Organization as a Phoenix: Reflection on life and death in community organizations (Case study: Jihad Sazandegi)

Abstract

Emphasizing on instrumental rationality and ignoring essential rationality, the organizations mainly focus on survival as their main goal. In this research, according to this problematic phenomenon (tend to survive), efforts have been pass purely empirical and inductive methods, while considering organizational death as an opportunity for better consumption and allocation of resources. The issue of planned death is highlighted as well. The metaphor of phoenix is used to provide a deep understanding of some organizational behaviors for confronting the issue of death and erosion. It is noteworthy to mention that by comparing this metaphor and some other fundamental metaphors, its functions and malfunctions are considered, and above all, its relative capability to explain and describe some aspects of organization has been evaluated. This issue has been taken into consideration by studying the story of Jihad-e-Sazandegi in Iran. In fact, Jihad had to die to survive, but it preferred to be merged in the Ministry of Agriculture to maintain its existence while annihilating its identity from the world.

Keywords

• future planning
• metaphorical understanding
• planned death
• planning beyond generation
• restoration of life