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The third question that was most voted up this week was about unconscious and
emergent goals or even changing goals within an organization.
And this person talked about how an organization shares goals and objectives
but they said what about those goals and objectives that arise through regular
interaction within an organization? And what about unconscious goals?
So. So here I, I guess the question becomes
what, what happens to a firm that lacks a clear goal and purpose?
And, and some of us think of organizations like maybe Yahoo has been criticized as,
as lacking, always a, a clear goal about what, what that company is about, and I, I
can see cases where that might be problematic.
In some ways because it, at least the difficulties about coordination and
behavior around what. But on the other there are sometimes
certain context like context of uncertainty where the lack of or at least
differentiated goals might be beneficial because, you can explore and change more
readily in an environment. So it's not always clear that a lack of a
clear goal. Is a, is a problem, but in, usually it
kind of helps with coordination and the degree to which something is a defined
organization. Now again, some organizations also change
goals, so there is some kind of complexity here with goals.
So like, for example, the March of Dimes is known for changing its goal.
The, the early part of the last century, they solved polio, at least most of it.
And had to find a different mission, or a different kind of goal to focus on and
coordinate around, and so it became childbirth defects.
So we do have change in goals, and that seems possible.
But perhaps, again, not something that's recommend.
Tended to be done very frequently cuz it has coordination cost.
What about unconscious goals and identities, and here the thing that I, I
constantly wonder about is, Natalie the moral claims of organizations and their
mission statements like you saw in this weeks lectures that are implicit, I mean
that are implicit, are implicit in those statements, but also selections of
individuals and the firms and organizations.
So, its common that for example teachers and schools that a lot of them are
particularly interested in a social justice or interested in kind of community
service, or is another organizations may see a different kind of selection, right?
And people like Peirre Budroix in France have written about how academics in
different departments selected and he found things like, you know, physicians
and medical doctors within the university system there in the, at the time, in
France in the sixties had come from upper class backgrounds and were conservative in
their political orientations, whereas in the social sciences were kind of rebels
from blue collar backgrounds or alternative backgrounds and, and were kind
of a different sort. So.
I think there is something to this about selection, that the individuals that
compose an organization may have certain kinds of latent identities and, and
ideals. But I think you want to, and I think it's
also an, an issue there is about the conflict between the organization goal and
those individuals' kind of motives or identities themselves.
And there's an often an effort within organizational culture theory to align
those two or to enable individuals to express their, their own identities
through that of the organization's. So I think it's an interesting question.
A lot of firms have. Ambiguous goals, that a lot of firms do
have emergent goals through the interactions of the participants and
through their kind of informal organization.
They also have changing goals and in addition there is sometimes conflict
between the organization's goals and the individual's.
And, again, that's another reason why we need analysts.
So that we understand these dynamics and when they become problematic and when they
can become kind of an asset and resource to the firm.