Welcome to Organizations as Ecosystems
Welcome! Thanks for being here.
I'm not sure how you arrived here, but I'm glad that you did. Here being "Organizations As Ecosystems" - a semi-public research and writing project. OAE is my exploration into the way that human and non-human actors work and work together, where I’ll use a variety of lenses and metaphors taken from other disciplines. While there's a lot of literature within organization and management sciences that seems valuable (and I may wade through), I'm much more interested in looking at "organizations" using different frames of reference. The plan is to spend this year meandering. I’ll be reading a lot (feel free to send me suggestions) and sharing notes as I go.
Some of the questions that excite me include:
How do we think about the different pace layers within an organization and the way that those layers interact?
How do organizations keep time? How do they keep score? How are those connected?
What is "decay" in an organization? When is decay waste versus compost?
What is the organizational equivalent of a virus? Of antibodies?
If we were to look at a company like a rainforest, how would we look at it differently?
These are not exhaustive nor prioritized. They’re simply a start.
What I’ve realized through the conversations I've had with people about the democratization of research (and the practice of research more broadly) is that organizations are all beautifully diverse, and the dialogue that excites me is not about tactics and answers. I’m interested in the laws of physics that govern an organization, the frameworks that the organization uses to govern itself, how an organization learns and knowns - and the incentives for all of these things.
Organizations are both harmonious and chaotic, depending on where and how you look at them. As I’ve spent more time thinking about how research as a practice can be more open across an organization, I’ve found myself looking for different ways to think about organizations themselves. I wonder what I can borrow from biology or how trying to thinking about the “soil” of a company changes my work.
I don’t know what will come from this, but I’m looking forward to it.