Crossroads—Spontaneous Organizational Reconfiguration: A Historical Example Based on Xenophon's Anabasis

Abstract

This paper examines an ancient historical event that has profound implications regarding the role of organizational culture in facilitating spontaneous organizational reconfiguration. Xenophon's Anabasis documents the successful retreat of a Greek army trapped in Persia in a setting that is comparable to the hypercompetition of today. Spontaneous reconfiguration is seen here to be a vital survival element in hypercompetitive environments, past and present. As a result, a historical case is used as a time-bridge to reveal the importance of rapid and substantive organizational redesign when confronting highly competitive and quickly shifting environments. The Anabasis is also used to animate several of Gareth Morgan's (Morgan, G. 1986. Images of Organization. Sage Publications, Newbury Park.) metaphors. In particular, metaphors pertaining to a biological organism, the brain, and culture are used to parallel the Greek emphasis on body, mind, and spirit. While Xenophon's army is depicted here in terms of being an organic, biological organism, as well as a brain with holographic properties, it is culture that emerges as the truly defining metaphor. The Greek supraculture appears to have played a vital role in facilitating nearly instantaneous organizational restructuring. This was a culture that emphasized an integrative balance between the ethic of community and individuality. Such redesigning properties were essential for an isolated, leaderless army which faced a variety of hostile competitors, rapidly shifting environmental conditions, and starvation. The culture metaphor enables us to see how widely shared values and beliefs can facilitate an organic type of behavioral programming capable of enabling Xenophon's army to transcend the formal attributes of organizational structure. Ultimately, it was culture, not strategy, qualitative and informal properties, not well defined roles and structures, that produced the Greek success. Contemporary organizations that attempt to become more horizontally focused, team oriented, and process driven are adopting a paradigm that is now 2,400 years old. Toynbee would not be surprised: What light have we that we can project upon the darkness of the future? We have the precious light of experience, which has always been Mankind's guide to action in public, as in private affairs. No sensible person, of course, has ever imagined that a mechanical application of past experience to present problems will grind out automatic solutions of these. Experience gives us enigmatic hints, not blueprinted instructions. Yet these hints are invaluable, since they are the only light on the future that we can bring to bear, and where the future that is in question is a society's not an individual's the experience of other societies has the same significance for us as the experience of our contemporaries and our elders is the ordering of our personal lives (Toynbee [Toynbee, A. J. 1953. Greek Civilization and Character. Mentor, New York.], p. xii)