Management Observation and Communication Theory and Organizational Information

The identification of basic principles that apply to all aspects of the knowledge domain of a discipline is important. Such fundamentals define the discipline and instruct its development. This process, nevertheless, may be pursued too narrowly--and schools of management thought often do so. These schools of thought generally seek principles and methods that apply equally in all different kinds of organizations. In doing so, they ignore an important aspect of the objects they observe, that organizations are part of a highly dynamic, currently ongoing, evolutionary process. Relatively recent emergents, exchange-based societies are composed of organizations competing for survival with dynamic, ever-changing internal purposes and external goals. The competition itself is management and unique management patterns emerge in different organizations. Management science needs a conceptual framework that instructs the development of organization-specific management theories. Management observation and communication theory (MOCT) is one step in this direction. MOCT is essentially an integration of linguistic-mathematical theory (L-M theory) and living systems theory (LST). L-M theory is a pure system--defined by the interrelationships of its own elements, and thus does not depend on any particular empirical element. LST views existence in the context of concrete systems and particularly from the vantage of living systems. By integrating these general systems theories, MOCT instructs the discovery and development of internal purposes and external goals unique to particular organizations. L-M theory synthesizes information about an organization's internal processes into general statements of purposes and connects those statements to similarly general statements of external goals. LST focuses MOCT on the processes and structures managers control and in which they compete. This paper overviews the central ideas and methods of MOCT. Some examples of methods suggested by the theory are given to illustrate how MOCT is applied. Keywords organizations; management; systems theory; living systems theory; linguisticmathematical theory
INTRODUCTION Management observation and communication theory (MOCT) (Heiskanen and Swanson, 1992) is an integration of linguistic--mathematical theory (L-M theory) (Heiskanen, 1975; Heiskanen and Airaksinen, 1979) and living systems theory (LST) [...]