Organizational Chaos Research Articles

Christopher John Mead, 1940–2003

On 16 January 2003 British ornithology lost one of its best known voices and one of its most enthusiastic communicators to the general public of the results of bird research. Chris Mead was also always full of fresh and novel ideas for research and particularly for new ways to enthuse, inform and to involve the public with birds in their lives. He was instrumental for example in developing the Sand Martin enquiry, New Year's Day Sponsored Bird Counts, National Nest Box Week and, most recently, the BTO's House Sparrow Survey. After a rather unconventional education at Aldenham School (Hertfordshire) and an unfinished Maths degree course at Cambridge University, Chris started work in 1961 for the British Trust for Ornithology in the Ringing Office when it was still housed in the bowels of the Natural History Museum at South Kensington. He played a major part in locating Beech Grove in Tring, Hertfordshire, which became the BTO's headquarters for nearly 30 years, and then moved to The Nunnery, Thetford, with the Trust in 1991 (causing some confusion by buying another ‘The Nunnery’ as his home). Chris worked in the Ringing Office for over 30 years and in that time became almost synonymous with bird ringing in the UK. He overs1aw many of the developments of the scheme that made it what it is today. His mathematical training helped when computers were installed and he was always an advocate of the importance of ‘General Ringing’ as much as the project-orientated ringing favoured by many of the major funding bodies. He was himself a very keen ringer, and ringing sessions with him in his garden near Thetford, and earlier in gardens around the Ashridge Estate in Hertfordshire or on Pied Flycatcher expeditions to Wales, were always organized chaos with Chris presiding from the ringing table and overseeing anything up to a dozen others at a time. His wife Verity (known to all as V) and family were always very understanding and, outwardly at least, very supportive of these, even though it must often have appeared that there had been a mass invasion. Chris retired from full-time work in the Ringing Office in 1995, following a severe stroke. However, as a consequence, he was then able to do more publicity work. A regular presence on television and radio, he became an extremely effective one-man press department for the BTO right up until his death – he was continuing to send emails just a few hours before he died. Chris wrote or contributed to a variety of books and other publications, including species accounts for Swallow and Sand Martin in the 2002 publication The Migration Atlas; this atlas had itself been a project that he had promoted hard over many years, and latterly he had devoted much time to this. He contributed several regular columns (e.g. in British Wildlife), a constant stream of communications to various birding websites, and in 2000 arguably his most telling contribution, The State of the Nations’ Birds, a book in which he described the varying fortunes of British breeding birds over the previous century with a personal look into the future. Chris was unmistakable, as large in life as in frame with red, and latterly white, hair and large beard (we only know the latter to have come off once as a sponsored publicity event at the Rutland Bird Fair; at V's insistence it was grown back immediately). Always helpful and encouraging to fellow ornithologists, both professional and amateur, he was a friend to many and his almost photographic memory ensured that few were ever passed by. As a valued, if at times infuriating, colleague his memory helped answer and identify all kinds of query – he was always the person we turned to for those awkward questions to which ‘nobody’ knew the answer. Chris served on various committees, including BOU Council 1973/77, was instrumental in the organization of EURING (European Union of Bird Ringing) for 15 years, was a champion of Swifts and their conservation, and was an avid fan of Duke Ellington, Formula One racing and international rugby matches. He was very proud to be one of the few recipients of the major medals of all three of the BOU (Union Medal in 1996), BTO and RSPB. We will all miss an ebullient personality who always had a few new ideas brewing and who always promoted birds and the BTO to the best of his ability. Our sympathies go to V and their three daughters.

Choose an HR star for competitive edge

Because of the volatile business environment, organizations are in a state of unprecedented change, which numerous observers have called chaos. Under current, unstable, perhaps chaotic, conditions, there is a window of opportunity for human resources (HR)/change leader professionals to step up to areas of conflict, chaos, and confusion in organizations. The opportunity currently available to HR professionals is obviously open to all stakeholders in organizations. Eventually someone will claim this opportunity. In changing, unpredictable, chaotic organizations, the HR groups stand out as likely claimants because of their generally applicable skill sets. However, this is a new, confrontational leadership role that HR personnel have not filled in the past. Some HR personnel will not be interested, some will not have what it takes. HR stars will definitely be “in the gate” and have what it takes. This paper describes how HR stars behave, and what they can accomplish in chaotic organizations.

