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“Whoever Owns the Gold Makes the Rules”—Dysfunctionalities in the Organization’s Purpose

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Abstract

The purpose has emerged in the previous chapter as one of the key factors determining the organization’s overall equilibrium. Who defines the purpose determines not only the organization’s equilibrium and but also its capacity to process complexity. This chapter will introduce the reader to the dysfunctionalities that can emerge if one system element usurps the organization’s purpose definition process. It will first discuss the dysfunctionalities related to the operational organization followed by the ones having their cause in the metasystem. Finally, this chapter will show the reader how the VSM can be used to describe and assess leadership styles.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    All figures in this chapter related to the VSM are or contain adapted (detail) views from Beer (1995b: 136, Fig. 37), if not specified otherwise. For the corresponding permission details, see the reference section at the end of this chapter.

References

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Correspondence to Wolfgang Lassl .

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Lassl, W. (2019). “Whoever Owns the Gold Makes the Rules”—Dysfunctionalities in the Organization’s Purpose. In: The Viability of Organizations Vol. 2. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-16473-7_14

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