Literature Review - A Look at Current Books and Articles of Interest to Diversity and Vitality Practitioners

Each quarterly issue of Diversity Praxis will summarize and/or reflect upon at least one recent contribution to Organizational Diversity and Vitality.

Quantum Organizations: A New Paradigm for Achieving Organizational Success and Personal Meaning
by Ralph H. Kilmann
Davies-Black Publishing, 2001
$45.00 Cloth 344 pp

AUTHOR:
Ralph H. Kilmann, Ph.D., is an independent author / consultant who resides in Newport Coast, California. During 2002 and 2003, he served as the Visiting Scholar for the College of Business Administration, California State University at Long Beach, Formerly, he was the George H. Love Professor of Organization and Management at the Joseph M. Katz Graduate Scholl of Business, University of Pittsburgh - which was his professional home for thirty years. He earned both his B.S. and M.S. degrees in industrial administration from Carnegie Mellon University and his Ph.D. from the University of California at Los Angeles. Since 1975, he has been president of Organizational Design Consultants (ODC) - a firm specializing in quantum transformations. An internationally recognized authority on systems change, Kilmann has published more than fifteen books and 100 articles on strategic challenges and systems change - and has coauthored several diagnostic tools, including the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument and the Kilmann-Saxton Culture Gap Survey. He has consulted for numerous organizations throughout the United States and Europe, including AT&T, IBM, Ford, Kodak, Philips, Lockheed, Olivetti, TRW, General Electric, General Motors, Catalana de Gas, Wolseley, and Xerox. He has also consulted for numerous health-care, financial and government organizations, including the U.S. Bureau of the Census and the Office of the President. He is profiled in Who's Who in America and . His web site is at www.kilmann.com

SYNOPSIS:
Review by Richard Vicenzi
Global Diversity Institute

As we move into the 21st century, it is clear that the markets in which today's businesses operate have evolved in a ways that present very difficult challenges to even historically successful firms. More and more rapid responses to changing conditions are demanded by multiple constituencies and more and more companies. The effect is that managers are falling short in their solutions. In the US, we see the result in the deterioration and even demise of once great companies, the inability to maintain levels of employment and the quality of positions within the workforce, and a more rampant reliance on ethically questionable practices to present an acceptable face to the relevant constituents.

There is not much question that the nature of business has changed dramatically, and that appropriate new techniques and approaches are severely lacking. Many solutions have been proposed and implemented over the last two decades, some of which have had a measure of success. Rarely, however, has there been an analysis of the question of the internal workings of the organization that integrates questions of efficiency and effectiveness with corresponding consideration of both the impact and importance of external market and constituent influences as well as the reciprocal relationship between the organization and its individual employees. Ralph Kilmann, widely published management expert and until recently George H. Love Professor of Organization and Management at the University of Pittsburgh, has written an ambitious and provocative new approach to this dilemma.

He draws upon newly understood aspects of physics, human consciousness, and systems theory to explain the intricacies of interconnectedness among industries, markets, organizations, and organization members. He presents a framework that allows the emergence of infrastructure, systems, and processes that are more finely tuned to both the objectives and values of the organization. This also builds an environment where employees develop and utilize their own self-awareness and understanding of their ability and opportunity to contribute. This not only makes possible continually improving organizational processes but also provides personal meaning and fulfillment.

Ralph Kilmann's purpose in this book is twofold. The first is to contrast what he calls "dueling paradigms": a Cartesian-Newtonian worldview that has been incorporated into the existing formal systems and processes of organizations, and a Quantum-Relativistic paradigm formulated by emerging 'new' science that includes recognition of dynamic interconnections that exist between both mind and matter. The second purpose is to offer a method for enabling self-aware consciousness and self-transformation in organizations that can create the conditions necessary for quantum organizations.

Organizational transformation requires a fundamental shift in how all members of the organization see, think, and behave. In identifying the essential changes, Kilmann digs into 7 diametrical oppositions between the Cartesian-Newtonian paradigm and the Quantum-Relativistic paradigm.

