MPA 8002
Organization Theory

PowerPoint Presentation:

SCENARIO BUILDING

In an important work entitled Metaphors We Live By, Lakoff and Johnson (1980) assert an intriguing notion, namely, that human thought processes are largely metaphorical. That is, the ways in which human beings describe organizations do not reveal objective truth about the organizational reality. Instead, attempts to describe entities like organizations convey more so how human beings experience and understand organizations in terms of how these people experience and understand things that are not organizations (Grant & Oswick, 1996).

In this sense, organizations are what Weick (1979) calls "enacted" realities.  What people call an "organization" emerges from a reiterated, continuous, evolutionary process of interaction through which people develop all sorts of theories about what organizations really are. But, these theories are veritable only because people have said so, not because a theory accurate describes reality. What human beings strive to accomplish when they describe organizations, then, is to reduce the equivocality of meanings to one which makes "sense," given one's idiosyncratic experience and constructed meanings.

Working with this abstract notion a bit, some organizational theorists have invoked the metaphor of "theater" to describe organizations (Starratt, 1993; Turner, 1974a,b). If, indeed, the organization can be understood as high drama―perhaps like a Puccini opera―organizational analysis might begin with a critical examination of the stage upon which the drama is enacted. One might also inquire: What is the role of the stage? Who is (or are) the actor(s)? How do these people present themselves and interact on stage and what does this mean in terms of human interactions in daily life (Goffman, 1959, 1967)? In view of the responses to these questions, one might also analyze the drama’s plot, setting, theme, character, and conflict. The organizational metaphor depicting the organization as theater conveys how humans experience dramas and, then, use this experience to explain and legitimate organizational processes.

Other organizational theorists have invoked the metaphor of "organism" to convey how they understand organizations (Hannan & Freeman, 1977; Lawrence & Lorsch, 1967). Steeping their analysis in general systems theory, these theorists liken organizations to living systems which respond and adapt to their environments in order to survive. Just as human beings are organisms which adapt to their environments, or perhaps, are selected by nature, or even, adapt to subtle patterns within the environment, so too, organizational theorists have posited that organizations are best understood through contingency theory, natural selection theory, and the theory of organizational ecology. Viewed from the perspectives provided by these theories, successful management and leadership is a matter of boundary spanning in order to understand the organizational environment so that the people in organizations can engage in "organizational learning" to solve problems (Senge, 1990a,b).

The central concept to grasp here is that, while metaphors allow managers and leaders to understand organizations in terms of how people experience other things, metaphorical conceptions also veil other organizational realities. That is, metaphorical analysis of an organization provide only a partial, not total, view; otherwise, what an organization is would have to be the metaphor itself, not merely be understood in terms of it.  As noted previously, an organization can be understood to be like a theater or like an organism. That is what the metaphor allows. But, it would be foolish to say that an organization is a theater or an organism (and vice-versa) because human beings know that organizations and theaters as well as organisms are very different things.

What Lakoff and Johnson (1980) posit, then, is that the factual truth about any entity (and in this instance, an organization) is always relative to a conceptual system defined in large part by a metaphor. Any account of how a metaphorical description of an organization is veritable is only to the degree the description reveals the way in which the alleged truth is dependent upon human understanding. And, since the essence of a metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another, these authors argue that metaphors influence and condition how humans experience and act upon what they describe as an organization.

In light of the power of metaphors to shape how people view organizations, the problem managers and leaders must confront, then, is first and foremost an intellectual problem.  That is, to make inquiry into organizational reality, managers/leaders must allow dichotomous thinking and diverse interpretations—the stuff of metaphors—to compete with one another as manager/leaders puzzle through the complex reality that is the organization.

Cognitive complexity revisited...

"Cognitive complexity" may be defined as "the intellectual ability of a manager or leader to envision the organization from multiple and competing perspectives so as to develop a depth of organizational understanding that is at least equal to the factors impacting its functioning." Without doubt, engaging in this intellectual work is not easy. But, then, why are so many managers/leaders so easily seduced into the believing that it should be easy?

Organization theory suggests that successful management/leadership is not so much attributable to human behavior―a manager's or leader's decisions and actions―as it is attributable to the way a manager/leader complicates his understanding about the organization by using different frames, images, and metaphors to provide guidance about what might be done when confronting organizational problems. This intellectual activity is what Morgan (1986) calls "conceptual pluralism."

Bolman and Deal (1997) suggest that managers/leaders complicate their understanding about how organizations function by using four "frames."  For example, when a manager/leader confronts a problem, she might use the structural frame to think about how the organization’s structure and environment influence the premises on which members of the organization make choices. This individual might also consider the human resources frame to expand her understanding about human motivation, that is, to understand humans are complex creatures and can adapt, but not infinitely so. The political frame, which suggests that resources are scarce and because of this competition will ensue, helps a manager/leader to understand how power and politics will not disappear and cannot be ignored. Lastly, in order to help members of an organization develop a deeper appreciation for the meaning and purpose of their work, the symbolic frame can help a manager/leader puzzle through the series of assumptions, beliefs, and values which construct the organizational reality. Taken together, these frames provide multiple insights into the organization as a system of interrelated and interdependent parts.

