Intervening in the shadow systems..

Intervening in the shadow systems of organizations
Consulting from a complexity perspective
Patricia Shaw. Complexity and Management Centre, University of Hertfordshire, Hertfordshire, UK
Journal of Organizational Change Management, vol 10, no. 3, 1997, pp. 235-250.

Extract from the article:

Introduction
This paper explores some implications of the theory of complex adaptive systems (Gell-Mann, 1994; Goodwin, 1994; Holland, 1975; Kauffmann. 1991, 1995) for the practice of organizational consulting, particularly that of organization development (OD). OD praxis is steeped in ways of conceptualizing organizations as open systems in dynamic equilibrium with  their environments. This informs the goals and methodologies of OD consultants and focuses them on a design perspective to do with realizing the prior intentions of an organization's legitimate system, its prescribed network of relations or hierarchy, its bureaucracy and its approved ideology or explicitly shared culture. Although the existence of an "informal" organization has long been appreciated (see e.g. Schein, 1965,1985; Trist and Branforth, 1951), this has been perceived largely as a source of inertia or "resistance" to the legitimate change effort, and much has been written on strategies for understanding and "dealing with this (Coch and French, 1948; Klein, 1976; Kotter and Schlesinger, 1979; Kanter, 1985).

I will argue that taking a complex adaptive systems perspective provides a radically different way of conceptualizing how organizations change. This shifts consultants' attention away from planned change to the "messy" processes of self-organization that produce unpredictable emergent change. Complexity science is studying the nature of such dynamics in complex networks of adaptive agents, and suggests that "order emerges for free" without any central or governing control or intention when the network is operating in “edge of chaos" conditions (Kauffmann, 1995). Stacey (1996) has argued that self-organizing processes are to be found primarily in an organization's shadow system - that is, the complex web of interactions in which social, covert political and psycho-dynamic systems coexist in tension with the legitimate system. In the paradoxical conditions of "bounded instability", such systems are capable of spontaneous novelty and emergent strategy.

From this perspective an OD consultant, like every member of an organization, is actively working with a paradox - an official role in a legitimate control system, facilitating an intended change effort, while simultaneously participating in a shadow system in which no one is "in control" but in which patterns of controlled behaviour emerge that profoundly influence the actual evolution of the organization.

The article is to be read in: Journal of Organizational Change Management, vol 10, no. 3, 1997, pp. 235-250.