The Viable System Model and inter-organizations

Abstract

To work against threats and to obtain new possibilities, new forms of interorganizational collaborations are formed. The management literature deals mainly with one single organization although aspects of collaborative processes are discussed. In this article problems with inter-organizational management and decision-making are discussed. In this article the possibilities and the limits of using the Viable System Model (VSM) for diagnosing and design of inter-organizations are discussed. The conclusion is that VSM seems to be promising but further evaluation must be performed. Organizational learning and negotiation support systems are approaches that should be used in inter-organizational management.     

Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation in Personality: Assessing Knowledge Profiling and the Work Preference Inventory in a Thai Population

Abstract

Personality trait theories are often used to identify particular personality or behavioural characteristics of potential employees by human resource management departments. However, this can be enhanced by understanding how motivation plays a role in personality, and particularly within the context of knowledge-based personality processes. The paper draws on knowledge management theory called Knowledge Profiling (KP) in which a theoretical construct has been developed representing personality through a set of three traits and their polar values. This model has previously been linked to the trait theory of personality called Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). This research adopts KP, develops its linkage with MBTI, and elaborates on its connection with motivation. The resulting model, referred to as Knowledge Profiling Motivational (KPM) model, is developed by connecting it with the Work Preference Inventory (WPI), which assesses individual differences in Intrinsic and Extrinsic motivational orientations. Analysis indicates that KPM is an improvement on the KP model in representing personality. Moreover, the research suggests that personality traits are not limited to a bipolar relationship but that there are relationships between traits as well.     

Confronting Myths and Stereotypes About Borderline Personality Disorder

SUMMARY

The clinician treating a patient with borderline personality disorder (BPD) is often faced with complicated challenges, from making and communicating an accurate diagnosis, to implementing an appropriate, informed plan for treatment. Myths and stereotypes about BPD, and the individuals who may carry the diagnosis, likely complicate effective recognition and treatment of the disorder. BPD has been a controversial diagnosis among clinicians since its inception, and it is poorly understood among the general public. Pressures to avoid an explicit exploration of the diagnosis stemming from myths and stereotypes about the disorder can come from a number of sources, including other clinicians, family members and patients themselves. The results of minimizing or ignoring the contribution of borderline pathology may be detrimental. Clinical decisions based on outmoded thinking about diagnosis, prognosis, treatment efficacy, and availability of resources may deny patients optimal care. Integrating current findings into consideration of a BPD diagnosis and design of appropriate treatment, free of misconceptions about the condition, may help limit the untoward effects associated with failure to appreciate elements of borderline personality.     

Anxiety and organization: what I learned about anxiety in a psychiatric ward in the 70s that turned out to be useful for managers in daily practice

ABSTRACT

This essay is a contribution to ‘de-pathologizing’ anxiety, reaffirm it into organization studies, and cast light on some findings on anxiety among staff members in a psychiatric ward. I will endeavor to reveal how I as a young researcher examined anxiety influences that have proven helpful to managers, suggesting that (1) anxiety comes in cold and warm forms, (2) organization is a way to deal with primordial anxiety, (3) organization causes systems anxiety, and (4) a socio–psycho personality dimension mediates the relationship between anxiety and organization. Managers need both anxiety and security – feeling secure enough to dare venture, and anxious enough to have the energy to perform effectively. I hope the essay will be a contribution to the task of bringing the concept of anxiety more out and into the light, helping organizational members to become safer and more successful in their different roles as leaders and co-workers.     

Symbolic Justice: The Status Politics of the American Probation Movement

Abstract

This paper addresses in substantive terms an emerging debate between Marxian and Weberian perspectives on crime and law. It is argued that the cooptive character of the American probation movement and its impact on juvenile and criminal law is an anomaly for orthodox Marxian theory and its preoccupation with coercive strategies of crime control. Revisionist Marxian perspectives similarly fail to account for the growth of this movement. An alternative Weberian approach is then articulated. It is found that probation legislation evolved at a federal level in juxtaposition to American temperance legislation, drawing its base of support from status groups reluctant to support the latter social movement, as well as from the leadership and rank and file organization of a voluntary association, the National Probation Association. The attention of a Weberian approach to such factors of organization and status helps to correct a one-sidedness in the Marxian class analysis of crime and law.     

Concept of ‘personality disorder’ and its relationship to social work

Abstract

Inherently difficult to define and apply in a valid and reliable way, the concept of ‘personality disorder’ is, nonetheless, a very important psychological construct in the assessment and treatment of clients. This paper discusses the nature and limitations of personality disorder diagnoses. It also refers to data suggesting a paucity of formal training and research on personality disorders, and mental health in general, within Australian social work. The authors call for greater research, analysis and debate by social work educators and the profession on these issues.     

