With regards to a healthy organizational structure, I view it as a living system. It is organized, yet maintains the capacity of self renewal. It finds its integrity and stability through reciprocal expansions and contractions; a living and breathing entity. This processing structure maintains its form over time, yet has no rigidity. It is identifiable and consistent, yet ever changing and evolving. This is nicely illustrated in the concept of autopoiesis – “The characteristic of living systems to continuously renew themselves and to regulate this process in such a way that the integrity of their structure is maintained.”
(Jantsch, 1980, 7) as quoted in Wheatley, 1994, Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World p. 18)