Kilmann challenges the reader in two ways in his approach to the book. First, he divides the 315 pages of text into only 7 chapters that range between 40 and 70 pages long. He believes that shorter chapters fragment holistic categories and inhibit deep introspection. Then, as an introduction to the description of his proposed approach to organizational structures and processes, Kilmann challenges the reader to wrap his or her mind around concepts that he admits are "mind-blowing and paradigm breaking." He devotes a long chapter (he allows that this chapter can be read later if it seems too much to absorb in the beginning) to a somewhat detailed discussion of Newtonian physics and the new understanding initiated by Einstein's theories of relativity, making specific note of von Neumann's conclusion that the only possible solution to what is called the "quantum measurement paradox" is that the world exists in a state of possibility except when observed by a conscious mind.

Provocative questions emerge from this realization of the nature of the physical world. A growing number of physicists are gravitating to a view consistent with ideas in philosophy (James), psychology (Jung), and theology (de Chardin) of an evolving cosmic consciousness, collective unconscious, or "meta-mind", giving rise to an "implicit order" (Bohm). Within this, it is the divergent experiences in life of each person that create different psychological filters and influence how each individual affects, and is affected by, this universal unconscious.

Kilmann establishes that the Quantum-Relativistic Paradigm is most relevant to organizational life by distinguishing between inert (molar) objects, whose movement is determined totally by external forces, and monads, entities capable of self-motion. A monad "decides for itself what it is, when and how it will move, and why." The behavior of molar objects is explained comprehensively by Newtonian mechanics. The behavior of monads is much better explained by quantum mechanics.

Since organizations and the people who compose them are driven by self-motion, any attempt to explain or modify their behavior using frameworks incorporating essentially Cartesian-Newtonian principles reduces them to the equivalent of inert objects. That reduction ignores the important and unpredictable influences and feedback mechanisms that provide the potential for self-motion, self-organization, and self-transformation.

Traditional management practices and organizational theory are based in Cartesian-Newtonian ideas, relegating employees to control by external reinforcement and coercion. The inert-object organization suppresses quantum thinking, the integration of left and right brain activity that is vital in creative thinking and leadership in organizations, and the basis for transdisciplinary creativity, structural change, and organizational transformation.

Kilmann states that an organization must evolve quantum infrastructure before members can become fully functioning self-motion monads capable of quantum thinking, the basis for self-designing, implementing and improving formal systems and value added processes. Failure to create quantum infrastructure is the primary reason why initiatives to achieve organizational transformation fail.

Kilmann honors necessity of right and left brain integration through the generous use of symbolic figures (there are over 100) to illustrate the progression of his narrative. He steps the reader through the parallel transformations of old to new paradigm in both physics and organizations. He equates the coalescence of light waves and particles into atoms that fall into the infrastructure for inorganic and organic entities in nature - which gives rise to plants, animals and finally people who can potentially create self-motion processes - with the coalescence of transformational infrastructure components (culture, skills, and team dynamics) that are designed to generate self-awareness, quantum thinking and collaboration - resulting in formal systems that give rise to conscious process management improvements. The transformation from inert-object organization to quantum organization requires the following shifts:

NEWTONIAN ORGANIZATION	QUANTUM ORGANIZATION
N1 The Exclusion of Consciousness in the Design of Formal Systems	Q1 The Inclusion of Consciousness in Self-Designing Systems
N2 The Organization as Passive Jobholders Following Official Procedures	Q2 Organizations as Conscious Participants Actively Involved in Self-designing Processes
N3 The White Space Between Passive Jobholders as Implicitly Ignored	Q3 Cross-Boundary Processes as Explicitly Addressed and Infused with Information
N4 The Unconscious Administration of a Rigidly Structured Organization	Q4 The Conscious Self-Management of a Flexibly Designed Organization
N5 The External Control of Passive Jobholders	Q5 The Internal Commitment of Active Participants
N6 The Enforced Segregation of Passive Jobholders	Q6 The Empowered Relations among Active Participants
N7 The Eventual Self-Destruction of a Rigidly Structured Organization	Q7 The Eternal Self-Transformation of Flexibly Designed Organizations

This shift takes place through a specific sequencing of orchestrated change activities (tracks) that are designed to address the three transformational components: Quantum Infrastructure (Culture, Skills, and Team tracks), Formal Systems (Strategy-Structure and Reward System tracks), and Process Management (Gradual Process Improvement, Radical Process Improvement, and Learning Process Improvement tracks).

