Free Access
Issue
E.J.E.S.S.
Volume 15, Number 1, 2001
Page(s) 89 - 109
DOI https://doi.org/10.1051/ejess:2001110
DOI: 10.1051/ejess:2001110


European Journal of Economic and Social Systems 15 N°1 (2001) 89-109

Dynamic of the organisation and structural inertia

Christian Poncet

LASER/CREDEN, University of Montpellier I, Av. de la Mer, BP 9606, 34054 Montpellier Cedex, France. E-mail: poncet@sceco.univ-montp1.fr

Abstract
The story of organisation is often related as a successive period of stability and crisis. This article is based on the hypothesis that it is the intra-organisational inertia (i.e.: the organisation lack of adaptation to any modifications of the environment) the cause of usual severe ruptures in the evolution of firms. Indeed if we consider as theorists of organisations that the interrelation settled between the organisation and its environment is structural, the questions of representation, the evolution and adaptation become essential to understand the dynamic organisation. Starting by a geometric construction a model describing the organisation dynamics will be introduced, with elements enabling us to understand what an organisational change is (construction of a taxonomy) by the forces that generate it (construction of a dynamic). It will be more precisely question of trying to identify the notion of force compared with the notion of efficiency. And taking into account "this idea of crisis" which characterise all organisational transformation a geometric explanation based on the rupture of the organisation trajectory and singularity will be suggested. The interpretation of the first results thanks to a mere example of a model application in dynamic organisation brings to the fore, the importance of its history (for instance training in this example) in its adaptation capacity proving that it may become the cause of inertia, and organisational inefficiency.


Key words: Organisation, structure, dynamic, space of representation.


© EDP Sciences 2001