Hi, welcome to week nine, Screen Side Chats. The first question I'm going to respond to is actually an old one. And if you go to the main forum outside the weekly chats, there's been one that's been kind of persisting for a while that I just missed, and I haven't had a chance to get to. But the course TAs directed my attention to it. So, thank you for bringing it to my attention. The question is, posed by Mahmoud Magdhi, and he says, a month ago, he says, I'm wondering how we can judge and say that this organization is bad? What kind of indicators or factors identify a bad organization? Of course, he says I'm not talking about financial terms here, not whether it makes a profit. So that's kind of an interesting question, and a variety of you actually tried to answer this, like Malik talked about quality management system efforts. And here, you try to establish best procedures or means for improvement. And then you look for compliance or fish and see kind of implications. And this is kind of a standard operating procedure that's often put in an organization to kind of develop organizational learning, right? You constantly improve on yourself. And you implement a process or procedure by which you do that, and you seek compliance across the organization, whereby they take up these procedures, these best procedures often, right? Now someone like Sayo rightly says that look, goals can alter this, like the efficiency may not be the only concern or indicator of bad. Or compliance with procedures may not be an indication of a good or a bad firm. And he gives the example of unethical and ethical kinds of efforts, like Red Cross, which may not make a profit or work very efficiently all the time, has a noble goal, whereas other organizations may not. Other people talked about whether the organization takes care of the employees, etc, and contributes to society. Jose said, can this meet goals? Do they meet their goals and so on? And it was really actually Patricia eventually comes back to the question of bad, how do you tell a bad organization? She says look, it's pretty easy to tell a bad organization. And she starts listing some things in this thread about how they lack clear goals, so their mission might be ambiguous or inconsistent. They may have poor communication. Notice this is a reference to social structure now, and on she goes. As I read all these, I started thinking, how did I actually think about an organization that's bad, given all the things I've read that you've posted, as well as kind of the readings I've done and the experiences I've had and the conversations with students, how could I kind of sum it up? And I think your intuitions are right that there's many dimensions on which you can judge an organization's performance or conduct or activity as deficient. And I think it depends on your perspective or standpoint from which you view this, right? So if your primary concern is the goal, then that would be the lens through which you would adopt. Now my personal view is perhaps less contextually dependent as, say, where you guys stand within an industry. I have this luxury where I can stand outside in a way as an academic. And my sense is that it's like how we talk about people, like children sometimes do bad things, or actions, but it doesn't necessarily mean that they're bad kids, right? And the same thing with organizations. They may have deficient features that don't work very well, but it doesn't mean they're bad organizations. Now, I think another way to think about it, too, is, if we look at the organizational elements, I think the way I would probably approach an organization in thinking about its quality and whether it's deficient or whether it's succeeding in some regards, would be through the diamond that Scott depicts early in the course for us, where we have the five elements, right? So you have participants, social structure, goals, and technology. And in addition, each of those elements has a relationship with each other, as well as with the environment. So you can imagine a diagram, like a diamond with each element, participants, social structure, goals, technology. And outside is environment relating to participants, environment relating to goals, environment relating to social structure, environment relating to technology. And in each of these we can think of how participants, within themselves, you can have deficient characteristics of the elements. So like participants turn over too quickly, the goals are unclear, the social structure is conflicted or resistant or fractured. You can think of the technology as bunk, it doesn't work. So, just by themselves or the environment as volatile and unable for an organization to survive in it no matter what, like a revolution, right? So we can think of those on their own, but in relationship to each other as well, we can think of conditions that would be deficient within an organization or operational in a good way. So in social structure, for example, we could think that participants may not like coercive kinds of relationships or social structure, or a heavy organizational culture that's integrated, maybe layered on to these participants and may make them leave these organizations. So that the participants that you invite into an organization as well, the ones that you recruit, that you select in, may have different views from the goals, right? And so you have a fit issue there between participants and goals. You can also have a misfit between the goals of the organization and the environment with which it's in, right? And on it goes. So [COUGH] thinking about the elements in relation to each other, as well as on their own, when you consider an organization, might help you identify more systematically features that may be deficient or could be improved, as well as kinds of potential asset, places that you have strengths, where these alignments and associations across elements of your organization are performing well. Now that's my sense using the readings, and what I like about it is that it feels more systematic, as opposed to thinking about my own personal sequential experiences through organizations here. It's kind of, I can extrapolate out and draw on a bunch of experiences and start to see how maybe a variety of you would view goals as highly salient. Others of you may think it's all about the technology if the product works well. Others of you may think it's purely a social structure issue or just the context, the environment, the physical and cultural and economic environment with which in your firm's position may make it deficient. Location, location, location, we've all heard that with business, right? Where you place it can dictate quite a bit about whether it functions well or not. So those are my thoughts, hopefully, they help add something to your thread in the conversation, which I also thought was quite insightful. So thanks for drawing it to my attention, CTAs. And thank you, Mahmoud, for proposing it and bearing with me and waiting a month for me to answer it.
