The Role of Consciousness in Organizations (Part I)

Abstract

The study of consciousness in organisations is still in its early stages and there is immense scope for future research in numerous directions, which may be better directed as our knowledge in this area grows. Analysis using artificial neural networks has revealed patterns in the dataset generated from our sample. The responses received, pertaining to certain axes of the questionnaire, appear to be more coherent, while those pertaining to other axes appear to be fairly de-coherent. This distinction appears to be quite discreet. From available conventional management data, it is apparent that although the organisation appears to deliver good results in terms of operational efficiency, it operates in a demanding environment with stretched resources, shows significant staff turnover and leave utilization, and there are some critical areas of dissatisfaction amongst the staff, namely internal communication, staff cohesion and feeling under-valued by the organisation. This study seems to suggest an association between organisational consciousness and functionality, which should be investigated further in future research.

Part I of this two-part article includes: Introduction; Literature Review; Methodology; and Results.