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Dysfunctional conglomerates: An explanation provided by linking ontological individualism to social relationships within an open systems context
Author(s) -
Swanson D. L.
Publication year - 1992
Publication title -
behavioral science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.371
H-Index - 45
eISSN - 1099-1743
pISSN - 0005-7940
DOI - 10.1002/bs.3830370205
Subject(s) - dysfunctional family , context (archaeology) , individualism , social system , social psychology , hierarchy , psychology , organizational behavior , sociology , epistemology , political science , social science , paleontology , philosophy , law , psychotherapist , biology
The arguments presented in this paper regarding the widespread failure of the most recent American experiment with conglomeration link psychoanalytic, sociological, and open systems literature. Executive decision‐making is proposed to affect social relationships within an organization and between the open systems organization and other organizations in its environment. Specifically, dysfunctionality on the individual living systems level (on the executive level) is postulated to create dysfunctional relational patterns that can be generalized across a hierarchy of nonliving organizational systems that, in turn, contain living systems. An understanding of Laing's (1959) description of a schizoid process for individuals guides our construction of a dynamic model of dysfunctional organizational states (MODOS, Figure 1). The MODOS depicts unsuccessful conglomerate organizations as dysfunctional nonliving relational systems with tendencies toward pro‐entropic, systemic deterioration.