March, James G. , The future, disposable organizations and the rigidities of imagination, Organization(articles on organizaitonal futures), volume 2 (3/4) 427-440 Sage

Environmental Volatility and Uncertainty

The rate of environmental change seems to have accelerated, and organizations of the future will face higher environmental volatility. p. 428 More change happens within the lifetime of an individual or an organization.

Global Linkages

The networks of associations cross political boundaries these days. The movement of ideas and cultural products is global. There are more and more international firms and governmental associations.

Information Technology

The computer has changed the technological context of modern organizations. Information technologies affect the capabilities for coordination and control and learning. It changes the cost and benefits of alternative organizational structures.

Knowledge-Based Competition

Survial is more tied to access to knowledge than access to material resources or markets. The traditions of free-exchange of science are changing to traditions of science as private property. The appropriation of knowledge requires awareness, access, and capabilty to use it. Organizations who fall behind in competence may not be able to benefit from new information. p. 429

Organizations have to invest in "knowledge inventories" to have the right info available when they need it. These inventories have tradeoffs between long and short-term returns. Research and education have become more important the individual and organizational experience. The comparative advantage of the individual organization as a sustained accumulator of experiential knowledge has declined. p. 430

Political Uncertainty

Western democracies are having trouble balancing demands for more services and less taxes. There is discontent with the nation-state and hints that it is declining in importance. There is loss of control and more international interdependencies. Ethnic and religious groups have also claimed their autonomous standing.

These have weakened the buffers that protect organizations from volatility. Organizations have less response time available. There are fewer protections against competitors.

Organizational Adaptation

Environments do change organizations, though inefficiently. Increases in global connectedness and info technology may be leading to non-hierarchical organizations for coordination. There may also be less emphasis on learning by doing and more on accessing existing information.

Modern organizational theory believes that this chaning world will favor more adaptable organizations. Exploitation is about short-term improvements, close coordination, tightening slack. It involves the pursuit of legitimacy. They refine capabilities, reduce costs, and adopt standard procedures. These include re-engineering, down-sizing, and total quality management.

Exploration is about new ideas, new paradigms etc. It thrives of serendipity risk-taking, and novelty. It's rewards are usually slow in coming and focused on the long term. It is stimulated by failure or by excess slack.

Adaptiveness requires both exploration and exploitation. But the dynamics of learning tend to destroy the needed balance between the two. p. 432. The "failure trap" causes organizations to continually search and fail without exploiting their search long enough to realize the benefits. The "sucess trap" causes an organization to focus too much on exploitation.

Thus both exploitation and exploration are required for adaptiveness, but each interferes with the other.

Disposable Organizations

It appears the increased environmental volatility is to demand more flexibility and change which invites more exploration and experimentation and a long-term focus. But the current responses of organizations has been more exploitation and short-term perspectives. p. 433

But one way to resolve this imbalance is to extend the perspective beyond individual organizations to the social system in which they are a part. Then as in population ecology exploration is less a function of individual organizations but of populations of organizations. Populations of organizations adapt through selection among non-adaptive, efficient, and legitimate organizations, retaining those that match the current environment and discarding those that do not. p. 434

This creates the conception of the future of disposable organizations with high short-term efficiency but only modest adaptive durability. Organizationally variety is maintained at the population level. A highly efficient organization is maintained until it is dysfunctional in the changed environment -- then it is discarded and another rigid organization is formed. Within a skeleton of a corporation there will be ad hoc construction of project groups or collaborations linked by constantly changing hierarchical networks.

But there are complications in fitting such a system into the current social context. Current social systems rely upon the stability of workforces. Individuals who are disadvantaged in such a new system will seek political redress. The vision of disposability may be at odds with existing morality and social order. p. 435

The other issue is that the disposable organizations may have a hard time focusing on short-term efficiencies and will try to escape the rigidities that are essential for the disposable organization. Also it will be difficult to ensure an adequate supply of mutant organizatons that differ from existing ones. Infant organizational structures have to be protected in their infancies from pressure to mimic existing successful organizations.

The imagination of possible futures is a source of new experiments and different ways of thinking and acting. Imagination also insulates exploratory ideas from a hostile environment. New forms and practices need to be buffered from learning what is technically efficient. Short-term feedback may restrict development of the new idea until it can be separated from the"noise".

In this new ere of disposable organizations the problem is not flexibity but stability. Creating new ideas willr require illustions and conservation of belief inthe face of failure, communities of irrational commitment, and adequate social and economic capital to endure through adolescence. p. 436

Rigidity of existing forms will be assured because of the propensity to exploit current expertise through learning. Thus the rigidities produced by learning are reinforced by rigidities produced from imagination. In business a business plan is a form of fantasy that insulates new ideas from abandonment prematurely.

The perils and glories of imagination

Predicting the future is tough. Imaginations of possible organizations serve to nuture the uncritical commitment needed for sustained rigidity in a selective environment. In this view the primary role of imagination is to protect new ideas from disconfirmation. Imagination is not likely to be more correct, but it is more lucid and compelling.

Clarity of vision protects deviant imaginations from the disconfirmations of experience and knowledge. p. 437 Within this shell craziness is protected long enough to elaborate it's challenge to orthodoxy.

Of course, there is much to be viewed as unjust ina system that sustains imaginative madness at the individual organizational level in order to allow a larger system to choose among alternative insanities. Most of the fantastical imaginations for individual organizations are disasterous. The benefits move to the system as a whole.