BAH on the Health of Today’s Organizations
A survey in Strategy + Business magazine (a publication of consultancy BoozAllenHamilton) detects the sources of organizational dysfunction and finds that two thirds of all businesses are ‘unhealthy’, or as I would say they exhibit pathologies (and neuroses) and that these make them basically incapable of responding effectively and flexibly to economic events and changing customers needs and wants.
Most organizations are inherently unhealthy. That hypothesis is inspired by experience, informed by economic theory, and now supported by hard data.
There are some regional distinctions in Organizational Health, where Germany rates fairly OK, like the rest of Europe, in stark contrast to Japan or the US.
One thing that struck me is that in unhealthy organizations there is a lack of clear decision rights, besides the other syndromes like passive-aggressive behaviour (well, yes, neuroses galore) and over-(micro-)management.