Reviews: Managing the Unknowable: Strategic Boundaries Between Order and Chaos in Organizations, Ralph D. Stacey; Complexity and Creativity in Organizations, Ralph D. Stacey

Reviews: Managing the Unknowable: Strategic Boundaries Between Order and Chaos in Organizations, Ralph D. Stacey; Complexity and Creativity in Organizations, Ralph D. Stacey

Downsizing and Structural Holes

Organizational downsizing places many strains on surviving employees. Despite the implicit relationship between changes to communication networks and employee responses, few studies examine downsizing-induced network changes or the impact of these changes on employees. This longitudinal investigation examined fluctuations in structural holes within a hospitality company's corporate headquarters resulting from the loss and gain of communication contacts. Building on Burt's treatise on structural holes, we tested a measurement of structural holes and its relationship to layoff survivors' perceptions of organizational chaos and their willingness to participate in planned, postdownsizing changes. Although the downsizing had a modest impact on surviving employees' structural hole experiences overall, the structural hole index was a significant predictor in longitudinal and within time period comparisons of employees' perceptions of chaos and openness to change.

Carved in Stone The History of Stone Mountain (review)

Carved in Stone The History of Stone Mountain By David B. Freeman Mercer University Press, 1997 200 pp. Cloth, $32.95 Reviewed by John M. Coski, historian at the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond, Virginia. Coski is the author of CapitalNavy: The Men, Ships, and Operations oftheJames River Squadron and contributed to A Woman's War: Southern Women, Civil War, and the Confederate Legacy. He has written and lectured widely on die Confederate memorial period and on the history and symbolism of the Confederate battle flag, including a photo essay for Southern Cultures. A heroic monument to the Confederacy first envisioned in 1914 and finally dedicated in 1970 presents an ideal opportunity to explore the Lost Cause in twentiethcentury America. Inexplicably, freelance historian David B. Freeman fails to seize this opportunity in his history of Stone Mountain, Georgia. Instead, Carvedin Stone is a minimally interpretive narrative history ofthe granite monolith, the village, and the memorial known as Stone Mountain. The author 's purpose is to write a definitive history -"to set the record straight"—about the often controversial mountain. Based on research in official records and newspaper accounts and featuring fifty full-page black-and-white photographs, Carved in Stone fulfills the author's documentary purpose, but it only hints at the mountain 's significance for the study of southern cultures. Rising 800 feet above the surrounding north-central Georgia hills, Stone Mountain was a landmark for Native Americans and European setders, a resort, and a source ofbuilding stone before it assumed its place as the "Southern Mount Rushmore." The mountain's vertical north face virtually begged for a monumental sculpture, and it was Helen C. Plane, an eighty-year-old widow ofa Confederate soldier and an active member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (udc), who proposed transforming it into a monument that would oudast all the others dedicated to Confederate heroes. The saga ofStone Mountain was epic in direct proportion to the ambitions of its visionaries. Sculptor John Gutzon de la Mothe Borglum captured the imagination of the udc sponsors with a proposed relief sculpture of nearly 1,000 figures featuring the only three figures to be started or completed: PresidentJefferson Davis and generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson. 102 Reviews Complementing the colossal relief sculpture was a grand colonnaded memorial hall hewn out of the mountain's base. Typical ofmany Confederate memorial projects, Stone Mountain was delayed by financial problems and organizational schisms. Compounding these was the ultimately fatal rift between the stubborn Borglum and Hollins Randolph, the powerful president ofthe Stone Mountain Confederate Monumental Association (smcma). Before being fired and becoming persona non grata in Georgia in early 1925, Borglum and his crew finished the figure of Lee, which was unveiled with great fanfare on 19 January 1923 (which Freeman erroneously identifies as the general 's centennial birthday). In March 1928 Borglum's Lee was blown from the mountain, replaced with the work of another sculptor, Augustus Lukeman, unveiled on 9 April 1928. Lukeman's work remained unfinished and virtually untouched for thirty-five years as the smcma went down in a blaze oforganizational and financial ignominy. Only when the state of Georgia took over the project and the property in the late 195os was the monument completed by yet another sculptor, and Stone Mountain became an enormous success—as a popular amusement park. The story told here is an engaging one. Carving even three equestrian figures into a sheer rock face was a complex challenge, and Freeman relates clearly how Borglum and his successors met the challenge. Carvedin Stoneis a story oftechnical achievement amid often comical organizational chaos. Freeman is not oblivious to Stone Mountain's wider social and cultural ramifications . The monument project was born almost simultaneously with the release ofD.W. Griffith's film Birth ofa Nation and the revival ofthe Ku Klux Klan (???) at a ceremony held on Stone Mountain. The mountain's owner, Sam Venable, was a Klan activist; the principal figures in the project, including Gutzon Borglum, became members; and Helen Plane suggested adding figures of 1 860s klansmen to the sculpture. Contrary to contemporary belief, however, Freeman asserts that the monument was not a...

