Absconding vociferously: Rumours about the disturbing disappearance of organizations
Jens Aderhold, Martin-Luther-University of Halle-Wittenberg
Ralf Wetzel, Chemnitz University of Technology
Political parties run the destruction of their public legitimization, unions and church organizations loose dramatic shares of their members and business organizations ruin their own markets through drastic cost-cutting and profit-blowing strategies. Schools suddenly need social work to be pedagogically effective. Police and army organizations are helplessly outrun from wakeful networks of terror-sleepers. That list could be lengthened effortlessly.
The astonishing point here is the strange behaviour of the organisation in the face of that ‚crisis’. It radicalizes and polemicizes its public appearance: Enterprises guarantee at least a double-digit yield return, parties proclaim drastic reduction of unemployment, governments force the development of atomic weapons and nursing organizations train a ‚humane terminal care’.
That behaviour seems to have something to do with the changing capability of performing classical organizational functions. Previously, people could work in organizations, (execution of inclusion) make career (execution of address-building and performance realization) and organizations were the place to decide (coordination of collective action).
Apparently, organizations withdraw exactly from these functions: People work noticeably in project and network constellations, they make career in markets and co-operations and the place of decision was dislocated into complex systems of negotiation. That means: The most important issues of and for organization happen beyond organizational responsibility and even accessibility.
The organization seems to register that change and react in a strange, unexpected way. They behave brawly and produce attention in the moment of weakness. Evidently, we face a short-termed strategy of “error-correction” (Luhmann) here, which is ‘blind’ for the form of organizational functionality, which should be treated according to long-run-relations.
Is the organization already beyond its future and did already realize that? Could it be imaginable, that the organization fabricates promising ‚silhouette targets’, backdrops, in whose shadows it can abscond clandestine and incognito?
Therefore, the first question which has to be raised is that of assumed reasons. Could it be possible, that the organization is overstrained with the problems of uncertainty-absorption, it was originally famous for? A large part of organizational effectiveness stemmed out of the modus of indifference-regulation. Actually, we could observe a tremendous change in indifference management within organizations. On the one hand, we experience a shrinkage of the “zone of indifference” (Luhmann), in which the relevance of the organizational member rises up close to idiosyncrasy, which confronts the organization with a new challenge of what to select and to regulate that decision. On the other hand, we face a strange enlargement of the zone of indifference. But it’s not the organizational member anymore which is framed with indifference, this time – it is society. Organizations concentrate on identity (not on difference anymore), and oppress their functional observation of society. In tackling these parallel and antipodal developments, organizations loose their ‘ability’ to meet societal needs. Does society therefore discharge its organization while they ‚forget’ their functions?
That raises further questions about the perspective ‚chance of survival’ of the organization and equivalents regarding the classic functions. Which instances could take over the production of decision and performance exchange?
The paper introduces some empirical vignettes, sketches some appropriate theoretical description and risks a look into the future of organizations.