Chaotic Essence inside the Organizational Reality

Chaotic Essence inside the Organizational Reality

Ulas Cakar, Ozan Nadir Alakavuklar
Copyright: © 2015 |Pages: 17
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-8468-3.ch066
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Abstract

In the chaotic reality of the human civilizations, organizations were always seen as bastions of order. Even in the extreme cases of organizations that sought to bring chaos and confusion, their purpose was generally to clear the present situation and bring a new order. Except the cases of some extreme sects and marginal crime organizations, almost all organizations strive to bring their own existential definitions of order. In this process, management has been the tool of bringing order to organization. Even though modern management is a relatively new concept, all through the history the elements of management such as superior-subordinate relation, persuasion, direction, and administration were seen (Starbuck, 2003; Wren, 2004). But underneath the idealistic goal of bringing order, all organizations are suffering from the chaotic essence that is in their midst. In the organizational theory literature, this chaotic essence is either ignored or it is treated as a problem of good implementation of managerial control. And this problem has been treated in a surprisingly linear way whereas non-linearity of the organizational reality is not considered.
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Background

In order to discuss all this development and growth in management and organization studies, first, we have to examine the mythical roots of the chaotic essence considering its relation with the human history. Whilst present belief in the orderly nature of the organization is a myth of the modern times, on the other hand it has so deep roots. Study of the myth and analysis of the myth is crucial in the human process of understanding and giving meaning to the world surrounding us (Berger & Luckmann, 1967; Bowles, 1997); hence we need to examine this deep mythical root. Creation myths all around the world is concentrated on the issue of the primordial state, the chaotic essence before the universe comes into being. Then the god or a god-like entity comes and tames this chaos and brings an order to the existence of the universe. But forces of chaos are always at the edge of the universe. That is why it may be argued that this struggle is an endless fight of good and evil. But when we look deeper, we see the forces of good are representing the order and evil forces are always trying to overthrow the order of the universe. Then we can ask why this mythical beginning is so important? It is important because the concept of chaos can’t be just defined in terms of a mathematical evaluation or can’t be reduced to a simplistic implementation of chaos theory to the management field of which are the main approaches in the literature. Therefore, primarily we have to digest the essence. Chaos is a state of existence for the organizations, it can’t be subdued. It is not possible to define it in a reductionist way (Çakar & Alakavuklar, 2011).

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