Message 7 Organisation - Co-operation
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Organisations exist to facilitate purposeful cooperation between individuals and groups. They establish shared structures, rules, interests and values to allow people to work together towards common goals and survival. The quality of cooperation within an organization ultimately determines its success or failure, as cooperation is needed to produce goods and services while achieving economic viability. Successful cooperation requires open communication of interests, transparency to establish trust, and a willingness by all partners to find compromises and invest in the shared endeavor. A culture of cooperation enables networks and communities to develop from simply working together into high performing groups that achieve meaningful objectives.
Message 7 Organisation - Co-operation
- 1. Message 7Basic concepts of organisation and co-operation Organisations are the distinctively structured and regulated form of purposeful interaction of individuals and groups. Said differently, organisations are purposeful co-operation of (groups of) people based on shared structures, rules, interests and values. The first and foremost objective of organisations (as of all systems) is striving for survival by fulfilling their purpose. Economic organisations must ful- fil a double purpose, they must produce the product or service they have been created for, and in doing so they must produce an eco- nomic yield that allows extended reproduction. Co-operation means working together for achieving individual and common advantage. Organisation It seems self-evident that organisations are a structured and regu- lated form of people interacting with each other. And for facilitating co-operation it is essential to understand organisation this way. But there are many more theories – in economics, law, political science, etc. - stating that organisations are characterised by a distinct framework of structures and rules. And if people are mentioned at all, they are in such a framework. In this view, organisations are containers with people in them. On the other extreme, there is a sociological theory on micropolitics (Bosetzky 1995; Burns 1961) that primarily conceives organisations as a number of individual people and groups of people with conflicting individual or group interests battling for power and influence so that the whole of the organisation, its basic purpose and raison d’être, seems to disappear in a haze of contradicting views, interests and orientations. With our definition, we want to stress the fact that certainly hierar- chical structures and rules make a difference, but it is just as cer- tain that through all micro-political irritations it is people who stand for the success or failure of organisations. Success or failure may depend on many factors, but in the first place they depend on the quality of work and on the quality of the organisation in which this work is done. It is the quality of co-operation which really makes the difference. We are looking at organisations with the eyes of facilitators, experts of communication who have the task to lead groups to successful co- The quality of co-operation makes the difference. 24.09.2008, 14:46:02
- 2. 2/2 operation. It is a view from a perspective of responsibility. Hence, our definition of organisation has a simple question in the back- ground: Which understanding of organisation helps to make the or- ganisation successful? Co-operation Successful co-operation, within or between organisations, is built on a number of aspects which must come together and be accomplished by the co-operating partners (Becker et al. 2007). First of all, with- out communicating about their interests in co-operation, partners will not be able to establish joint projects achieving predefined aims and solving perceived common problems. Transparency, knowing what is im- portant to know for the common purpose the network is pursuing, is a necessary condition for each partner’s capacity of measuring the perceived advantage of networking and co-operation as compared to competition. Possible conflict situations can only be settled in a sustainable way if there is mutual readiness to except compromise and to invest in terms of money, time and emotions into the common endeavour. Networks are exchange mechanisms striving for a win-win situation. Without commitment and mutual reliability, trust as a necessary condition of sustainability will not be growing. And without trust none of the other aspects will prosper. Facilitating can become an essential factor of building a trust-based culture of co-operation because it is completely oriented towards creating transparent problem-solving processes along with an open way of dealing with conflict. Facilitating establishes simple and transparent rules of fair exchange which in many cases become the procedural charter of networks. Obviously, facilitating cannot guar- antee reliability, but experience shows that transparent communica- tion creates higher degrees of commitment and hence, reliability. Mutual reliability (reciprocity) is the most important condition for creating and maintaining trust relationships and creating social capi- tal. Cf. Message 15: Learning networks – constructing social capital Cf. Message 9: Communities of practice and self-organisation A culture of co-operation is a necessary condition for developing communities of practice into communities of performance, i.e. not just of working together but working together to achieve something in common.