Organizations as soap bubbles: An evolutionary perspective on organization design

In this paper we approach the problem of organizational order (that is, how patterns in organizational actions and design features emerge) from an evolutionary perspective. It is argued that constructivist rationalism, the doctrine that organizational order is the product of human design, is inadequate, for it conflates human action with human design. We argue that organizational order is neither the outcome of anthropomorphic design nor the product of sheer chance but the nonconscious outcome of evolutionary processes. Organizations are likened to soap bubbles: they consist of individuals acting in a quasi-random manner who are plastically controlled-that is, their actions are selected by-higher-level regulative processes concerned with survival. Quasi-random trial-and-error actions are the raw material that is subsequently transformed into a meaningful whole through reflection. The latter acts as a selection process and gives rise to an enacted organizational order that is retained and conditions further sensemaking.An early draft of this paper was presented at the conference Culture, Knowledge, Communications in Systems, July 1–4, 1992, University of the Aegean, Samos, Greece.