Maira and Scott-Morgan state that, "The word management has acquired connotations of certainty and control. However the rigidity of these structures can result in inflexibility in the organization that cannot step with the dance of change. To be most innovative, it must operate on the edge of chaos. At the other extreme if there would be no organizational control at all then an organization wouldnt exist. The key question here is: How can a manager set the right conditions to encourage a balance between organic chaos and mechanistic stagnation?" (Mairacs, page 230)
To get midway between innovation/chaos and goal-oriented/mechanical rules, there are, again according to Maira and Scott-Morgan in their interesting study, "The Accelerating Organization" (Mairacs, page 235) , the following conditions that need to be satisfied:
* 1. Creative tension between shared vision and acknowledged reality
* 2. Permeable organizational boundaries
* 3. Flexible resource architecture
* 4. Minimal rules
The strategic task is how much experimentation and innovation a company needs for success in business and how much tension is acceptable (see 1). The operational task is to ensure that at least three dimensions (see 2, 3 and 4) are aligned with respect to each other. Knowledge has to be developed as part of these tasks.
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