The Company as a Living System Scientists and artists have always been fascinated by the order and disorder present in nature. Our universe is characterised by two very contradictory transformation processes on the one hand the growing complexity of species, but also of society and the instruments which Men create for their activity, on the other hand - and this is the second law of thermodynamics - a progressive degradation of energy and structured matter. This contradictory movement can be illustrated most strikingly by observing the civilisations which have existed on earth. The birth of a civilisation is marked by the progressive enlightenment of a culture and the way of functioning which forms its framework, which reaches its apogee in an ever more structured form and then gradually declines. As we approach the end of the millennium, our Western civilisation is undoubtedly living through one of its periods of transition, brought about through the impetus of a change in the epistemological paradigm as described by numerous authors, notably J. de Rosnay in "Macroscope", F. Capra in "Le temps du changement", L. Segal in "Le rêve de la réalité", F. Vester in "Neuland des Denkens" or I. Orgogozo in "Les paradoxes du management". After some four hundred years of Cartesianism we have arrived at a form of culture inspired less by a machine-like model, immortalised in Chaplin's Modern Times, than by one based on systems, living things, the functioning of organisms and the human brain. A form of enterprise whose superiority over the machine is described by F. Vester thus "nature is an enterprise that has been in existence for two billion years and has not yet gone bankrupt". It is an undeniable fact that certain organisms remain alive and continue to develop over hundreds of millions of years. Others which belong to very specialised species can survive if they find themselves in an ecological niche there they can make the most of the advantages their specificity gives them, but they risk dying out very quickly if the environment changes. Therefore, by referring to the study of living things, it is possible to get a better understanding of why some enterprises survive for a long time while others succumb to a sudden death. This change in the thought model can be found in some way in all areas of knowledge, exact and human sciences, overturning theories which have become increasingly elaborate in the course of scientific progress. It is certainly found in the approaches to the management and organisation of work, a discipline which divides scientists and practitioners into partisans of a purely rational vision of the organisation, who think that a an optimum functioning could be achieved by a strong management, and partisans of an eco-system vision, for whom it is first and foremost a question of integrating the internal dynamics common to all living things. Chaos Management, the solution contributed by Tom Peters, thunders a challenge in the universe of rational management, formed over the course of this century. But it is thought to be an extension of the ideas of authors such as Elton Mayo in the 1930s and Herbert Simon in the 1950s, who each illustrated in his own way the limitations of rational and mechanical business organisations, such as that envisioned by F.W. Taylor with his scientific organisation of work (SOW), or by M. Weber and his ideal type of bureaucracy. At the other extreme, some authors, fascinated by the apparent disorganisation of companies, have developed concepts such as organisational anarchy or the "dustbin" model, which outline social systems as subject to essentially uncontrollable mechanisms, and above all evading the rationality of their creator. E. Friedberg, one of the leading lights in the sociology of organisations in France, devotes himself to a veritable "dismantling of the organisation", demonstrating the limitations of rationality in the world of work, the fragility of the internal cohesion as well as the blurred boundaries of organisations, and stressing the importance of strategic working logic by their members above the formal rules of the organisation. Such phenomena can only illustrate the necessity of basing management models on a living and systems-oriented approach and not on the illusion - convenient but specious - of a great, perfectly regulated clock. Numerous authors, among whom should be mentioned P. Senge and his future classic on the "fifth discipline", endeavour to show the effects of this new paradigm on management. back to Homepage