21st CENTURY: TOWARDS A NEW CONCEPT OF ORGANIZATIONS

 


Original article published in catalan on 08/14/2024


Most organizations in the 21st century rely on the knowledge of the people who make them up, so one of the main challenges will be knowledge management. However, knowledge management should not be approached merely from a "classic" perspective—where one or a few people define training and development plans for employees—but from a more comprehensive and holistic view of organizations.

People close to me have likely heard me refer to a quote by Steve Jobs: “It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to do.” Therefore, one of the challenges organizations face is how to design and implement organizational models that encourage the contribution of knowledge from employees. These models must also be flexible enough to facilitate the emergence or construction of the most relevant knowledge at any given moment.

A more comprehensive and holistic view of organizations involves seeing them as complex systems: composed of people but, more importantly, of interactions. It’s important to recognize that, as a complex system, the rules governing it will be more aligned with natural sciences or biology (recursiveness, emergence, self-organization...) than with Newtonian physical laws of cause and effect. Hence, an approach to organizations that is more ecological than mechanistic.

Daniel Innerarity reflects on this in his book “A Theory of Complex Democracy”: “There is a general principle of organizational theory that warns that an increase in environmental uncertainty demands a corresponding increase in system complexity in terms of anticipation and response capacity (Wagensberg, 1985). The internal complexity of the system must be appropriately related to the complexity of the environment (Luhmann, 1970). Complex systems need a correspondingly complex governance architecture for their self-organization.”

The societal model we live in today is different from that of the last century. We can think of concepts such as Modernity or Zygmunt Bauman’s Liquid Society, or Joan Subirats’s Epochal Change. Thus, organizational models, whether in the public or private sector, must adapt and evolve to respond to or create new opportunities within the current societal model.

The perspective, vision, and intuition of those who lead and manage organizations are important for constructing these new models, but they should not be essential for these transformations. From a more systemic viewpoint, the design and implementation of these new models cannot overly depend on one or a few individuals but should rest with the organization itself.

“In the social world, what matters are not individuals, but interactions and their corresponding institutionalization. (...) It is not so much about modifying individual behaviors as it is about properly configuring their interaction, and that is precisely the task we can designate as collective intelligence. (...) We should not expect too much from the virtues of those who make up a complex system or fear too much its vices; what should really concern us is whether its interconnection is well organized, how the rules, processes, and structures that shape this interdependence are set up.” (Daniel Innerarity, 2019)

Thus, we are talking about new organizational models aimed at bringing out the knowledge of the people who are part of them, models that view organizations as complex systems with all their potentials and difficulties. Complex systems that better adapt to the complexity of the world we live in. Models that focus on innovative structures but, above all, on people’s interactions to promote learning, knowledge, and collective intelligence. Models where the focus on individuals designing these new architectures is not a fundamental requirement for their stability. Models that address the challenge of shifting the vision of new structures from one or a few individuals to the organization itself.

“If the first Age of Enlightenment revolved around acquiring knowledge for individual and social progress, the second Age of Enlightenment should aim at a broader level of learning, at the intelligence of organizations and institutions, and at organized forms of collective intelligence.” (Daniel Innerarity, 2019).

Interesting challenges in the conception of organizations in the 21st century, shall we advance?

 

___

Innerarity, D. (2019). A Theory of Complex Democracy. Barcelona: Galaxia Gutenberg.

 


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