Abstract
This paper considers the nature of the dominant corporate paradigm, its change, failures or successes, and its relationship with the homeostatic organization. There is a popular way of understanding the dynamics of organizational change and that is through the pre-configured sequence of stages in a corporate life-cycle. Through there are a number of competing models for this kind of analysis. In all of them, the sequence of stages is defined by that which configures the life-cycle deterministically. However, there is little discussion given for how these models of organizations shift between stages, and none appear to dominate in the literature. A major criticism of these models is that they do not represent complex organizational processes of change. Therefore, this paper represents an alternative model, called “the paradigm life-cycleâ€, which is connected to the homeostatic processes that maintain an organization, and which is, in principle, capable of generating corporate life-cycles under conditions of complexity.
Highlights
The idea of corporate bodies passing through processes of change goes back at least 100 years, to 1912, with Ludwig von Mises’s work on the theory of money
Drawing on notions of complexity, it has been argued that a generic model referred to as the paradigm cycle can be formulated that is able to generate corporate life cycles
Kuhn was interested in the scientific frame, while our interest lies in the corporate frame
Summary
The idea of corporate bodies passing through processes of change goes back at least 100 years, to 1912, with Ludwig von Mises’s work on the theory of money. The passage occurs through the development of patterns of self-organization that accommodate phenomenal change in the paradigmatic practices and behaviors that paradigm holders pursue This occurs through morphogenesis and new forms of complexity; patterns for long-term evolution towards autonomy; and patterns that lead to systems functioning viably through their capacity to create variety, and respond to, environmental situations with the matching requisite variety (Ashby, 1956), which is required to maintain balance and enable a paradigm (through its carriers) to respond adequately to its environment. The dynamic processes that are associated with autonomous self-organizing systems, and their viable paradigms, are illustrated in Figure 4 (adapted from Schwarz, 1997) It explains the cycle of change for viable paradigms that are able to survive by transforming their natures, initially by developing through normal mode, experiencing uncertainty, and moving into post-normal mode and to metamorphosis. Non-viable paradigms decease, while a viable paradigm will become complexities as it develops more attributes and explanatory power in its theory
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