Organizational Dynamics

Almost half a century after systems theorist Ludwig von Bertalanffy initiated the publication of the General Systems series, formally bringing the biologybased open systems perspective to organization studies and, by extension, to leadership studies, the majority of academic studies of leadership still fail to give adequate consideration to the dynamic aspects of organizations. The reasons for this failure are many and have been repeatedly documented: [Page 1118]lack of accepted methodologies for temporal studies (i.e., those that occur across time), the demands of the academic tenure system, researcher familiarity with cross-sectional research methods (i.e, traditional statistical correlation), shortages of research funding, difficulties in conceptualization, lack of sympathy on the part of editors and reviewers, and numerous others.

The validity of any of these reasons in the past is not disputed. However, in the twenty-first century they are no longer excuses for failing to consider the dynamic aspects of organizations and leadership. Four waves of leadership studies have swept the field of leadership in the past one hundred years or so: “great man” theories (that rely on inborn leadership qualities), behavioral theories, situational theories, and, most recently, theories of transformational/charismatic leadership. The next generation of leadership studies will center on organizational dynamics. Meaningful models of leadership in the future will explicitly consider the changing, temporal nature of leadership, as only a few do now.

Organizational dynamics result from system structure. Organizations engage in such basic dynamic behaviors as growth and goal seeking due to their structures and due to their interaction with their environments. Organizational dynamics are the behaviors of the physical and institutional systems and human agents that vary over time. Within the context of any system that has humans as decision makers, leadership cannot be understood without recognizing changes over time, feedback processes, and the inevitable nonlinearities of human behavior (that is, those whose relationship would not graph as a straight line), even of life itself.

The key leadership impact of dynamic systems comes from the recognition of two types of complexity: detail complexity and dynamic complexity. Detail complexity is the complexity of many parts or variables. Dynamic complexity is the complexity that occurs when cause and effect in a system are far apart in time, and changes made based on standard linear attributions of causality (relationships that would graph as a straight line) do not result in the outcomes that people expect. Dynamic complexity results when systems are dynamic, tightly coupled, governed by feedback, nonlinear, history-dependent, self-organizing, adaptive, counterintuitive, policy resistant, and characterized by trade-offs. Under these circumstances, traditional thinking about leadership cannot keep pace with the demands of leadership in dynamic organizations.