Comparing Wheatley's Leadership And The New Science
560 Words3 Pages
Which two of the metaphors read so far in the Morgan book do you think best describe an organization led by the new science as delineated by Wheatley? In the book Leadership and the New Science Margaret Wheatley describes the benefits of the self-organizing system and how new developments in the sciences show us how to design a new, more effective organizational structure. This structure is more responsive to human needs allowing an organization to be more flexible and easily adapt to an ever-changing environment. Wheatley explains that in order for organizations to succeed in the future they need to eliminate the mechanistic models of the organization. She emphasizes that organizations are not machines to be controlled and regulated through policies and procedures. Wheatley compares organizations with biology, quantum physics and chaos theory and believes that organizations are living organisms that, when given plenty of trust and freedom, with inspiring leadership can easily adapt to changing times, unlike a…show more content… When information flows freely throughout the organization it creates an energy source with a self-renewing system allowing the energy to feed back on itself to create new structure and solutions to a changing system ~ essentially, adapting. Wheatley's self-organizing metaphor is similar to Gareth Morgan's metaphor “Organization as an Organism” in which he states organism are seeking to adapt and survive in a changing environment and therefore work like living organisms who are concerned with survival. When organizations are open to changes they are better able to respond to the employees needs, making work more meaningful and getting people more involved in their jobs. Wheatley goes on to explain that a second fundamental process of a self-organizing system is that of self-reference and when the environment changes it is important that it remains consistent with itself.. Strong self-identity is important and a