Why is quality the DNA of organizations that can be mapped, charted, modeled, and altered?
Conceptual Pattern for Organization
An organization is a relationship identified by a shared interest or purpose that exists between separate components in a coherent whole by virtue of orderliness. An organization is methodical and well structured. It is a quality that is a logical interconnection associated with a rationally stated motive. An organization is aesthetically consistent so that all the separate parts fit together and add up to a harmonious or credible entity. Organizations obey or appreciate method, system, and arrangement in a neat, sensible, or proper way that leads to understandability. An organization exists or for which something has been done or made and is manifested as an anticipated outcome that is intended or guides planned actions to achieve a desired result. (Pattern Engine – Organization N=12 © 2014)
If the organization is understood then the meaning of Quality will follow.
First Principle: The purpose of the organization is to delight the customer and make a profit doing it.
Second Principle: Organizations are quasi-markets in which influence and control are negotiated and allocated according to which organizational participants are the most critical to the organizations continued survival and success.1
Third Principle: An organization is a purposeful complex adaptive system.2
Fourth Principle: An organization as a system is the product of the interaction of its parts.3
Fifth Principle: The command-and-control organization that first emerged in the 1870s might be compared to an organism held together by its shell. The organization that is now emerging is being designed around a skeleton: information, both the organizations new integrating system and its articulation.4
Sixth Principle: In order to assess the cognitive framework of an organization, there is a need to understand the interactions of four fundamental elements contained in every organization: its principles, models, rules and behaviors.2
Key Conceptual Patterns
Adaptation is responsive adjustment to varying conditions affecting the structure, function, or behavior by which an organization improves its chance of survival in a specific environment as the result of change. Adaptation aggregates surrounding conditions causing an event that modifies circumstances. It occurs when something passes from one phase or state to another. Adaptation is the result of alteration, modification, or a variance from a routine or pattern that must exist for something else to happen. Adaptation rests on the validity or the effect of something else that may be restricting or limiting and thus influences or affects a particular activity. (Pattern Engine – Adaptation N=12 © 2014)
Articulation is the expression of thoughts, ideas and feelings that results in a connection and coherency. It is a relationship of parts expressed in words. Articulation is a means of communicating a feeling or thought or conveying an idea or sentiment as in the case of one causing the other or sharing features with it within its context. Articulation is logical, orderly and consistent so that all the separate parts fit together and add up to a harmonious or credible whole and may proceed from the subordination of the parts of a thing to one principle or purpose. (Pattern Engine – Articulation N=12 © 2014)
Next Post: Performance – Quality in Disguise or just Plain Disguise.
1. Jeffery Pfeffer and Gerald R. Salancik, The External Control of Organizations, 2003.
2. Howard Sherman and Ron Schultz, Open Boundaries: Creating Business Innovation through Complexity, 1993.
3. Russel Lincoln Ackoff, Recreating the Corporation: A design for the 21st Century, 1999.
4. Peter Drucker, The Essential Drucker, 2001.