What Happens When Nothing Happens? A Metabolic Perspective on Organizational Change

Organizations devote substantial effort to change. Yet despite this effort, many remain virtually the same. Vast resources are poured into numerous initiatives, yet it often seems as if the organization is standing still whilst running. Why does so much motion beget so little change? Drawing on systems thinking, organizational theory, productivity analysis, and biology, this session puts forward the notion that much organizational activity is metabolic rather than transformational. Just as living organisms devote much of their effort to maintaining and reproducing themselves, organizations expend substantial energy sustaining their viability. Living systems must also continuously determine what to incorporate, amplify, stabilize, transform, and expel. Organizations similarly devote substantial effort to distinguishing between signals that warrant adaptive response and noise that does not. Illustrating the thesis with case examples, the session introduces a parsimonious model of organizational metabolism and adaptation. The model distinguishes between the irreducible functions through which organizational viability is produced and the distributed socio-technical systems through which those functions become integrated, coordinated, and developed. Much as organs and connective tissues play different but complementary roles within living systems, both forms appear necessary for organizational adaptation. The session explains how organizations simultaneously change and remain the same, adapt to signals, and develop new capabilities whilst preserving their viability