Self-orgdnixing Systems Perspective in the Study of Organizational Communication

During the 197Os, several communication and organizational theorists advocated a systems perspective to the study of organizational communication (Katz and Kahn 1978; Monge 1977). Theoretical approaches developed in the 1940s and triggered by interest in biological phenomena, resulted in the broad frameworks of General Systems Theory (Bertalanffy 1968; Miller 1978) and cybernetics (Wiener 1954). Inspired by these developments, organizational and communication scholars conceptualized organizations as “open” structural-functional systems that had clearly identified boundaries, through which they transacted information and materials with the environment, including vendors and clients (Monge 1977). In order to accomplish its functions, the organization itself comprised many interrelated “subsystems” such as managerial, technological, and strategic units (Kast and Rosenzweig 1973). This image of the organization spawned a new vocabulary, considerable theorizing, and a modest amount of empirical research. Scholars operating from a systems perspective rejected the notion that there was one best way of organizing. Instead they offered contingency theories. For instance, Burns and Stalker (1961) proposed that the optimum structure for an organization was contingent on its