‘Organisations are ecosystems within ecosystems'
A thought piece on organisational life
Thought Piece
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‘Organisations are ecosystems within ecosystems’ (Western 2019)
The first and perhaps greatest challenge we have when working to lead change in organisations, is to re-imagine organisations as ‘ecosystems within ecosystems’. In our popular social imaginaries, organisations are seen with the industrial gaze we have inherited from the recent past. Organisations-in-our-minds are like ‘machine-architectures’. The built environment will resemble what an office or workplace ‘should look like’. Perhaps rows of desks, filled with computers, micro-machines and material objects, a water-cooler. These spaces are filled with people who are structured in our imagination in linear hierarchies as shown in organisational charts shaped like pyramids.
These mental images become a simulacrum that obscures the reality behind it. Organisations are not like this. They are more like webs-of-life, networks of activity and ecosystems of engagement that are fluid and changing.
Organisations are hybrid ecosystems, made up of technology, people and the environment. These ecosystems are inter-connected and interdependent, and are so entangled it is hard to separate the technology, people and environment.
The organisational ecosystem is in constant relation to many other ecosystems. Financial ecosystems, stakeholder ecosystems, political-regulatory ecosystems, environmental ecosystems, customer and competitor ecosystems, and also emotional ecosystems. In these networks of desire, things go viral. Sometimes technology bugs or glitches, sometimes rumours and stories and very often emotions go viral.
These ecosystems are vibrant, fluid, overlapping and both energy consuming and energy producing. Organisations thrive when a) the organisational ecosystems are healthy, dynamic and nurtured and b) when the organisations relations with the wider ecosystems they engage with are dynamic and adaptive.
One of the four core principles of the Eco-Leadership approach is ‘Organisational Belonging’ . Organisations belong to local communities and to the global world. They don’t live independently, they live inter-dependently. When an organisation belongs, it experiences the joys and sorrows of being fully engaged, a connected part of the whole
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Western S. (2019) Leadership a critical text 3rd ed Sage pub