ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses a contrast of the two conceptualisations of organisations as machines and living systems and how they hold important and very differing beliefs about management systems, processes and leadership behaviours and especially how best change can be achieved and sustained. The topic of emotions within organisations is still viewed as inappropriate and as having no place in a mechanistic context. A fundamental aspect of all living organisms is their capability to adapt. Viewing organisations as living systems is recognising they have the capacity to self-organise and move towards greater complexity and order as needed. In talking of living systems, we might imagine that the person has a lesser role and that there is a primacy of the whole over the single individual. The chapter concludes with situating gestalt as a needed relational and emergent organisation development (OD) approach, aligned to post-modern change practices and bringing experience and know-how to facilitate this in the personal and inter-subjective domain.
