Organizational Structuralism: A Comprehensive Multidisciplinary Hypothesis for the Interpretation of Organizational Phenomena

729 Pages·2022·13.373 MB·English

by  Kostas Langas

Kostas Langas
Organizational
Structuralism
A Comprehensive
Multidisciplinary
Hypothesis for the
Interpretation of
Organizational
Phenomena
Organizational Structuralism
Kostas Langas
Organizational
Structuralism
A Comprehensive Multidisciplinary
Hypothesis for the Interpretation of
Organizational Phenomena
Kostas Langas
Turin, Italy
ISBN 978-3-031-16048-6 ISBN 978-3-031-16049-3 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16049-3
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To all those who could have done but never did.
To all those who would have done but were impeded from doing.
To all those who were destined to do but death ceased them from doing.
Preface
Men create structures but structures create civilizations.
In fact, the most complete and developed countries in history have
been characterized by highly structured both Public and Private institu-
tions and organizations.
Structures can be differentiated on the basis of numerous factors
among which symmetry, repeatability and complexity of patterns as well
as adaptability which constitute some of the key ones.
Furthermore, structures may be both material and symbolic. The
Antikythera Mechanism is definitely a material structure but it is full
of symbolic representations of the Sun, the Moon, some of the Planets,
important athletic and religious events of the historical period in which
it was constructed and much more.
Since man developed the capacity of representation, material and
symbolic structures coexist, in the vast majority of cases they are strongly
entangled and, to a great extent, they constitute the frames of reference
of our civilization. Today, it is practically impossible to find a human-
made material structure without a correlated symbolic structure and vice
versa.
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viii Preface
Organizations are structures. Therefore, they are composed of material
and symbolic structures which are in continuous and dynamic interac-
tion between them. The frequency and amplitude of such interactions
often determine the rate of change as well as the d irection in the
evolutionary trends of an organization. Hence, different material and
symbolic structures exist at all levels of an organization in relation to
the perspective, to the observer and to the analytic tools.
The reason of this book is to try to explore the material and symbolic
structures of an organization from the lowest microlevel to the most
extended macrolevel from most perspectives possible, according to and
within the limits of the author’s perceptions regarding organizations.
A multidisciplinary and cosmopolitan (in the original sense of the
word) approach has been followed with the hope to provide a compre-
hensive approach in the entanglement between the numerous material
and symbolic structures which are active within organizations.
Such a multidisciplinary approach has constituted the main challenge
in writing this book: interfacing and correlating Hegelian negations to
Classic Physics, Aristotelian logic to molecular biology, Immanuel Kant’s
theories to ethology and to the cognitive sciences, Lacanian theories
to the symbolic dimensions of organizations, De Saussure’s linguistic
structures and the anthropological structures of Claude Lévi-Strauss to
the Business Process Analysis and Reengineering, Platonic and Kastori-
adian autonomous symbolic structures to organizational development,
Quantum mechanics basic assumptions to organizational methods and
tools, Monod’s magnificent theories to the evolutionary tendencies of
organizations, fundamental Euclidean and Calculus principles for the
describing of the development and decline of organizations based on clas-
sical field theories and, I hope, much more, such as a cosmopolitan vision
of the world in geopolitical and historical terms.
Enjoy your reading!
Turin, Italy Kostas Langas
Acknowledgements
Authors often state that acknowledgments are one of the most difficult
parts of a book to write.
Fortunately, this is not my case since the persons who contributed
to the realization of this book with their competence and creativity or
with their patience or both are very few. And you know what they say:
“few in number but innumerable in quality”. I feel proud to express my
profound gratitude the following people:
First of all, to Ms. Karolina Tatar (owner of four different Master’s
Degrees in Arts including one in Musical Composition) who with
her outstanding competencies in English language and literature, her
translating capability and sensibility from Italian to English and her enor-
mous patience in managing brilliantly all my objections, perplexities and
doubts regarding the completeness, accuracy and precision in the delicate
and sometimes difficult terminological, semantic and syntactic choices
provided a fundamental contribution to the writing of this book.
Furthermore, I can only express my gratitude to Karolina also for the
invaluable suggestions regarding the structuralistic influence on some of
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x Acknowledgements
the most important composers of our times and not only as well as for
the musical analysis of the two scores included in “Epilegomena 1”.
Another person to whom I would wish to express my appreciation is
Ms. Alessandra Zumbo (Master’s Degree in Science in Aerospace Engi-
neering) for her fundamental contribution in the development of the
three-dimensional configurations regarding the evolutionary phases of a
structured organization, for the fine-tuning and final formulation of the
mathematical treatment and analogies regarding the structural analysis of
an organization as well as for the development of some complex graphs.
Finally, I would like to thank and express my gratitude to Anna and
Sofia for their enormous patience and support offered to me during the
writing of this book.
Contents
1 An Attempt to Introduction 1
1.1 The One Who Knows Only One Discipline
Knows Nothing About That Discipline 2
1.2 From the Phoenician Alphabet to the Structure
of “O” According to Sofia 13
Reference 13
2 Organizational Fields and Organizational Processes 15
2.1 A General Outline 15
2.2 The Total Quality Management Systems 17
2.3 The Hunt of Competencies 19
2.4 The Hunt of Performances 22
2.5 The Recent Years and the Actual Situations 25
2.6 Why This Book 38
References 39
3 Introduction to Organization Structuralism 41
3.1 Functional (Systemic) and Structural (Analytic)
Study of Structures 52
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