Is the “ethics” that you are seeking something beyond the heuristics of behaviour required to maintain or strive towards an aesthetic?
Are you looking for something that is situationally specific to an organisation and it’s inbuilt endeavour?
If so, is that really something distinct, or more a calibration effort to ensure aesthetic (and associated ethic/heuristic) recognition and acceptance in a group of people?
(I.e. can organisations actually have aesthetics, and therefore ethics, that differ in any way from the people of which they are comprised?)
I certainly am aiming for something situationally specific to an organisation, but I’m not sure I’d describe it as an aesthetic, although if what you mean by aesthetics are behavioural affordances , then I have to admit I’ve never thought of them that way, and that’s really interesting.
To your second point, I’d say treating an organisation as an ecology avoids having to choose between different scales, and treating only one of them as real. So, whether an organisation has a mission or endeavour to which teams conform as cogs in a machine, or whether those teams are in fact all there is to an organisation, is not a choice if want to make once and for all, because the relative explanatory and political power of those levels would change over time.
But what I would say is that an organisation that has the ability to respond as an organisation OR as a collection of teams OR even as a collection of individuals is far more adaptable than one that cannot.
Is the “ethics” that you are seeking something beyond the heuristics of behaviour required to maintain or strive towards an aesthetic?
Are you looking for something that is situationally specific to an organisation and it’s inbuilt endeavour?
If so, is that really something distinct, or more a calibration effort to ensure aesthetic (and associated ethic/heuristic) recognition and acceptance in a group of people?
(I.e. can organisations actually have aesthetics, and therefore ethics, that differ in any way from the people of which they are comprised?)
Thanks for the comment, Faruk
I certainly am aiming for something situationally specific to an organisation, but I’m not sure I’d describe it as an aesthetic, although if what you mean by aesthetics are behavioural affordances , then I have to admit I’ve never thought of them that way, and that’s really interesting.
To your second point, I’d say treating an organisation as an ecology avoids having to choose between different scales, and treating only one of them as real. So, whether an organisation has a mission or endeavour to which teams conform as cogs in a machine, or whether those teams are in fact all there is to an organisation, is not a choice if want to make once and for all, because the relative explanatory and political power of those levels would change over time.
But what I would say is that an organisation that has the ability to respond as an organisation OR as a collection of teams OR even as a collection of individuals is far more adaptable than one that cannot.