Organisations as emergent normative personalities: part 1, the concepts

Abstract

Purpose -Modelling the organisation to enable purposeful analysis and diagnosis of its ills is often problematic. This is illustrated by the unconnected non-synergistic plurality of organisational models each of which relates to a particular isolated frame of thought and purpose. A cybernetic approach is adopted to create a generic psychosocial model for the organisation that is used to characterise its emergent normative personality. Organisations are often complex, and seeing them in terms of their normative personality can reduce the complexity and enable a better understanding of their pathologies. This paper seeks to do two things. The first is to show that it is possible to set up a generic model of the organisation as an agency, and the second is to show that this same model can also be represented in the alternative terms of the emergent normative personality. In order to do this, an understanding of what it is that constitutes generic criteria is required. In addition, the paper shall show that organisational and personality theories can be connected generically. One of the consequences of the theory is that the patterns of behaviour which occur in an agency have underlying trait control processes. Design/methodology/approach -A meta-systemic view of the organisation is adopted through knowledge cybernetics that enables more flexibility and formality when viewing organisational models. The paper develops a formal generic model of the organisation that should facilitate the exploration of problem situations both theoretically and empirically. Findings -The outcome of the research formulates the cognitive processes of normative personality as a feasible way of explaining organisations and provide a capacity to analyse and predict the likelihood of their behavioural conduct and misconduct. As an agency trait model, agency explains the socio-cognitive aspects of self-organisation and the efficacy of connections between the traits. These traits control the personality, and inter-trait connections are Piagetian intelligences that orient the traits and work through forms of first-and second-order autopoiesis. The development of a typology of pathologies is also suggested as feasible. Originality/value -There are previous metaphorical notions that link agency with traits. Here, metaphor is extended to produce a formal model for the emergent normative personality. This is the first time that socio-cognitive and trait approaches are formally linked, as it is the fist time that a typology for organisational pathologies is proposed.

Personality, pathology and mindsets: part 1 – agency, personality and mindscapes

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Understanding Corporate Life-Cycles

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“…One discipline that studies these issues systematically is critical discourse analysis, hereafter referred to as CDA (Fairclough 2001, van Dijk 2008. In relation to CDA, sociology, management studies and organizational scholarship also provide in-depth discussions of corporate discourses, with research focuses on corporate strategies, developments and positioning (Groucutt 2006, Bloom & Cedestrom 2009, Yolles et al, 2011. Global brands and corporations are often the research subject, one prime example being the fast food brand McDonald's (Boje 2008, Ritzer 2011) The term "McDonaldization" (Ritzer 1998(Ritzer , 2010 has been established to refer to a wide range of social, Apart from the aforementioned approaches, recent studies in narrative inquiry have made important contributions to the examination of corporate and media discourses (Lightfoot & Daiute 2004, Herman 2009, Clandinin & Huber 2010.…”