Consciousness In Organizations

Consciousness In Organizations
Forget about I.Q.! What's your organization's C.Q. (consciousness quotient)?
For that matter, what's your personal C.Q.? And what's the C.Q. of your supervisor, manager, or boss?

Unfortunately, there's no "quotient" for measuring consciousness in individuals or organizations. And while we could easily design such a quotient or test to measure consciousness, any attempt to make a linear variable out of such a complex function as consciousness would be ill-conceived. Also, while we could test for the presence of various specific types of consciousness, these tests would fail to detect the presence of other forms of consciousness. Finally, there is little sense in assigning a "score" for consciousness within organizations, when it is clear in advance that few organizations can receive anywhere close to a "passing" or acceptable score. The state of consciousness within organizations is generally either weak or absent, and so most organizations will have to work on their internal structures for years before achieving a consciousness score out of the negative range. Given this bleak outlook, our approach will be to describe the qualities and characteristics of the conscious organization.The following table provides some initial guidelines for distinguishing conscious from unconscious organizations. After the table, a detailed list of relevant topics is provided.

Realm or Aspect of Organizational Functioning	Characteristics of the Conscious organization	Characteristics of the Unconscious organization
Feeling of employees toward management/owners	employees feel that managers or owners are in touch with the needs and sentiments of employees	employees openly dislike or ridicule managers or owners for being out of touch with employee sentiments
Management methodologies	management by productivity, quality, satisfaction, values	management by documents, deadlines, profits, expediency, political motives
Impact of disturbed employees & managers	intolerance of rogue employees, absence of interpersonal abuse from disturbed employees and managers	free reign for interpersonal abuses from malicious & predatory employees or managers
Level of bureaucratization	Low bureaucracy; bureaucracy discouraged	High bureaucracy, bureaucracy encouraged
Use of documents	document sparse	document rich
Organizational sophistication	organic management; fluid procedures; high organizational sophistication possible	Low sophistication; use of regressive & discredited management approaches/ philosophies; management by objectives
Organizational health	Organizational health possible; organizational health is protected by proactive management philosophies and methods.	Organization health impossible; organizational philosophy absent, defective, or corrupt. The full gamut of organizational pathologies have free reign.
Organizational stress and risk factors	Management disallows the imposition of stress upon employees from within or without. Health-conserving orientation to time.	Pathological orientation to time; organization imposes stress on employees to fulfill organizational goals within pathological time constraints or conditions; organizations sacrifice employee health for attainment of corrupt goals - the vampirish organization
Employee health	Employee health protected. Employees function more days per year, and more effectively at work, enhancing the attainment of legitimate organizational goals.	Employee health compromised; evidence of management failure reflected in stresses imposed on organizational victims. Occurrence of illness, breakdown, family crisis

Complete List of Topics

Specifying and elaborating the qualities of conscious and unconscious organizations
Toxicity - Inhibitor of Consciousness in the Organization and Individual
Forms of Toxicity in Organizations and the Workplace
      Interpersonal Toxicity
        Toxic Communications
        Toxic Co-workers
      Toxic Supervisors and managers
      Organizational thugs
      Toxic Task Design
      Toxic Organizational Climate
Towards a taxonomy of organizational diseases
        Operational diseases
                   Deadline Sickness
                   Clerkism
        Institutionalized abuse of employees/members
        Institutionalized abuse of customers
        Institutionalized predatory employees/managers
        Nepotism, favoritism, and other triangulation diseases within organizations
        Diseases of organizational climate
Coping With the Toxic Organization from Within
        Instant recognition of organizational thugs, and other organizational predators
                    operate by harm to others rather than by personal achievement
                    use of slander, defamation, sabotage, manipulation, gossip, blame
        Mastering the art of dodging toxicity in organizations
        Direct confrontation of toxicity from within organizations