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Arne Stjernholm 

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Beginning with personal consciousness, it seems a possible conclusion to understand consciousness as a psychic model of the world, a model used for redoing or forecasting behavior of the real world in a psychic world: We are able to rethink previous behavior or to "try out" future actions in this model world of thoughts, thus gaining more adequate behavior without having to try everything out for real. This model world is based on metaphors: images or words representing elements of the real world. Where the real world is physical and concrete, the model world is intangible and abstract. At a time in human evolution this model world evolved a language referring to its own metaphors - a model world containing its own psychic model of the physical world: Self-consciousness. Thus human beings are not only able to understand the physical world and manipulate it, we are also able to understand and influence the inner world of other individuals and of ourselves.

In short, we can say that consciousness is like a map of the world; a psychic map we use to "find our ways" in the real world.

In figure 1 I have illustrated the understanding of consciousness as a part of our psyche and self-consciousness as a part of consciousness. (This understanding is based on works by the Danish psychologist Boje Katzenelson).

Figure 1.

If we try to use the semiotic model of C.S. Peirce, we can unfold the understanding step-wise.
Figure 2 shows the model per se. (The model is presented according to the Danish biologist Jesper Hoffmeyer).

In figure 3, I use the model to display the concept of psyche. Psyche plays the role of bridging the outer and inner world by interpreting stimuli from the outside for the organism inside (according to Katzenelson's perception of Psyche).

Figure 3. The semiotic model of psyche.

You can put it so that Psyche interprets the world outside as a sign of an organism. Figure 4 displays the concept of consciousness using the same model. Consciousness bridges the Present with "the story of my life", i.e. the concrete experiences from the present are interpreted into an abstract model of an "I", a story with both past and a future.

Figure 4. The semiotic model of consciousness.

You can say that consciousness interprets the Present as a sign of a past and a future.
Next step is to understand the concept of self-consciousness (figure 5). The self is bridging the consciousness of other persons with my own consciousness by seeing the life stories of the others as signs of my own life story (mirroring my own inner world of thoughts with their stories).

Figure 5. The semiotic model of self-consciousness.

As can be seen from these semiotic models, the development from psyche to self follows a trail away from the concrete, tangible world towards an abstract world of meaning. The self is the most abstract entity, interpreting other people's consciousness into my own, a kind of "meta" consciousness. My point is that human production has undergone a similar evolution from concrete, physical products towards handling knowledge and meaning. The key to new management principles therefore may be to follow evolution of consciousness in creation of a new organizational "meta" consciousness.

The conception of an organization

According to the systems theory we describe the world in systems of numerous levels: Atoms, molecules, cells, organisms, groups, societies etc. One of the levels we call "organizations". To apply the understanding of individual consciousness to a level of organizations, we need a definition of the conception of an "organization". It is not enough to describe an organization as a group of individuals, since this understanding is still tied to the systems level of individuals. "Organizational consciousness" would then be nothing more than shared individual consciousness. Instead I suggest understanding an organization as a system of collaboration: It is the scope of a given collaboration, regulating the collaboration in the same way as grammar regulates language. An "organization" is so to speak the grammar of a given collaboration: A system of habits, attitudes, values, rules and so on. And organizational consciousness would then be the consciousness of this system. What this means, I will show using the same semiotic model as before.

Organizational consciousness

First: Psyche bridges the outer and inner relations of the organism. Concerning organizations, there is also a function bridging the outer and the inner relations of the organization: Management. In deed, we often describe the two fundamental dimensions of management as outer efficiency (to do the right things in relation to the market) and inner efficiency (to do it the right way). Thus we can describe the organizational psyche as shown in figure 6.

We can see that management in the sense of figure 6 is reactive, only adjusting the inner processes to changes in market conditions. This is equal to the first concepts of industrial management, dealing solely with the transformation process.

Turning to personal consciousness this was described as bridging the present with the personal "life story", the model of an abstract "I" with an existence beyond the present. Within organizations, a part of the management process has had a similar function during the later decades: The organizational strategy. Strategies are not tangible entities, but "life stories", where the present behavior of an organization is interpreted into a life story of the past and the future of the organization. This interpretation establishes the organizational "I" as an abstract model of an entity with a life story reaching beyond the present. So we can describe organizational consciousness as in figure 7.

This organizational consciousness allows the organization to be proactive, to think ahead of the present. Therefore it is very important to have an adequate language to tell the story with - which is: To have good models, metaphors and theories of strategic management. The organizational consciousness will be only as bright or clever as the language, in which it is created. As said by Descartes: You don't describe the things you see, you see the things you can describe.

If we continue with self-consciousness, this was seen as mirroring the personal life story with the life story of other persons. Organizational self-consciousness thus should interpret the strategy or life story of other organizations into the ongoing story-telling process. See figure 8.

Figure 8 shows the organizational self as a function mirroring the own story-telling process with the ongoing exchange of stories in society and culture. The organizational self is therefore making the organization able to think ahead of the story telling of the present, to think out new ways of telling and interpreting life-stories. It is so to speak a "meta" consciousness of the organization. Such a function would require a management language of organizational consciousness, of the story telling as a discipline, containing models, metaphors and theories of the narrative process, which in the end establishes the organizational model of an "I". And that is, I think, the core problem: Such a management language does not exist, or it is not in use.

Please also read: Strategic Innovation, Innovation Management, and Management Metaphors.
Another place, where you can find information about working with organizational consciousness, is at Richard Barrett's homepage www.corptools.com