Organisational Ecology

nant peris

These articles apply ecological concepts to organisational life: substrate, succession, indicator species, ecotones, the adaptive cycle, as working analytical tools. Ecologists learned long ago that we cannot measure a living system directly; we learn to read the surrounding and underlying conditions and the signals they give off. We think organisations deserve the same discipline.

A note on the name: academic “organisational ecology” (Hannan and Freeman’s tradition) studies populations of organisations, their founding and failure rates. Our interest runs the other way: what happens when we treat a single organisation as an ecosystem, and think like ecologists inside it.

Otter at the British Wildlife Centre, Newchapel, Surrey by Peter Trimming, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Organisational Indicator Species: being an Organisational Ecologist

The more elaborate and expensive our system for understanding something, the less we may actually understand it. Ecologists face the same problem — you can’t measure the health of an ecosystem directly — and solved it by learning to read indicator species instead. This piece asks what those look like in organisations, why the same signal means different things in different habitats, and why nobody’s listening to the worm at the bottom of the dashboard.

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peat bog in derbyshire

Rewetting the Organisational Substrate

Rewetting Organisations by Tom Geraghty Allowing the system to self-organise by improving the substrate: creating the underlying conditions for change. When I was studying ecology at university, one of the activities we undertook in our field trips was helping to

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ridge and furrow fields, leicestershire

Efficiency versus Resilience

Efficiency vs Resilience By Tom Geraghty Standardisation is often used as a way to increase organisational efficiency and scalability. Through reducing variation, we can standardise our tools, training, processes and more, enabling us to optimise systems and better achieve our desired

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ecotones and the edge effect

Ecotones & The Edge Effect

Welcome to the psychological safety newsletter and thanks for subscribing. You are amazing. This week discusses Ecotones and the Edge Effect, as well as polarisation at work, relational contracts and internal conferences. If you enjoy reading this newsletter, please share it via your social networks

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