Observing organisations: the use of identity and structural archetypes

Abstract

This paper aims at increasing our ability to observe and diagnose shortcomings in the management of complexity in organisations. People by and large manage organisational complexity intuitively and of course in the process they make more or less costly mistakes. These failures tend to be archetypical in the sense that they are relational patterns that recur in many organisations. Their observation facilitates diagnosing organisational identity and structural shortcomings. The danger is the temptation to converge too quickly into diagnostic points, thus stifling necessary appreciative processes. Hence, the paper finishes with a critical reflection about their use. Stafford Beer's Viable System Model (VSM) is used as a reference model to observe these archetypes.