Creating Roles for Social Work in Changing Health Care Organizations

SUMMARY Social work has historically been influenced by and influential in periods of social change. The current health care environment poses challenges to the profession whose function is to maximize adaptation. In addition to helping patients and families adapt to a rapidly changing health delivery system, social workers can develop roles that affect the direction and impact of organizational change, substantively if not fundamentally. This includes assisting staff to work professionally and maintain client-focus during organizational stress and chaos. This article develops one example of how social work expanded its role during a time of transition through staff education of another discipline at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City, USA. The authors conceptualize the need for such practice, describe and analyze the program, and extrapolate practice principles for expanding social work roles in a changing work organization.

Social and organizational chaos: Alan Garfinkel, Departments of Medicine (Cardiology) and Physiological Science, 47-123 Center for the Health Sciences, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA

Social and organizational chaos: Alan Garfinkel, Departments of Medicine (Cardiology) and Physiological Science, 47-123 Center for the Health Sciences, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA

Five Small Secrets to Systems Success

A pervasive theme today regarding the performance of new systems is many systems are technical successes, but failures. Systems that are well designed often fail to meet user expectations at implementation. This paper details and analyzes the implementation of a major operations support system at a large U.S. firm that fits this theme. Measurements of success from a quasi-experiment are used to accurately measure user performance and user expectations pre and post system implementation. These measurements offer solid proof that the system achieved key user defined objectives.... And yet, the system is widely viewed as a failure. This paper highlights the organizational chaos that technically successful systems often cause in user organizations when the Systems Delivery process how systems are delivered to users is ineffectual. In effect, systems are dropped off at the users' doorsteps. A prescriptive model using five key guidelines is proposed for effective management of the Systems Delivery process. These five relatively small secrets can save corporations millions in investment dollars, reduce negative impacts to customer service and enhance employee morale and systems acceptance.

Review of Managing the unknowable: Strategic boundaries between order and chaos in organizations.

Review of Managing the unknowable: Strategic boundaries between order and chaos in organizations.

Lord of the Flies Community College: A Case Study of Organizational Disintegration

This interpretive case study examines the organizational disintegration of a community college which had experienced a sudden loss of leadership. Its culture both contributed to and prevented organizational chaos. The essay addresses how leaders can honor the culture and mission of educational organizations and simultaneously work to transform them.

