banks, bakeries, armies or cars? Are you paid (enough) for this function? Likewise, the environment checks if the organisation has appropriately fulfilled the function: Can it acquire money more cheaply from another bank? Would it not rather eat healthy fruit? Does it really need the expensive federal defence in these days of cyber warfare? Is the car not too polluting to continue driving it? As long as the primary function remains, the process of organising can unfold and is shaped by means of decisions about the individual guiding processes. Should the primary function fall into a crisis, this fundamentally influences the entire guiding process, and, with it, the ‘entire’ organisation. Then the organisation must find another function, beef up the old one or end it. In all three variants, the pattern changes in all guiding processes.