Case Study
2020/02/25 SystemsThinkingTO, Gareth Morgan (2006) Images of Organization – Case Study
CC-BY-NC-SA 2020 David Ing
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
The machine
metaphor:
An organization drifting into the mechanistic mode of operation
The organism metaphor:
An organization drifting out of alignment with the challenges of the external environment.
The brain metaphor:
An holographic, team-based, learning organization that is being bureaucratized.
The culture metaphor:
A corporate culture in transition:
The flexible and dynamic essence of the “old Multicom” is being reproduced in Media 2000.
The political
metaphor:
A politicized organization that has factionalized and been transformed in pursuit of the competing interests of the four principals.
The psychic prison metaphor:
An organization that has been shaped by conflicting ideologies of what it means to “get organized” and by unconscious needs to control and reduce uncertainty.
The domination metaphor:
An “white-collar,” “middle-class” organization serving the interests of its clients with all kinds of social impacts.
The flux and transformation metaphor:
An organization drawn two different “attractor patterns,”, one has resulted in the restyled Multicom; the other generated Media 2000. Both organizations are being shaped by autopoietic feedback loops and dialectical negations.
Multicom
Exhibit 11.1 “Reading” Multicom
The Organismic Metaphor
The Holographic
Metaphor
The Culture
Metaphor
The Political
Metaphor
The Psychic Prison
Metaphor
Dominant Frame:
Supporting Frames:
Exhibit 11.4 “Storylines” Prioritize the Insights of Different Metaphors
The Political Metaphor
The Holographic
Metaphor
The Culture
Metaphor
The Psychic Prison
Metaphor
The Organismic
Metaphor
Dominant Frame:
Supporting Frames:
Exhibit 11.5 A “Political” Storyline