Organizations as Environment

Echoing the work of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a great Catholic thinker, Gareth Morgan writes about the holistic way to view organizations.

“Many biologists now believe that it is the whole ecosystem that evolves and that the process of evolution can really be understood only at the level of the total ecology. This has important implications because it suggests that organisms do not evolve by adapting to environmental changes or as a result of these changes selecting the organisms that are to survive. Rather, it suggests that evolution is always evolution of a pattern of relations embracing organisms and their environments. It is the pattern, not just the separate units comprising this pattern, that evolves. Or as Kenneth Boulding has put it, evolution involves the “survival of the fitting,” not just the survival of the fittest.

“Organizations and their environments are engaged in a pattern of cocreation, where each produces the other. Just as in nature, where the environment of an organism is composed of other organisms, organizational environments are in large measure composed of other organizations. Once we recognize this, it becomes clear that organizations are, in principle, able to influence the nature of their environment. They can play an active role in shaping their future, especially when acting in concert with other organizations. Environments then become in some measure negotiated environments rather than independent external forces.” (Morgan, G. (1998). Images of Organization: The Executive Edition. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers. (p. 61)