The use of multiple frames, images, and metaphors not only complicates how managers and leaders think about organizational development but also unlocks the human creative potential and critical thinking ability to develop new ways for organizing because managers and leaders now consider alternative viewpoints (Bolman & Deal, 1997). Knowing that no single frame, image, or metaphor is consistently more effective than another, successful managers and leaders are adept at using multiple frames, images, and metaphors to develop alternative scenarios about how to approach organizational problems. These scenarios provide vistas for managers and leaders to puzzle through solutions as well as to identify possibilities and capacities which might otherwise have gone unnoticed. As managers and leaders use multiple scenarios to complicate how they understand the organizational reality, they can define an agenda, build a cooperative network, and use that network to get things done.

Notice, too, the use of the metaphor "vista" in the preceding paragraph which implies that managers and leaders can stand back, survey, contemplate, analyze, review, and develop a "larger view" or a "bigger picture" of organizational functioning.  What those managers and leaders can do with the ideas generated by surveying the vista that is their organization is to envision an organizational change plan that is attentive to the complexities that are part and parcel of their organization.

In light of this analysis, management and leadership might be defined as a thought process, a form of cognitive complexity, through which managers and leaders make decisions about what ought to be, given the organizational reality they are confronting. The organizational reality is clarified by developing a more complicated understanding about what is transpiring within the organizational system.

A three-step approach to scenario building...

The belief that much of the work of successful management/leadership practice is directly attributable to what successful managers and leaders do (that is, how they implement the skills provided by various theories of practice) is a powerful and seductive ideology. This belief seduces women and men into thinking that learning about these skills and techniques and implementing them in the workplace will infallibly solve the problems that seem to keep cropping up as they do in all organizations, from the simplest family unit to the complex multi-national corporation.  This belief also seduces women and men into thinking that one's powerlessness in resolving organizational problems stems from a manager's or leader's inadequacy rather than questioning the relevance of one's theories in actual practice episodes (Sergiovanni, 1986).

In contrast to this belief, it is likely that much of the work of successful management and leadership practice does not involve simply implementing Bolman and Deal's (1997) four-frame approach, Morgan's (1986) metaphorical "images of organization," or the approaches proffered by variously theoretical models (e.g., Barnard, 1938/1961; Etzioni, 1975; Herzberg, Mausner, & Snyderman, 1959/1993; Simon, 1945/1997). Instead, successful management and leadership practice has to do with a using a set of refined cognitive skills, namely, the intellectual skills that enable managers and leaders to "read" organizational realities for what they are, to consider how these realities can be managed/led and, as Aristotle (1958) notes, to decide what is the right thing to do, to the right person, in the right way, and at the right time.

This concept of management/leadership practice assumes that the manager/leader is inquiring into a human organizational system rather than a technical-rational system (Taylor, 1911). Human organizations systems are characterized by interacting, interrelating, and ever-changing parts as well as permeable boundaries. They are capable of negative entropy and are hierarchically organized. These organizations are more than the sum of their individual parts; they attempt to maintain equilibrium and they adapt to threats and turbulence through feedback loops. Human organizational systems are rather messy and untidy affairs, if only because people and their lives are constantly in flux.

What managers and leaders are really looking for, then, is a means to integrate the frames, images, and metaphors depicting organizational reality. Their challenge is to develop an organizational "portrait" rather than merely to rely upon individual "snapshots" of the organizational reality.

To the neophyte manager/leader, developing an organizational portrait might seem to be unduly complicating matters. But, by so doing, managers and leaders are attempting to discover the organization's complexity. In order to achieve this objective, they need to invoke a plurality of concepts that can describe the organization’s rich context. To develop an integrative human organizational system, managers and leaders need to utilize the positive attributes each frame, image, and metaphor highlights and to limit the potential deficits inherent in each.

To analyze a human organizational system, then, Bolman and Deal (1997) suggest utilizing a three-step approach. The first step involves producing a diagnostic reading. To achieve this objective, the authors suggest utilizing as many frames, images, and metaphors as possible to identify and highlight the key aspects of the organizational reality. As a critic, the manager/leader must also be aware of the fact that each metaphor also hides certain relevant aspects.

Once a diagnostic reading has been produced, organizational analysis proceeds to a second step. At this level, the critic evaluates critically the significance of each of the different interpretations produced by the different metaphors. By intellectually pitting each frame, image, and metaphor against the other, a storyline emerges that describes and defines the basic problem(s) confronting the organization. However, rather than producing a neat description of the problem(s), this critical evaluation produces competing explanations of the organizational reality. What is at work at this second level is the development within the manager's/leader's mind of a complex understanding about how the individual parts of the organization integrate and collide within the organizational system.

The third step of organizational analysis involves prescribing a remedy for the issues of concern to the human organization. The mode of understanding provided by the diagnostic reading and critical evaluation prescribes a mode of action. At this level, the frames, images, and metaphors begin to inform action and to shape the analysis. Further, they delimit the prescription in accord with the particular image of the organization provided by the frames, images, and metaphors used.

The goal of inculcating conceptual pluralism and cognitive complexity as well as engaging scenario building is to liberate managers and leaders from psychic prisons, those narrow, frustrating, self-made intellectual jail cells where individuals cling to unitary vantages in order to explain organizational reality by simplifying it to fit one's worldview (Morgan, 1986). Unfortunately for their organizations and the people in them, these managers and leaders see what they know. However, when freed from these self-chosen psychic prisons of unitary perspectives and diagnoses through conceptual pluralism and cognitive complexity, managers and leaders can become more imaginative and creative because they understand organizational functioning. That is, these managers and leaders know what they see.

Ultimately, these women and men―armed with cognitive complexity and the skills and techniques of best practice―will manage and lead their organizations to achieve their goals by uniting people, technology, and process in a more efficient and effective human way.

References

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