A unified open systems model for explaining organisational change - Information Systems Foundations: Constructing and Criticising - page 127

and without referring to external factors, a purposive system will perform in an efficient
and effective manner. This belief has become the foundation of the machine metaphor
or the mechanistic organisation (Morgan, 1997).
A prevalent example of a management system built on a closed system model is a machine
bureaucracy, which is still, to various degrees the prevailing paradigm in most organisa-
tions (Brown, 1992; Beetham, 1996; Du Gay, 2000). The main objective of a bureaucracy
is to promote efficiency and control in systems through the following: a fixed division
of labour; a hierarchy of offices; a set of general rules that govern performance; a separ-
ation of personal from official property and rights; selection of personnel on the basis
of technical qualifications; and employment viewed as a career by participants (Scott,
1998). From an engineering viewpoint, it is a superbly designed system based on tech-
nical rationality, aimed at maximising operational efficiency and control. However, the
emphasis on internal operational efficiency without referring to external factors can
result in system-environment misalignment. In addition, the sole concentration on control
without flexibility may well cause poor adaptation, which leads to unsatisfactory per-
formance in the long run.
Closed systems and change
One possible explanation for the existence of organisations that continuously remain in
a steady state condition is that they reside in a relatively static environment (e.g. some
not-for-profit organisations). When the environment is relatively static, stable, and
predictable, interactions and relationships between the organisation and its environment
are trivial and, thus, can be ignored or otherwise managed (Robbins, 1990). The closed
system model was universally adopted in management theory development during the
early 20th century. However, the environment has changed dramatically over the past
century and the direction of change is toward an increase in both complexity and dy-
namism (Neumann, 1997; Robbins, 1990). A model that was valid in the past might not
be effective in describing, explaining, and predicting organisational phenomena in a
changing context. For example, the Just-in-Time (JIT) inventory system increases the
alignment between the production system and its environment, giving a substantial in-
crease in operational efficiency and a reduction in inventory cost (Chase and Aquilano,
1989; Greene, 1997; Gaither and Frazier, 1999).
If the human or work organisation is assumed to be a closed system, the direction of
change should go toward an equilibrium state in which entropy will maximised, according
to the second law of thermodynamics. In this case, the organisation as a system should
deteriorate rather than prosper over time. The increase in entropy suggests that the or-
ganisation and order of the system will be degraded and the system will run down.
Open systems and organisation theories
It was realised, by the 1960s, that the assumption that organisations are closed systems
was no longer tenable. The fact that organisations exchange resources with their envir-
onment is incompatible with the assumption in the closed systems model of lack of in-
teraction and interdependence between the system and its environment. This realisation
could possibly be explained by the increase in the complexity and dynamism of the
environment (e.g. technological, social, economic, and political) and the impact of these
changes on organisations required organisational theorists to rethink the validity of the
previous model and its assumptions. This led to the inception of a new generation of
theories, which were based on the open systems model, that were dominant during the
1960s and through the 1970s.