Granted, the potential for description of the organization at various levels of complexity,it becomes markedly more challenging to comprehend the global system at
any given moment.I have found useful to apply the term complexification (Casti, 1994;
Collen, 2003)to convey the dynamics of the process of organizational development
from more local and regional activities to participating actively in the global
marketplace as a global organization. A spreading geography and virtual outreach
bring immense challenges that press ever more greatly upon organizations struggling
to survive and thrive. Organizations are being drawn increasingly into operational
complexities simply because of the outsourced locations of various raw materials and
products they require to provide their products and services. Understanding
organizational development from regional to global, as a process of complexification,is
helpful. Leaders can imagine what is required to participate at a global level and
envision phases of development from present operations to that more macro-level end.
In a complementary fashion,participants can map the complexifications of concurrent
communications stemming from disparate sources impacting the organization to adapt
operations that worked at regional levels, but no longer work at the global level.
Conversely, looking for emergent operations that are working well at the global level–
potential open knowledge–that seems non-existent at local and regional levels,merits
even closer scrutiny. The challenge is tapping into and applying more open knowledge
shown to be effective at the global level to facilitate adoption of newer practices to
become a global organization. For example,shifts to interdependency on more distal
suppliers requires more knowledge of their locations that effect supply and delivery,as
well as the unintended consequences of expenses and resources required to adjust the
time of production processes,