My proposed PhD research topic is, until now, still..‘Corporate DNA: Strategic Direction of Firms’. Ken Baskin (1998) propounded in his book that organizations has much in common with life. That the concept of Corporate DNA is based on the notion from the biological sciences that states that: “DNA is life’s ultimate tool for creative problem-solving.” By analogy with the presence and accessibility of DNA in every cell of an organism. If one regards a corporate body as a legal entity, one that can sue and be sued, then it follows that and organization or a corporate body is akin to a human body with DNA and that drives or keeps the corporate body alive, grow and capable of learning or in this case, organizational learning..is what we term as corporate DNA. Concepts from the sciences of complexity is believed to be able to contain and legitimate the premise. (read Reviews: Corporate DNA: Learning from Life, Ken Baskin, Brian Goodwood, Emergence, Vol 1, issue 2, pages 160-162,1999)
Baskin (1989) focuses on developing a different more organic ways of thinking about organizations. Which brings me to Einstein’s Dilemma: ‘…caught between a changed world and the conviction that we already know the answers, we are trapped in between old ways we know do not work and new ways we can’t hope to understand. No matter how hard we try, most of us will remain trapped until we begin re-asking all the questions we were sure we’d answered’.
I then begin to look at mechanistic and organic concepts of organizations/models (Burns & Stalker, 1961) and some of the theories we cannot ignore (as a basis of our theoretical framework) would include but not limited to, the following: Chaos Theory, Living Systems, Adaptive Systems, Complexity Theory, Ecology of organizational relationships, Organic Thinking (mode of), Bureaucracy, Self-organisation (Margaret Wheatley), Learning Organisation (Peter Senge), Communities (M Scott Peck).
Epistemologies
3 important normal sciences post positivist epistemologies:
1. scientific realists
2. semantic conception of theories
3. evolutionary epistemology
No theory ever attempts to represent or explain the full complexity of some phenomenon. A theory is intended to provide a generalized description of a phenomenon, say a firm’s behavior. Complexity theory views organizations as ‘complex adaptive systems that coevolve with the environment through the self-organising behavior of agents navigating ‘fitness landscapes’ of market opportunities and competitive dynamics. Complexity theory suggests that ‘self-organisation is the natural default behavior. The freedom of activity is entrepreneurship is a key enabling self -organising behavior. Models of organizations that are based on living systems are naturally organic and adaptive. (‘We run the risk of becoming confused with word salad’). I need to read up more on complexity theory theory and brush up on my intended use of Yin (1994) case research methodology. Also need to look at Global Brain (Bloom, 2000).
Positivism vs Social Constructionism
It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data (Arthur Conan Doyle). And it would be folly to ignore, at the outset, in understanding the two contrasting traditions: Positivism versus social constructionism. The key idea of positivism is that the social world exist externally, and that its properties should be measured through objective methods, rather than being inferred subjectively through sensation, reflection or intuition. The view that positivism provides the best way of investigating human and social behavior originated as a reaction to metaphysical speculation (Aiken, 1956). As such this philosophy has developed into distinctive paradigm over the last one and a half century. The term ‘paradigm’ became vogue among social scientists, particularly throughout the work of Kuhn (1962) who used to describe the progress of scientific discoveries in practice, rather than how they are subsequently reconstructed within text books and academic journals.
The essence of social constructionism is then, firstly, the idea that reality is determined by people rather than by objective and external factors.The task of the social scientist should not be to gather facts and measure how often certain patterns occur, rather to appreciate the different constructions and meanings that people place upon their experience. The focus should be on what people, individually and collectively, are thinking and feeling and attention should be paid to the ways they communicate with each other, whether verbally or non-verbally. We should therefore try to understand and explain why people have different experiences , rather than search for external causes and fundamental laws to explain behavior. Human action arises from the sense that people make of different situations, rather than as a direct external stimuli. (Mark Easterby-Smith et al, 2008)
