Complexity and Management

The industrial age was based on Newtonian science. This includes organizational and management theory which were a direct outgrowth of the Newtonian paradigm.

The Information age is based on a revolution in science. These articles introduce the connection between complexity science, organizations and management.


Complexity and Organizations

Complexity and Management

The Learning Organization

The Information Age needs a new kind of organization. Bureaucracy was the child of the Industrial Age. But this information age calls for a different approach.

Please consider the following article for a good introduction the history of this movement.

The Learing Organization

The Organization Age

Modern organizations evolved in a particular environment; they came into being to address specific problems. What does a Prussian military general, the rise of the railroad, and a meat packing plant have to do with modern organizations.

The following article shows how the conditions in the 19th century led to our modern understanding of organizations.

The Organization Age

The Information Age

We have witnessed radical change since the 1960's. We have lived through times of explosive, and exponential growth of information and technology. Not just technology but many areas have experienced dramatic, revolutionary and ever accelerating change. Our society and institutions are in shock as a result. Alvin Toffler refered to it as "Future Shock", when he wrote about this coming wave of change in the early 1970's. In the "Third Wave", and then in "Power Shift", Toffler further develops his thoughts on the information age and its effects.

It is said that there has been as much knowledge created from 1965 to 1995, than in the preceeding 5000 years. That amount is said to double every 2 and 1/2 years.

The Information Age is also a Knowledge Age and a Network Age. The computer, and explosive growth in information technologies, has brought with it massive amounts of new information and connected it together through global networks of people and machines.

Consider the following link describing the The Information Age.

What is a Paradigm?

What is a paradigm?

A paradigm is a pattern of thought, a world view. Thoughts about the way the world is, about how things should behave. It explains the world for us, it tells us how the world should behave. It tells us what is real.

To speak of a business paradigm or a politcal or economic paradigm is misleading. A paradigm is really a Paradigm with a capital P. That is, it is a set of ideas that apply to all areas of the culture at once, not just one part of it. It is an integrated set of ideas.

The dominant paradigm of the last three hundred years was born with the Scientific Revolution of the 17th Century and has been the foundation of the modern world. This view sees all the world as a giant machine. The clock was the preferred metaphor.

Mechanistic science became the basis for understanding all that could be understood. This is the science of parts in motion and the laws that govern their motion.

The laws of nature, discovered by the astronomers and physicists of the 17th century were in the 18th century extended to the laws of human nature, the laws of society, of economics, of government. This mechanistic paradigm was extended to every area of thought and culture and has become the largely unconscious guide to our actions and our understanding.

Classical organizational theory was likewise based on this mechanical, or Newtonian, paradigm. Bureaucracy is a child of the scientific revoltion of the 17th century, and it worked well in the Industrial age.

But we are now in an information age and this has radically altered the landscape. The information age calls for a new organizational model.

Here is an interesting link to New Paradigm Consultants, which is not affiliated with this blog, except in spirit. New Paradigm Consultants