The term “ oscillated ” is the result of the fusion of the terms “ oscillate and paradox ”. It is a form of organization that does not try to solve paradoxes, but oscillates (navigates) between them.
According to Peter Litman, the creator of this organizational model, paradoxes have an alarm function that activates the organisation's immune system, removing it from its tendency to rigidity (Friedmann, 2003: 51).
The work will be carried out by "virtual teams", and this implies a new type of staff with new skills in the communication field, with the capacity for self-management, innovation, cultural tolerance, and flexibility.
The future is characterized by the surprising, the paradoxical and the unimaginable, so that it is impossible to maintain stability or to always have the possibility of long-term planning. Faced with this situation, organizations - and among them municipalities - require leaders, organizational forms and cultures endowed with a high degree of adaptation and resilience capacity (Friedmann, 2007).
Fig. Regimes order, chaos and frontier of chaos
Paradoxical management arises when environmental conditions are very changeable. We must then appeal to a logic that departs from linear forms of thought. In those situations, there can be no recipes whose ingredients are handled in exact amounts and with standardized cooking times.
Researchers from Hitotsubashi University reviewed the performance of the Toyota company. In addition to its manufacturing technologies, they found that the company had extraordinary flexibility. Apparently without strategy, the company developed in the midst of contradictions and paradoxes, which, far from considering anomalies, they accepted as a way of finding new ideas. The company had found six forces or principles that stressed the organization and that generated continuous innovation:
- "Move gradually, but also take big leaps. Cultivate frugality while spending large sums. Cultivate stability and a paranoid attitude. Respect the bureaucratic hierarchy and allow freedom to dissent. Keep communications simplified and complex."
Of course, these maxims must be taken with caution, carefully examining each new phase of the situation. It's hard to sell company directors on the idea that you don't have to worry about swimming in conflicting waters, but this allows us to innovate and increase reaction speed.
The traditional organizational configuration (bureaucratic, mechanistic) is rigid and has difficulty adapting to changing contexts and demands, with consequent internal coordination failures and low staff motivation.
Bibliography
- Contreras Torres, F. et al. (2012). The organization as a complex system: implications for the conceptualization of leadership ”. In Free Criterion N ° 16. Year 10 (January - June). Bogotá.Friedmann, R. (2007) “Reimagine! Municipal management in postmodern times ”(July). Santiago. Friedmann, R. (2003) “Public management in the XXI Century. Anticipating the changes to come. Towards an intelligent and constantly learning public sector ”. In Documents of the Faculty (November). Institute of Studies and Public Management of the Faculty of Political Sciences of the Central University of Chile. Toyota and the power of the paradox ”, In People and organizations (2008).
