Patterns & Metaphors
Strategic configurations
Template:
Whether in sport, military or business confrontations with competing forces, there is a tendency to elaborate alternative strategies which can be used if they are liable to be more advantageous. The team may therefore undergo training in response to a variety of possible scenarios, as with military manoeuvres, war games and management games. In each case the aim is to develop the ability of the group to switch to an alternative posture and work through that pattern until it is out-manoeuvred by the opposition. Each such strategy may be explicitly codified with the role of each person clearly defined. The principle of alternation between postures is especially clear in certain forms of martial art.
Metaphor:
This suggests that societies should be able to work through a variety of alternative organizational patterns according to the crisis they face.
[Features] The stress on the need to switch between organizational modes rather than treating any particular one as desirable in its own right. The explicit definition of each pattern and clarification of the transitions between them. Recognition of the inherent limitation of any particular pattern in a turbulent environment.
[Contrast] This approach has been extensively explored with respect to military strategies (although the number of alternatives in great power nuclear confrontation is presumably several orders of magnitude lower than in conventional warfare or team sport). A limited variant is applied for the alternative organization of society in response to civil defence crises. Extension of the approach to other crises has not been envisaged except through the use of various tactical economic devices (e.g. 'belt tightening') which do not involve temporary social reorganization. Multinational enterprises make some use of this approach.
[Keys] Range of organizational patterns required to contain the range of (un) foreseeable crises. Whether any intermediary 'rest' posture exists or whether all postures are a response to a prevailing condition.<