Chaos, Topology, and Social Organization

This paper attempts to apply chaos theory to social organization. It begins with a mathematical definition of chaos. Specifically, the geometric concept of attractor is explored; phase space and Poincaré maps are discussed and applied to the concept of attractor; and nonlinearity is conceptually defined. We then apply the mathematics of chaos to social systems by showing how a nonlinear equation might be used to describe organization and how data derived from a simple univariate equation can be converted into a multivariate Poincaré map. The conclusion section identifies three approaches to analyzing chaos in social organization: metaphorical analysis, mathematical modeling, and data collection. Finally, possible uses of chaos are explored, as are the shortcomings of such analysis.

Acceptable Risk? Making Decisions in a Toxic Environment.

Creating Risks Organizational Chaos Beginning Decontamination and Medical Surveillance Constricting the Field of Organizations As Excursus on Resolving Organizational Dilemmas: The County Government's Risk Organizing Medical Surveillance Organizing Decontamination The Exposed Organizing Risk Appendix A: The Players Appendix B: A Methodological Accounting References List of Interviews

Kingly Models in Indian Political Behavior: Culture as a Medium of History

In 1984 Iqbal Narain and P. C. Mathur published a paper in which they argued that ideology in Indian politics was a little studied and much misunderstood phenomenon, inside and outside of India.' They outlined those characteristics of Indian political behavior that preoccupied analysts and commentators, particularly the recurrent splits, mergers, individual desertions, and dissonant factionalism, that describe what they call organizational disarray. The authors noted that scholars writing on the organizational chaos in most Indian political parties commonly attribute it to the 'power orientation', 'temperamental differences', and 'self-seeking opportunism' of individual political leaders. These variables, they comment, have nothing to do with ideology as a motivating factor. 2 Narain and Mathur argue correctly that the matter of value and principle in political action requires more attention. But if their interest is in bringing more systematic analysis to the chaotic and person-centered aspects of Indian political behavior, then they should point to culture as needing special focus, as well as ideology. It is important to make a distinction between the impact of (cultural) structures and the impact of ideo-

Knowledge Based Systems for Real Time Command and Control Systems

Command and Control (C2) systems are the management infrastructure for defence and war, or for any other large scale dynamic resource management system; yet there is no theory for command and control or the underlying decision processes. This coupled with the sensor/information explosion, the organisational chaos associated with the many non-interoperable C2 systems used (or planned) by National Services, NATO etc. and the technological development in the enabling technologies (Communications, MMI, Large Scale Software etc.) has focussed attention in this paper on an alternative strategy for real time C2 decision aids. To cope with the uncertain environment, imprecise system configuration, and operational rules, an Artificial Intelligence System based upon concurrent adaptive distributed Knowledge Based Systems is proposed as a robust effective supplement to human reasoning in the most complex C2 system.

Confrontation Politics and Crisis Management: Nigerian University Students and Public Policy—a Social Commentary

Confrontation Politics and Crisis Management: Nigerian University Students and Public Policy—a Social Commentary

Organizational Chaos and Political Potential of African Trade Unions [Abstract

Organizational Chaos and Political Potential of African Trade Unions [Abstract

(12) Organizational Chaos and Political Potential of African Trade Unions

(12) Organizational Chaos and Political Potential of African Trade Unions

The Organization of Government in Metropolitan Areas: A Theoretical Inquiry

Allusions to the “problem of metropolitan government” are often made in characterizing the difficulties supposed to arise because a metropolitan region is a legal non-entity. From this point of view, the people of a metropolitan region have no general instrumentality of government available to deal directly with the range of problems which they share in common. Rather there is a multiplicity of federal and state governmental agencies, counties, cities, and special districts that govern within a metropolitan region.This view assumes that the multiplicity of political units in a metropolitan area is essentially a pathological phenomenon. The diagnosis asserts that there are too many governments and not enough government. The symptoms are described as “duplication of functions” and “overlapping jurisdictions.” Autonomous units of government, acting in their own behalf, are considered incapable of resolving the diverse problems of the wider metropolitan community. The political topography of the metropolis is called a “crazy-quilt pattern” and its organization is said to be an “organized chaos.” The prescription is reorganization into larger units—to provide “a general metropolitan framework” for gathering up the various functions of government. A political system with a single dominant center for making decisions is viewed as the ideal model for the organization of metropolitan government. “Gargantua” is one name for it.