Characterization of psychiatrically hospitalized college students

Abstract

Objective: To characterize contemporary college students requiring psychiatric hospitalization. Participants and methods: Sociodemographic and diagnostic information was gathered retrospectively and analyzed from the electronic medical records (EMRs) of the consecutive inpatient hospitalizations of 905 college students admitted to a psychiatric inpatient unit. Results: Significantly more females compared to males experienced the following: more hospitalizations, more family and financial stressors, more depression, and less psychotic and bipolar disorder. The most frequent diagnosis was a depressive disorder, followed by bipolar disorder, psychotic disorder, and personality disorder, most frequently borderline personality disorder. Half of participants had comorbid diagnoses with substance abuse most common. More than two-thirds of students endorsed social or intimate relationship, academic, and family challenges as psychosocial stressors. In all, 15% of participants had repeat admissions. Conclusions: The present study provides demographic data from a sample of psychiatrically hospitalized college students. Findings can help improve screening and identification of decompensation in college students.     

Resistance to change as issue selling in multinational firms

Abstract

Strategic change is a challenge because it tends to have repercussions for the organization as well as its members. Existing literature promotes a view that resistance to change is detrimental to an organization, especially during strategic change processes. However, resistance to change can alternatively be viewed as a beneficial factor. Given that middle- and operating-level managers are close to customers and markets and therefore have access to a different source of information than top managers, this article develops ideas about resistance to change as issue selling presents a conceptual model, and proposes a series of testable propositions.     

The Architecture of Complexity

In this paper we reflect on organizational space and its implications for organization and management. In contrast to dominant discourse in management and organization theory we address the ways in which corporate buildings, as social objects, provide a materiality to organization. Developing the concept of the architecture of complexity, we focus on space as the precondition of processes of organizing. The productive power of space lies in its potential to create and trigger complexity, as it pre-structures movement and flows of communication. Reflecting on two concrete spatial organizations (the fold and heterotopia) we suggest that the interplay of order and disorder and inside/outside relation, which these spaces provide, are spatial preconditions of organizational change and creativity.     

Crafting Organization

The recent shift in attention away from organization studies as science has allowed for consideration of new ways of thinking about both organization and organizing and has led to several recent attempts to 'bring down' organizational theorizing. In this paper, we extend calls for organization to be represented as a creative process by considering organization as craft. Organizational craft, we argue, is attractive, accessible, malleable, reproducible, and marketable. It is also a tangible way of considering organization studies with irreverence. We draw on the hierarchy of distinctions among fine art, decorative art, and craft to suggest that understanding the organization of craft assists in complicating our understanding of marginality. We illustrate our argument by drawing on the case of a contemporary Australian craftworks and marketplace known initially as the Meat Market Craft Centre ('MMCC') and then, until its recent closure, as Metro! Stella Minahan was a board member and then the Chief Executive Officer of the Metro! Craft Centre     

The reproduction of culture and personality: Critique of Christopher Lasch

Following in the theoretical tradition of the Frankfurt School, Christopher Lasch contends that the narcissistic personality has become the modal personality type in the United States. According to Lasch, the narcissistic personality is nurtured in the contemporary nuclear family and sustained by a culture that promotes immediate gratification and a preoccupation with the self.

The central aim of this paper is to critically analyze Lasch's argument. The paper will show that Lasch's perspective rests on the unfounded psychoanalytic assumption that the adult personality is crystallized during childhood socialization and remains largely resistant to change. It will further be shown that Lasch's Freudianism is at odds with his Marxist politics, and that his conceptualization of culture and personality rests upon a functionalist bias in his theoretical perspective. The conclusion of this paper is that Lasch does not provide any reliable evidence for the existence of a narcissistic personality type in contemporary America.     

Some problems of liberation

Abstract

The increasing complexification of society has challenged the established practice of government by exposing its deficiency of requisite variety. Governments have responded in two ways to amplify their variety: co-optation of elite actors from the private sector and from civil society on the one hand and devolution of state power to local actors on the other. These breaches in the traditional edifices of state governance have been hailed as real utopias in that they portend even greater possibilities for self-management in society. It is proposed that Stafford Beer's Viable System Model (VSM) holds the key not only to comprehending these developments but of dealing with many of the so-called problems of liberation     

Modelling Mindsets of an Agency

Abstract

This article introduces a culturally based socio-cognitive agency meta-model built from ‘living systems’ theory. The agency is adaptive. It has a normative personality with an epistemic state determined by its three formative traits, which have a control function and can take bi-polar epistemic values (‘enantiomers’). Combined together, they give eight different cognitive types, i.e. eight different types of personality mindset. These personality mindset types are influenced by the culture and the social environment to which the agency is bound. The traits can be used to explain the what, why, and how of dynamic agency behaviour in complex situations.     

Healthy organization: analysing its meaning based on the HERO Model / Organizaciones saludables: analizando su significado desde el Modelo HERO

Abstract

The aim of this study is to analyse the meaning of healthy organization from an empirical-theoretical perspective based on the HERO Model (HEalthy & Resilient Organizations). Analyses were performed by four independent judges on 14 interviews carried out with 14 CEOs or human resources managers in 14 Spanish organizations using content analysis. Qualitative results show: (1) a partial overlap in the categories proposed by the theoretical model (based on the concordance index, Cohen’s Kappa and ICC); and (2) that the empirical definition mainly focuses on employees’ psychosocial health as a key element of the meaning of healthy organization. Finally, categorical matrixes provide evidence of subcategories emanating from the key elements that comprise a healthy organization. Results as well as theoretical and practical implications are discussed based on the HERO Model.     

