The Future, Disposable Organizations and the Rigidities of Imagination
- 1 August 1995
- journal article
- research article
- Published by SAGE Publications in Organization
- Vol. 2 (3-4) , 427-440
- https://doi.org/10.1177/135050849523009
Abstract
Predictions of the future of organizations are variations on a theme of fantasy: reliably incorrect and usefully seductive. To illustrate a few general points about the role of imagination in human existence, some predictions about the future of organizations are developed from an interpretation of the environments that will shape organizational survival. The predictions emphasize the adaptiveness of populations of rigid, disposable organizations as well as some of the problems of sustaining rigidity. Imaginations of the future are portrayed as instruments of the organizational obstinacy required by such an adaptive system. Mention is made of one or two of the consequences of robbing fantasy of its innocence in this way.Keywords
This publication has 25 references indexed in Scilit:
- Collective Identity Formation and the International StateAmerican Political Science Review, 1994
- The myopia of learningStrategic Management Journal, 1993
- LEARNING BY KNOWLEDGE‐INTENSIVE FIRMS*Journal of Management Studies, 1992
- Variable risk preferences and the focus of attention.Psychological Review, 1992
- Random Walks and Organizational MortalityAdministrative Science Quarterly, 1991
- Innovation and Learning: The Two Faces of R & DThe Economic Journal, 1989
- Illusion and well-being: A social psychological perspective on mental health.Psychological Bulletin, 1988
- Technological Discontinuities and Organizational EnvironmentsAdministrative Science Quarterly, 1986
- The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational FieldsAmerican Sociological Review, 1983
- Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and CeremonyAmerican Journal of Sociology, 1977