The Organization of Government in Metropolitan Areas: A Theoretical Inquiry

Allusions to the “problem of metropolitan government” are often made in characterizing the difficulties supposed to arise because a metropolitan region is a legal non-entity. From this point of view, the people of a metropolitan region have no general instrumentality of government available to deal directly with the range of problems which they share in common. Rather there is a multiplicity of federal and state governmental agencies, counties, cities, and special districts that govern within a metropolitan region.This view assumes that the multiplicity of political units in a metropolitan area is essentially a pathological phenomenon. The diagnosis asserts that there are too many governments and not enough government. The symptoms are described as “duplication of functions” and “overlapping jurisdictions.” Autonomous units of government, acting in their own behalf, are considered incapable of resolving the diverse problems of the wider metropolitan community. The political topography of the metropolis is called a “crazy-quilt pattern” and its organization is said to be an “organized chaos.” The prescription is reorganization into larger units—to provide “a general metropolitan framework” for gathering up the various functions of government. A political system with a single dominant center for making decisions is viewed as the ideal model for the organization of metropolitan government. “Gargantua” is one name for it.

The Russian "Enigma": Some Recent Studies by Western Writers

OBSCURED by the flood of ephemeral works on Russia which pour from the presses in an undiminished stream, there is a steady undercurrent of more serious studies, destined never to appear on best-seller lists but finding some compensation in a modest but secure haven on the shelves of university libraries. Writers who have some knowledge of ancient (i.e., preI9I7) Russia and an honest conviction that communism has no monopoly on either good or evil in the world today need encouragement more than ever during these troubled times. A large portion of the books here under review indicate that their authors somehow obtained this encouragement-at least to the extent of finding a publisher. history of Russia is to Western scholars almost virgin territory, compared to the history of England, France, and Germany. Even so simple a requirement as a readable and authoritative one-volume history of Russia, comparable, say, to what G. M. Trevelyan has been able to do for England or Allan Nevins and Henry Steele Commager for the United States, has yet to be filled. There has been no lack of attempts, and some of them have been of very high quality. B. H. Sumner's Short history, which has appeared recently in a revised edition, unquestionably belongs in this category.' That the revisions are of a minor nature, generally in the interest of greater accuracy and clarification, is indicated most noticeably by the continued use of the present tense to describe events which were taking place when the I943 edition was published. In many ways the best single volume in its field, the book nevertheless suffers from an unsurmountable handicap arbitrarily imposed upon it by the author in an ambitious attempt to break away from the conventional chronological method of writing history. substitution of a topical arrangement (The frontier, The state, The land, The church, The Slavs, The sea, and The West) is less than satisfactory and creates more problems than it solves. Mere unorthodoxy is converted'into organizational chaos, however, by the further device of a reverse chronology under the topical headings. Thus the chapter entitled The land begins with an account of the Soviet revolution in agriculture; reverts to the I905 revolution, the emancipation of the serfs, and their condition previous to emancipation; and concludes with a discussion of the origins of serfdom (along with the commune) and of the various peasant revolts of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Such a book is virtually useless for the beginner, and the advanced student of Russian history may prefer to turn to V. 0. Klyuchevsky or more detailed monographic studies than to pursue the subject further at an elementary level. A third edition-one which will really revise and not simply perpetuate a major weakness-is needed before Sumner's undoubted talent will be properly harnessed. Of two other recent additions to the list of one-volume histories, only that of Joshua Kunitz was intended as a corrective to the older accepted versions.2 Paul Crowson's short study need not concern us, except to call attention to its existence as a possible textbook for high-school students.3 Its pretensions do not go beyond this-it was prepared for English students at this level-and, within the little more than two hundred pages allotted, the author has done a first-rate job of simplification and condensation. Kunitz, heretofore known primarily as an