ABSTRACT
This book seeks to establish a series of concepts and a theory of organization that treats enterprises—industrial, commercial, government, academic, or social—as living organisms. An enterprise, like an organism, must work to live. It can be created and grow to maturity, or it can wither and die. It can split into separate parts, each with a life of its own; it can merge with others to form an organism of a higher order. Some enterprises have a short life; others endure, adapting to changes in their environment or resisting until they become anachronisms. All, during their existence, employ human beings in a variety of roles, and require an organization, however primitive or transient, to relate those who work in the enterprise to each other and to the tasks they perform. The more complex the enterprise, the more complex the organization that is necessary to relate the parts to the whole, and the whole to its environment.
