Organizations in a Changing World

Abstract

Organizations today are under challenge as a result of the break with traditional authority, the growth of democratic ideology, economic affluence and consequent changes in needs and motive patterns, and the accelerated rate of change. Adaptive subsystems have not kept pace with other organizational subsystems, and hence new inputs tend to be either rejected in blanket fashion or else incorporated without assimilation to the dominant patterns. Organizational leaders are preoccupied with their tasks of mediation between conflicting demands, and the problem of the reconceptualization of values has been left to the rebelling factions. There is hope, however, that a new consensus may emerge about organizational restructuring which acknowledges both the role of direct democracy in the smaller units and representative democracy in the larger system.