Intervention in a Loosely Organized System: An Encounter with Non-Being

Abstract

Historically, organizational theory and the theory of organizational change have been preoccupied with highly structured organizations, the bureaucracy being the archetype. But recently what may be called a loosely organized system has attracted the attention of some theorists of organization and organizational change. Loosely organized systems come in all shapes and sizes, a familiar example being the ill-defined system consisting of a set of organizations, related but autonomous. If intervention is defined as a way of organizing to promote learning and change in social systems, then the question arises: How is this organizational task accomplished in a loosely organized system? This is the central question in this paper, which revolves around a case study of intervention in a system of community agencies: How does the interventionist shape an essentially integrative strategy to an essentially disintegrative social system?

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