The following is a list of spiritual needs people seek to meet in organizations:
community
shared work creativity
purpose meaning respect
self-worth fulfillment empathy
joy support validation
growth appreciation forgiveness
understanding safety love
compassion kindness stability
A number of factors may be present in an organization that will stifle spiritual needs of members. Most common are:
patronizing demeaning secrecy
fear decisiveness misuse of power
devaluing withholding splitting
prejudice judgmentalism greed
bureaucracy dishonesty
Research into every aspect of the universe, from human beings to astrophysics, reveals complex nonlinear systems. It is difficult to quantify and manipulate variable in complex nonlinear systems, so these systems are often simplified to assume a linear process. Practitioners responsible for the use and management of the system, may make assumptions that it is linear and engage in linear strategies as they seek to understand and control processes. This error is often prevalent in organizations and small groups. Relationships even at the level of two individuals are nonlinear, and as we add more people to form groups, complexity increases rapidly. Stephen Strogatz writes, “Complex networks are the natural setting for the most mysterious forms of group behavior facing science today.” (Strogatz, 2003, p. 232) While it would be daunting to quantify the variables that exist in a complex human organization, it would be beneficial for managers and group members to understand the complex nonlinear nature of their relationships and activities.
In recent years, a new body of approaches and disciplines with heavy reliance on advanced mathematics and computer modeling has rapidly moved to the forefront in scientific research. These new approaches called “The New Sciences” include quantum theory, chaos theory, complexity theory, and decision theory. A distinguishing characteristic of each of these theories is the rejection of the Newtonian clock-like universe and recognition of nonlinearity, diversity, interconnection, and randomness in every element of existence.
It is not surprising the disciplines of the new sciences have been applied to the study of small groups. Holly Arrow’s book, Small Groups As Complex Systems begins, “This book presents a general theory of small groups as complex systems.” (Arrow, McGrath, Berdahl, 2000, p. 3) Ralph Stacey writes,
In this book I invite you to explore with me how the newly emerging science of complexity might provide us with a more useful framework for making sense of life and organizations than the approaches that currently dominate our thinking and therefore our acting. (Stacey, 1996, p. 1)
What is complexity and how does it apply to small groups? Professor Scott E. Page, in “Understanding Complexity,” teaches that to describe something as complex, we mean that it consists of interdependent, diverse entities, and we assume that those entities adapt–that they respond to their local and global environments. A system may be considered complex if its agents meet four qualifications: diversity, connection, interdependence, and adaptation. In addition, complex systems have the ability to produce large events, or emergence. Emergent behaviors or properties arise when a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions occur in an environment. The emergent property will be different in size and kind from the underlying interactions. (Page, The Great Courses, 2009)