Much of what Kilmann advocates in Quantum Organizations is not new. His eight tracks will be familiar concepts to anyone experienced in organizational design and development efforts, and several are directly analogous to popular management initiatives of the past decade (team building, TQM, business process reengineering, statistical process control, continuous improvement, learning organizations). But the framework within which he places them is broader and more rigorous to a degree not often seen in "transformational" organizational literature. He argues that the dismal failure rate of past initiatives lies in the isolation from the system as a whole in which many of these change efforts have been introduced. He is adamant that the sequence of the implementation of the eight tracks must be honored if the transformation is not to be short-circuited by the prevailing forces of the old paradigm. He also is very clear about the difficulties inherent in tackling organizational transformation and the discomfort that is a necessary aspect of the breakthroughs prerequisite to a successful effort, recognizing the pitfalls awaiting change agents at several levels. He addresses the intricacies of deconstructing the cultural norms, implicit assumptions, and group processes that unconsciously rigidify organizations and add to the difficulty of solving complex challenges. He does not shy away from the necessity of dismantling dysfunctional norms and exposing inaccurate assumptions that suppress full utilization of the talents of each member, and perpetuate the obstacles to seeing, thinking, and acting in sync with expectations of both internal and external stakeholders, and in the best interests of the organization.

Kilmann devotes a long chapter to the creation of the formal systems that make managing the enterprise in a holistic manner possible. This involves the perpetual attention to definition, alignment, and deployment of managerial processes across the organization's strategic architecture, its structural forms, and its reward practices. Readers may find themselves skimming through much of the laundry list of elements that must be included in the consideration of the formal system. This treatment is too cursory to provide a detailed blueprint for the practitioner who is unfamiliar with the breadth of these elements (earlier in the book, Kilmann refers the "meticulous reader" to several of his previous publications for more in depth treatment), but it does provide a methodical assessment of the variety of factors that influence the coherence and success of a transformational initiative and therefore the degree to which each must be considered and integrated into the design and implementation.

The quantum organization is capable of being aware of both its internal and external processes and making them explicit; therefore it can also continuously modify these processes for both efficiency and effectiveness. To do so, however, the boundary between the internal and external elements of the organization must be transcended, Kilmann claims, through becoming explicit to the experience (seeing, thinking and acting) of all members, just as does the split between the human mind and the physical world. This allows the restructuring of categories and relationships in each member's mind/brain, and the realignment of activities organized around relevant business processes rather than by management function. This also opens the door to the self-reflection, both on an organizational and personal level, necessary to make a learning organization capable and committed to process improvement, enhanced infrastructure, aligning systems, and developing self-aware consciousness.

Kilmann's premise is that the work of transforming the organization simultaneously accomplishes the work of transforming individuals within the organization. As the organization proceeds through the sequence that moves it from a Newtonian Organization to a Quantum Organization, members, through the activities involved in creating necessary infrastructure, restructured formal systems, and the subsequent process improvements, are attaining a self-aware consciousness that transforms them from passive observers to active participants. The more diversity the organization has among its members, the more thoroughly each member, through the dialogue involved in active participation in the examination and modification of processes, activities, rewards and the reasons why they are instituted, is exposed to a variety of cultures, assumptions, perspectives, and ways of cataloguing and categorizing.

"Consequently, members' minds/brains undergo gradual and radical restructuring just by frequently engaging in meaningful interactions about difficult subjects with diverse others. Furthermore, members are frequently challenged to examine their traditional (Cartesian-Newtonian) ways of seeing, thinking, and behaving. In the process, they discover that quantum-relativistic perspectives of reality better portray a global, living, evolving economy - and they see why their active participation (versus passive compliance) is the key to self-transformation." (author's italics)

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