Bridge to the Next Lesson

 

As we have already seen, although the "Blueprint" metaphor [Structuralist Theories] gives us important insights into organizations, the lens is inadequate by itself to really help us understand and problem-solve in our organizations. Structuralists tend to overlook the environmental factors and think of organization as in a "closed system". Structuralists also tend to over-concentrate on structure at the expense of functioning, focusing on "how" we organize production, not "what and why" we produce. Some of these weaknesses are addressed by a group of theorists we examine in the previous unit known as the "Systems Theorists". Systems theorists tended to think about organizations in terms of life-cycles, and processes. This lens encourages us to consider how organizations work over time and how the organization grows and interacts with its broader super-systems of other organizations., much like examining a living organisms growing and interacting with a broader eco-system. While providing valuable additional insights beyond the structuralist into organizational functioning, the systems theories are inadequate by themselves because such theories tend to overlook the human factor - the social and interpersonal dynamics of human organizations.

It is this "human factor" that our third lens, the "Culture Theorists" incorporate into their analysis of organizational life.