Tracing disorder across theories of autism,empathy, and mental health care

Abstract

Categories of mental disorders are generally understood through a biomedical paradigm of clinical research, diagnosis, and intervention. Here, diagnoses operate as professional tools, facilitating care organization and information exchange across diverse social contexts. In this article, I focus on how the diagnosis of autism-spectrum disorder operates in this manner. Autism conceived as a biomedical disorder is then contrasted with proposals by the neurodiversity movement, who understand core qualities of autism as alternative expressions of otherwise normal processes of brain development. Finally, I supplement these conversations with insights from Gerald Edelman’s theory of neural plasticity and Felix Guattari’s paradigm of ethico-aesthetic care. Understood together, these allow mental disorders and community care generally to be reconceived in terms of networks of expressive, embodied, and dynamically embedded rhythms that transcend individual persons. This serves, additionally, to illustrate a concept of empathy that traverses neurological, psychological, and sociocultural domains.     

Borderline Personality Disorder and Hospitalization

SUMMARY

This chapter reviews and discusses the issues and controversies related to the hospitalization of suicidal patients with a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder. It highlights the challenges faced by both the clinical staff and a prototypical patient during a hospitalization. Included are a discussion of the transference and counter-transference that arise during inpatient treatment, the stressors on the staff as well as on the patients themselves. The chapter offers suggestions for enhanced in-hospital treatment, including increased collaborative decision-making, clear and realistic short- and long-term goals for patient and family, and increased supervision and ongoing education of staff.     

Psychiatric Symptomatology in a Deaf College Population Affecting Diagnosis and Treatment

Abstract

As the mental health needs of the deaf receive increased recognition, issues of diagnosis and treatment become vital. Several characteristic behavioral patterns are frequently encountered which often confuse diagnosis, particularly in clinicians inexperienced with hearing-impaired individuals. These behavioral characteristics of suspiciousness, the use of odd or idiosyncratic language, difficulties in expression of affects, and acting out behaviors may create a tendency to overdiagnose serious mental illness. In addition, an understanding of the impact of deafness on an individual's personality development is crucial to an intelligent choice of treatment approach. These difficult issues of differential diagnosis and treatment are discussed in the context of the psychotherapeutic experiences of a hearing and nonsigning clinician working with deaf college students.     

Pilot study of a personality-based approach to assessing eating disorder and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder symptom risk in college men and women

Abstract

Objective: To conduct a pilot test of the validity of using empirically derived personality types to characterize eating disorder (ED) risk in college students and resolve discrepancies regarding the role of perfectionism and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) symptoms.

Participants: Man and woman undergraduate students (N?=?169) at a small, private university. Data were collected from February to May 2016 and 2018. Methods: Participants completed self-report measures of personality (perfectionism, impulsivity, and effortful control) and psychopathology (EDs, OCD). Results: Our analyses replicated three validated personality types: overcontrolled, undercontrolled, and resilient. Analysis of variances demonstrated perfectionism, ED, and OCD symptoms were significantly elevated in the overcontrolled subtype. There was no interaction by sex. Conclusions: These findings suggest that personality types may be useful for classifying ED risk and OCD symptoms in college students across sexes. Further study and relevance to prevention and intervention efforts to reduce the burden of EDs on college campuses will be discussed.     

A comparison of the Viable System Model and Seven Models of Risk with the effects of the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation

Abstract

A strong need to respond to threats to the credibility of large corporations and their auditors in the wake of scandal led to the passage of legislation focused on controls rather than control. The limitations of this approach are discussed and compared with the more comprehensive perspective of a whole systems approach. Stafford Beer's Viable System Model(VSM) and the Seven Models of Risk published by the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants(CICA) are described. They are compared with one another and found to be compatible. The response to Sarbanes-Oxley, in contrast, has led to a great deal of effort spent on compliance activities and their verification. It is contended in this paper that this is not as effective as a systems approach for constraining error and fraud, and promoting strong ethical values such as transparency and common commitment to shared objectives.     

Youth-Adult Partnership in Community Organizing

Abstract

This paper presents a case study of a campaign developed around sexuality education policy by a national youth-focused organization, Advocates for Youth, and its network of youth activists. The paper provides an overview of the national sexuality education debate and the specific strategies youth and adults use in partnership to advocate for a comprehensive approach to the education. The case study of the My Voice Counts!Campaign provides insight into the creation and evolution of a youth-adult partnership approach to community organizing, beginning with an online activism campaign and resulting in local youth-led projects to improve sex education policies and curricula. Following an analysis of the Campaign's accomplishments, the paper lays out recommendations for action and research to demonstrate the positive effects of this form of community practice.