It was the eighties and still many expert theorists considered organizations as rational means through which groups of people were coordinated and controlled in pursuit of a goal (Amorós, 2012).
Its verticality, its departmental character and authority relations were recognized from an objectivist, quantitative and positivist perspective. That was believed at that time, continuing to think that way will be the equivalent of wearing flared trousers and hairspray for the tousled hair right now.
Now, almost two decades into the 21st century, organizations are known to be much more than that. At this time it is recognized that
an administrative discipline is not enough to study them, not even merely economic. To achieve its multidimensional understanding, multiple disciplines are also required, ranging from the classical Administration and Economics to the unthinkable Linguistics or Philosophy, through Sociology, Psychology, Biology and Narrative.
And it is that organizations are now understood, from an expanded perspective, as entities of human coexistence that consist of open systems integrated by people with common intentions who interact as a whole articulated by conversational networks that are raised there in the search for explicit higher purposes or implicitly agreed (Soto, 2001). They are living beings that, inevitably, have a behavior that is expressed even in moods, that is, they think, reason and also get excited, that is, the emotions of their members are collectivized, transforming those multiple emotional energies into one. The foregoing becomes a singularity: none resembles another since their particular cultures give them their own organizational personality.
Organizations, made up of groups, also self-organize influenced by these groups of people who make life in it. As Gibson (2006: 7) states: "Groups in organizations also have a powerful effect on individual behavior and organizational performance."
It is also pertinent to highlight that in organizations we can observe the phenomenon described by the Chilean scientist Humberto Maturana as Autopiesis, that is, the ability to self-organize that living beings have. In other words, in the absence of an established order, the same organization provides it, although it is difficult to understand it as in the case of chaos.
Knowing the above, it is worth asking: Can the organization be managed as it was thirty years ago? The answer is obvious but it is not.
Although we might think that it is absurd to think that we can manage organizations with the same precepts of the middle of the last century, some continue to insist on managing companies under the approach of outdated paradigms; who resist (with good intentions) to give way to new ideas that bring new ways of approaching their understanding. It also turns the organization into a kindergarten of prehistoric beings who, although mobilized, do not advance due to inadequacy. In this scenario, where it is worthwhile to insist that science and organizational practice have been integrated to significantly increase the way of understanding how and why what happens happens, this new understanding is necessary to direct intentions and efforts aimed at mobilizing it towards spaces of satisfaction, achievement and sustainability from different approaches of interest.
Bibliography
Amorós, Eduardo (2012) Organizational Behavior. In search of the development of competitive advantages. Lime. Editions Universidad Católica Santo
Toribio de Mogrovejo.
Gibson, James (2006) Organizations. Behavior., Structure and Processes. Mexico. Mcgraw-Hill.
Soto, Eduardo (2001) Organizational Behavior. Impact on Emotions. Mexico. Thomson Learning
