Organizations as technorganic symbiotic systems

Today's organizations are a composite of living (human resources) and non living technical components. For many years organizations, specifically business organizations, have been studied and managed as if they were either mechanical entities void of any other social system (the mechanistic or "Tayloristic" view of organizations), or as purely biological entities (the organic view of organizations). Some may claim there is a third view, the cybernetic organization in which information flow in the several components. There exists yet another view, that of the organization as a technorganic symbiotic system. An exact description of organizations is hard to obtain given there is no model that fully explains the complex nature of social systems and their behavior either as purely mechanical (technological) or purely organic systems. Thus current mental models for organizations prevent us from better predicting the behavior and performance of organizations. This paper describes the technorganic symbiotic interaction existing between the living and non-living components of an organization. A preliminary analysis and future research implications are also discussed.