So, how can all these elements from social structure, technology, participants, goals, and environment, how

can these five kinds of elements work together as a system? Fortunately, we can fall back upon Richard Scott's work again. In his review of organizational research, he not only identified organizational elements, elements but he also described how theories in different eras focused on certain organizational elements over others, and characterized their arrangement in certain patterns. In short, he recognized three classes of organizational theory. The earliest class of theories regarded organizations as rational systems. Here, the theories characterize an organization as a collectivity oriented toward the pursuit of specific goals and whose behavior exhibited a formalized structure. These theories tended to focus on the administrative units of organizations and their process of rational decision making. But, ensuing class of organizational theories characterize organizations as natural systems. Here, the theories, related an organization as a collectivity, whose participants pursued multiple interests. Mm-hm. Often forged in conflict and consensus, but who recognized the value of perpetuating the organization as an important resource. So, the organization wants to survive, for example, and needs to have kind of this, this natural system coordination. In a natural system, the coordination is unplanned, emergent, and coalitions team to, seem to matter. The informal structure of relations that develop among participants is more influential in guiding behavior than the formal structures, role expectations, and guiding principles. So, this class of theories is regarded an organization as an adaptive organism, and therefore it's called kind of a natural system. Most recently, organizational theorists have come to characterize organizations as open systems. Here, organizations are conjuries of interdependent flows and activities linking shifting coalitions of participants embedded in wider and

material resource and institutional environments. This class of theory focuses more on the environment than any other organizational feature. So, let's review what we've covered. Here, in this table that I'm going to present to you there is a lot of text, and I apologize for that. But, I think it's important to see the landscape of these different theories. The first thing to consider with each of these theories is the unit of analysis. And, when we look at rational systems, we see that there are single organization or administrative unit, or typically, the theory regards them as such. When we look at the natural system, we see that, again, it's looking at a single organization. But, it tends to view the organization as more of an organic system with different parts, and divisions, or even a coalition, a shifting coalition. It's contingent, the organization, in many regards. Then finally, with an open system, we see that it's, it's a larger construct altogether of multiple organizations, even an organizational field, say, of biotechnology. Now, if we look at the elements again that have been covered in this, this lecture so far, we see them as actors, social structure, goals, technologies and tasks, and environment. And if we follow each of them down the actual columns, we see that the actors in a rational system are leaders or an organization as a, a single unit. Its social structure tends to be formal and planned, and hierarchical. The goals are specific missions with clear objectives, and the technology or task is, of this is standard operating procedures that are, that have followed maximization in decision trees, right? So, they're rational ways of taking inputs and, and changing them into outputs. And then, finally, the environment is, is, is mostly ignored. These are early organizational theories, In the second column, we see natural systems. And here, we see participants as those in multiple roles and in the direct environment someone. The social structure is informal and emergent. So, here, the external kind of seeps in

and norms enter. But, it's really the informal organization that matters more, the emergent relationships and coordination that it, that people adapt and use in that context. Matter more, say, than the formally prescribed ones which people may actually even ignore. The goals in a, in a natural system tend to be multiple. We don't just have one clear one. There tend to be multiple ones, and some of them even conflict. The tasks are, kind of, sometimes less planned, they have contingent decisions, and unintended outcomes of, kind of, organizational processes where things kind of, end up somewhere else than planned. And finally, the environment has kind of a minor role here. It's, it's relevant but it, it, it doesn't have the full-blown role that we'll see with an open system view. So, the third column gives us the open system perspective. And here, the actors kind of expanded everything, kind of expanded to the point where stakeholders, employees, and even mass consumers matter for an organization. We see in a social structure an external world that permeates the internal organization beliefs outside enter. The firm wants to, to match what the external environment wants, like a school of education wants to perform the kinds of tasks or have the kinds of relationships that the external world believes it should have. And then, the goals, the survival, and legitimacy of a firm in an environment is what, is, is more important here. The actual internal working, the technological core of an organization is less important in an open system. There's more of an environmental determinance of where you can even have the appearance of, of performing tasks that seem legitimate. But, they, they just have to seem legitimate as opposed to per se, actually, perform a product all the time as said. So, and the final thing is that the environment here is the major role. So, the internal organization is dampened often in terms of relevance with an open system view. Mostly, because here the organizations were worried about managing the environment. So, here are these three different

perspectives. And, Scott kind of affords us. Now, one could argue that these theories reflect the organizations of their day. So, for example, rational systems reflected organizations at the turn of the twentieth century. And then, natural in the mid twentieth century, and now open today. But, I'm not sure that's the case. Most organizations still entail all these features and the processes that rational, natural, and open system perspectives entail. Another view might be that organizational theories expanded their focus as our understanding of firms and instrumental social groups grew. All these features were likely there, and perhaps, shifted some in salience. But, to this day, rational, natural, and open system qualities persist in many organizations. And, part of me kinda wonders if we've just grown better at acquiring information and data on these organizations so that we can more and more see processes that pertain to these multiple kinds of system views. And, as we'll see with, with the lectures on say, the Alison case that's forthcoming in this course, that sometimes these multiple perspectives can afford a more holistic or complementary understanding of a phenomenon that makes us even better as an analyst and as a manager.