This document provides an overview of several organizational theories including system theory, Weick's theory of organizing, Luhmann's social systems theory, and evolutionary psychology. It discusses key concepts in system theory like wholeness, hierarchy, openness, and feedback. Weick's theory focuses on equivocality reduction and sensemaking. Luhmann examines social systems as communication and the role of episodes, stability, and change. Evolutionary psychology proposes that human behavior is influenced by innate mechanisms adapted through evolution.

1. Chapter 5
Organizational Theory: Metaphors of
Biology

2. A System Theory
• System Concepts
• Influence in Organizational Communication
• System Theory, Complexity, and Chaos

3. System Concepts
• Wholeness – Interrelated/Interdependent
• Hierarchy - Structured
• Openness - Open
• Feedback -

4. Wholeness
• A system is a set of elements bound together
in interdependent relationships
• Wholeness means that the effects of
elements working in a relationship to one
another differs from the effect of their
isolated, individual actions taken collectively
• Synergy: The whole is greater than the sum
of its parts

5. Hierarchy
• Elements (people) are organized into
subsystems
• Subsystems (work groups, departments,
divisions) are related to one another to form the
system (entire organization)
• The system itself operates within a larger
environment
• Division of Labor
• Unity of Command
• Unity of Direction

6. Openness
• Systems may be regarded as relatively open or
closed
• Open systems are characterized by active
exchange with their outside environment
• Organizations are open systems that take in
energy and materials (input), transform this input
in some way (throughout), then return products
and by-products of throughput to the
environment (output)

7. Feedback
• Open systems are characterized by two basic
processes
– Maintenance processes are regulatory. They keep
certain system conditions within acceptable
ranges
– Adaptive processes bring about change and
growth
• Both of these processes depend on feedback
responses to system actions that provide
information for use in adjusting system conditions

8. Feedback
• Negative Feedback: indicates
deviations from desired conditions. The
system adjusts by correcting the
deviation.
• Positive Feedback: reinforces
deviations rather than signaling for a
correction. This form of feedback is the
basis for change and adaptation.

9. System Theory: Influence on
Organizational Communication
All of the human processes that define an
organization arise from communication
• Relationships among organizational members
are defined through communication
• Linkages and interactions among subsystems
depend on communication and information
flow
• All feedback processes involve
communication

10. System Theory,
Complexity, and Chaos
• Living systems such as organizations are
quite complex, occasionally orderly, but
generally turbulent and very difficult to
predict
• The only certainty is uncertainty
• Unpredictability is predictable
• Do not impose false order on turbulence
• Understand turbulence as turbulence

11. Weick’s Theory of
Organizing
• Equivocality Reduction
• Fundamental Propositions
• The Evolutionary Metaphor
• Communication as Sense-Making

12. Equivocality Reduction
• Information is equivocal when it can be
given different interpretations because it
is ambiguous, conflicted, obscure, or
introduces an element of uncertainty
into the situation
• Equivocality reduction involves using
communication strategies to reduce
uncertainty so you may act

13. Equivocality Reduction
How do crises activate the process of
equivocality reduction?
• Natural Disasters: floods, tornadoes
• Corporate Crises: financial scandal

14. Fundamental Propositions
• Where environmental inputs (information)
have little equivocality, organizations can rely
heavily on rules to guide their responses
• As equivocality increases, organizations are
less able to rely on rules and more
communicative effort is required to respond to
it

15. Fundamental Propositions
• Communication strategy to reduce
equivocality
– Interlocked behavior cycle consisting of a
double-interact
– Person A says something to B, B replies to
A, and A provides an adjustment response
(e.g., confirmation, request for clarification,
etc.)

16. The Evolutionary
Metaphor
• In Darwin’s theory of evolution, the members
of a species exhibit variations in their makeup
• Some genetic variations turn out to be more
adaptive than others helping organisms to
survive
• Adaptive traits are selected for continuation
and eventually retained as characteristics of
the species

17. The Evolutionary
Metaphor
“The most advantageous variations are
selected by the cultural group for use and
retained as functional attributes of the cultural
group. Weick borrows this three-stage model
of adaptation [variation, selection, and
retention of behaviors] modifying it to the
three phases of organizing: enactment,
selection, and retention” (Kreps, 1990)

18. The Evolutionary
Metaphor
The idea of enactment in Weick’s theory means
that humans do not just passively respond to
conditions in the environment. We attend
actively to the environment and selectively
interpret it, recognizing the level of
equivocality in the information that we have.

19. Retrospective Sense-
Making
• Organizational behavior is no so much rational
as it is rationalized
• What if intentions and motives do not really exist
prior to action?
• What if they are only accounts that we construct
to explain our behavior after we have done it?
• Retrospective sense making means that we
construct interpretations of organizational
experiences and actions by reflecting on them

20. Luhmann’s Social
Systems Theory
• Systems as Communication
• Stability, Change, and Episodes
• Communications and Decision
Contingencies

21. Systems as
Communications
• Social systems are not comprised of persons
and actions but of communications
• Communication is a social operation, which
cannot be reduced to individual actions
• What is important about the social system is
not the individual utterance, but the
understanding produced from the interactions
of two or more parties

22. Systems as
Communications
• Communications are not produced by individual
actors; they are produced by the communication
process
• A social system can be understood only in terms
of its communication system because
communications themselves determine what
further communications occur
• In other words, the communication system is
self-sustaining

23. Episodes, Stability, and
Change
• An episode is a sequence of communications
with a beginning and an end and it is
recognized by the structure of its
communications
• Structure involves the conditions that define
what is possible in the episode at its beginning,
end, and between these two markers
• Structure in this sense both constrains and
enables communication

24. Episodes, Stability, and
Change
• The sequences of communications can be
replicated over and over or reproduced
across a wide range of situations within a
system. This is stability.
• Reproduction is not just about stability. It is
also about change. Communication systems
generate mutations, then select and retain
those mutations that are adaptive.

25. Communications and
Decision Contingencies
• Decisions involve choices among alternatives
• Decisions involve contingencies - things that
could happen, but are not certain to happen
• Decisions are always contingent in the sense
that we picked one alternative, but we could
have picked another

26. Communications and
Decision Contingencies
• In social contexts we cannot really communicate
decisions without also communicating rejected
alternatives
• Decisions, rather than eliminating contingencies,
generate new ones, always opening up new
possibilities to decide upon

27. Evolutionary Psychology
Nature versus Nurture Dichotomy
• Is behavior biologically determined (nature)?
• Is behavior socially acquired (nurture)?
Evolutionary Psychology
• Why do we have to choose between nature and
nurture?
• May human behavior be explained by an interaction
between environment and biology within an
evolutionary framework?

28. Evolutionary Psychology
• Human behavior, and by extension culture,
are influenced by innate psychological
mechanisms that evolved into their present
form during the Pleistocene Epoch, which
ended over 10,000 years ago
• The brain is a collection of domain-general
and domain-specific mechanisms adapted
through evolution to handle the problems
confronted by early human beings

29. Evolutionary Psychology
Adaptive Mechanisms proposed in Evolutionary
Psychology relevant to organizations:
• Primitive emotional contagion, where the emotional
state of one individual is evoked among nearby
individuals through a process of automatic
subconscious mimicry
• Reciprocal altruism, the performance of unselfish
acts for the benefit of others with some expectation
that the recipients will return the favor in the future

30. Evolutionary Psychology
Adaptive Mechanisms proposed in Evolutionary
Psychology relevant to organizations:
• Preference for similarity, the tendency to prefer
association with others who are similar to us
• Sensitivity to prestige hierarchies, showing deference
to more valuable group members and accepting
preferential access for those members to desirable
resources